Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am absolutely astounded that anyone from the Labor Party could come into this place and be critical of the job that this government is doing with the rollout of the NBN. I believe that members of the Labor Party, particularly those who were here in 2008, should still hang their heads in shame. I sat in this place in 2008 and watched the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund being raided and rolled into $900 cash payments that disappeared in wrapping paper and plastic toys leading up to Christmas in 2008. The government inherited an NBN program that was, I believe, instigated on the back of a beer coaster in an aeroplane with the previous minister and the Prime Minister. I believe the initial rollout was represented by that amount of planning.

I agree that Australia does need a national broadband network. It is important and no more important than in the electorate of Parkes. I represent a third of New South Wales—256,000 square kilometres—and some of the largest agribusinesses in Australia. Many of those businesses and individuals are absolutely frustrated beyond belief in trying to deal with the interim satellite. It is one of the worst examples of public policy that we have seen. The previous government had no cap on some of the products that could be sold from that. It was oversubscribed and we ended up with slow speeds that jammed. Indeed, the previous minister had to take some of the plans back so that everyone could get a go. Great news: last Monday, the new satellite—the first of the two Ka-band satellites—went up. They will certainly give the people of the bush an internet service that they can use.

One of the other things that is important to know is that, in the six years of the Labor government, not one cent, not one brass razoo, went into mobile phone black spots. In the bush, internet is largely delivered through the phone network. As I speak, they are harvesting crops of barley right across the Parkes electorate. If your grain harvester breaks down and the servicemen come to plug in their laptop to do a diagnosis, if they do not have mobile phone coverage they cannot do the job properly. So I very much welcome the black spot program rolled out by this government, and I look forward to the next rollouts. Indeed, one of the agreements that Prime Minister Turnbull came to with Warren Truss, prior to forming his ministry, was that we would continue rolling out the black spot program until there was no need to do so.

As we speak, we now have the Downer company rolling out the NBN in Dubbo. It is due for completion in May next year. Last week I was very pleased to visit Westhaven, which is a supported accommodation facility in Dubbo. The people in Westhaven were making the identifier tags for the cables that are going through Dubbo. They are indeed doing a fantastic job. I hope that, beyond Dubbo, the NBN Co and Downer actually give Westhaven more work to do as the NBN gets rolled out across the state.

To give people a bit of an idea what I am talking about, at the change of government I had a meeting with representatives from the NBN Co and I asked, 'Just out of interest, when will my home town of Warialda get broadband?' The answer: 2024! I can tell you now that most of my electorate is on track to be rolled out in the announcements in 2017. So we have come forward seven years. We are back on budget, we are back on track and we are very quickly fixing up the mess left to us by the previous government.

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