Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects) Share this | Hansard source

I do want to thank the member for Swan for this question, which really reflects a campaign that he has been assiduously pursuing in the totality of his time here in the parliament in relation to the delivery of broadband in Ascot.

There is, as the member informed the House, a letter on the record from Kim Wilkie MP, the then Labor member for Swan, from September 2007 which says:

Labor's National Broadband Network will solve Ascot's broadband problems.

There it was. There was the promise in 2007. And so, when the new member for Swan—as he then was in 2007—came to the parliament, he understandably pursued the delivery of that promise.

To his great surprise, when the city of Belmont and the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council put forward a proposal to prioritise the Ascot exchange, it was rejected by the then minister for broadband, Senator Conroy. He rejected out of hand the proposal, when there had been a promise only two years before by the then Labor member for Swan that Ascot would be sorted out.

It has fallen—as it always does—to the coalition to sort out Labor's mess. We are doing that with the NBN all around Australia. We are doing that in the electorate of Swan, where there are 28,000 premises ready for service today. I am sure there are many in the House who recollect that the total number of premises connected in all of Western Australia in 2013, when we came to government, was 34. Yet today—only slightly more than two years later—in just one electorate in Western Australia over 28,000 premises are ready for service. Indeed, when we came to government, Western Australia's NBN rollout was in such disarray that the primary contractor, Syntheo, had pulled out of that market. So we have turned that situation around in a short period of time. Thanks to the advocacy of the member for Swan on behalf of his constituents, some 15,500 homes and businesses in Ascot, Belmont, Cloverdale, Perth, Redcliffe and Rivervale will see construction begin in the first quarter of 2017, and there are 39,160 premises included in the rollout plan through to the third quarter of 2018.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

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