Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

They would indeed be sued. Generally, you would be getting about one to two megabits per second, if you are lucky. As I said, these little chickens are coming home to roost. As in the headline from David Ramli, 'NBN faces double cost hit on ageing Optus network'. We know that the Prime Minister yesterday would not—or could not—even support the assertions he made only a couple of years ago. I quote from David Ramli:

NBN Co spent $800 million—

that is your and my money—

to buy and reuse Optus' cable network. Now it may be forced to invest another $375 million to rebuild parts of the fading network because it isn't capable of delivering high-speed broadband to enough people.

What did the ACCC say in 2012? We have known this for years. Under this Prime Minister, the cost of his second-rate NBN—in April 2013, he said it would cost $29.5 billion. In December 2013, he said it would be $41 billion. In August this year, it was $56 billion. Just have a look at what their rollout plan, released in October, is based on. As was very aptly said by the shadow minister, it has a trajectory that even Evel Knievel could not jump! And it is predicated on HFC being a primary delivery mechanism for this, predicated on HFC.

This financial year, nbn co said it would connect 953,000 homes and businesses to the NBN in the fixed-line footprint, ramping up in the next two financial years to 6.2 million homes and businesses—predicated on the HFC. This Prime Minister promised minimum speeds to everyone by 2016. These premises are not going to receive the NBN until 2019 at the earliest. Meanwhile, residents in Blacktown, in the electorate of the member for Chifley and my own electorate, await decent broadband services under this government.

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