Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I join our colleagues on the other side of the House and wish everyone a fabulous Christmas and a magnificent 2016. Unfortunately, I have to talk about a topic today which is not joyous, and that is the delivery of the NBN into the electorate of Perth. Many punters in my electorate are pretty cross about their broadband service and the fact that they have been excluded even from the dumbed down fibre-to-the-node rollout. They have absolutely no hope of any upgrade for at least the next four years.

The Prime Minister promised at the last election that those with the worst speeds would be prioritised, but this clearly has not happened, as I have demonstrated in this place before. Over the last two weeks we have actually had 300 complaints about broadband, and I want to give you some examples of these. First of all we have Paul Dickinson. Paul is from Dianella. He says:

I am a sometimes Liberal supporter but this NBN issue coming as it does on top of road before rail, Route 8, lavish spending on pet projects like Elizabeth Quay whilst cutting funding to essential services, means I for one will not be voting Liberal in either State or Federal elections in future.

We have Craig Heath from Dianella. He says:

My son who is doing Engineering at UWA has to go to UWA to do any internet work as its not reliable, we have to rely on wireless that is so slow and drops out all the time and what makes it worse is we are in a wireless black hole.

This is less than 10 kilometres from the CBD, and a young tertiary student cannot do their work at home.

I want to read this from Julie Scott from Maylands:

From my home I have a clear line of sight to the city centre 4kms away and yet we have to rely on ridiculously expensive hotspot options along with appalling internet speeds.

I have travelled extensively and have never experienced such slow connection speeds and the fact we have no other option is both galling and frustrating when we see other suburbs going on to the NBN before us when they at least already have some broadband coverage.

And Helena and David Pak from Bedford wrote:

We love our suburb but this broadband issue diminishes the amenity of Bedford. We find it frustrating that in 2015 we are unable to enjoy services such as video on demand and any data related services offered by major tech companies.

This must be dealt with. It cannot be left unattended for the next four years.

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