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

This is a really important debate because the NBN is critical to our future. We are operating in a global environment. If our telecommunications are not of world standard we will not be able to compete, and that is particularly critical in Western Australia. With the mining boom winding down and unemployment ratcheting up, we need to have diversification within our economy. We need to move to 21st century jobs, and we need the digital infrastructure that underpins that. But, despite the endless rhetoric that we get from the Prime Minister about technological innovation and agility, we are failing the future with our substandard attempt at a national broadband network.

My electorate of Perth is pretty much a microcosm of how this government has not only trashed the real NBN but failed in its own second-rate version. When the Prime Minister announced broadband, its one saving grace was supposed to be that relying on the degraded copper network and delivering only 20th century speeds might be an inferior product but we are all going to get it a lot quicker. We are all going to get it by the end of 2016. So 'sooner' was one of the tag lines for the coalition's broadband. Let's see how that has played out in Perth.

I want to talk first of all about the Bassendean exchange for the suburbs of Ashfield, Bassendean, Beechboro, Eden Hill, Kiara, Lockridge and Morley. They were all on the schedule when Labor lost government in 2013. They were set to receive fibre to the premises by 2014. The preliminary work had all been done. We had spent $2 million upgrading the Telstra exchange, so it was all ready. Yet we noticed in 2014, when the first rollout plan came from this government, that something was missing. None of those suburbs had been included on the rollout. We then campaigned very strongly about this and, lo and behold, the next year they were put back onto the rollout—but the very earliest that they will be seeing this start is the end of 2016. That will be the start of construction. We know how lousy the copper infrastructure is in those suburbs. We know how the voice calls drop out when it rains, so we know that the likelihood of this being in place even by 2017 is very unlikely. So it is later, slower and more expensive.

We go to our next set of suburbs, even closer to the CBD, which operate out of the Maylands exchange—Bedford, Maylands, Embleton, Inglewood, Noranda and Dianella—and the NBN is not even a distant light on the horizon. Despite sitting on the lowest band for broadband quality in the nation, these suburbs are not on the three-year rollout. I will let the residents tell you in their own words about the situation. Sheila Pretsel from Bayswater says:

The section of Bayswater where I live does not have Internet access—period. This means that residents must use Wifi dongles—and the reception is hit and miss.

This also means no Netflix, updating of BluRay software, no ability to use the smart system linked to MyAir, etcetera. It's like living in the 1980s.

This is Maylands: the land of the mullet.

Betty Wong from Bedford tell us:

Though the exchange is diagonally 100m across from our house, we're unable to access iinet naked or ADSL2+.

Bayswater resident Scott Overheu says:

People don't believe me when I tell them that a YouTube video still buffers at the lowest definition they have.

Unfortunately I live in Bayswater, and with nine new residents in my street with infill, it just gets slower and slower.

And Anne Blake from Dianella says:

Looking at maps of the rollout in the Eastern States, I sometimes wonder if WA is treated as an afterthought.

Sadly when the rollout is completed we will still have a second class system which will no doubt feel the strain as more and more demands are placed on it.

This is not a niche issue. Our campaign over the past two years has proven one thing—nothing arouses passions in the electorate more than missing out on the 21st century technology we need for our future. Just this morning a Highgate resident, Steven Ebsary, emailed me his thoughts on the NBN— (Time expired)

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