Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015—and I have often been on my feet in this place to talk about the absolute mess that this government has made of the great National Broadband Network. The government has today gutted its own bill and removed the contentious elements that Labor opposed—cynically perhaps, because talking about telecommunications and the second-rate NBN is not what this government wants to do today. Of course, it is not surprising when they woke this morning to the front-page headline 'Turnbull's NBN plan in crisis.' We saw in question time today that the Prime Minister would like to hide behind the new minister. But Australia knows who is responsible. Australia knows who stood at the dispatch box in opposition and slated Labor's plan for an NBN. Australia knows who was responsible for the NBN in the first two years of this government and who the communications minister was.

Today the government has been forced into a humiliating backdown on its own bill that it was bringing into this chamber. The amendments introduced today by the government follow to the letter Labor's recommendations in its dissenting report. Some might see this as common sense; others might see it as a government that would like to close down the debate and get a piece legislation through before we all get up to talk about our experiences with the NBN.

The bill was a misguided. It was an ideological attempt by the government to roll back a number of competition and consumer friendly reforms underpinning the NBN. In the electorate of Lalor, the people I represent are living the digital divide that has been created by this government in the last 2½ years. They are acutely aware of the mess that is this government's NBN. They are acutely aware that, at the last election, this government promised that the NBN would be faster and cheaper and they would have it sooner. They are acutely aware that the NBN is slower, more expensive and the time line for delivery has stretched under this government.

It is worth looking at the history of the NBN and, in particular, the utterances of our now Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth, who was of course responsible for it in his previous portfolio. While in opposition, the then shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull said: 'We are going to do a rigorous analysis. We will get Infrastructure Australia to do an independent cost-benefit analysis.' Of course, that was before the election. After the election, instead of appointing Infrastructure Australia as promised, the now Prime Minister appointed the Vertigan panel, a panel made up of former Liberal Party staffers and strident critics of the NBN. Who better to do an analysis of the NBN than people who think it should not exist! The Vertigan panel, responsible for the initial provisions in the bill, based its cost-benefit analysis on certain assumptions that were hopelessly, outrageously and embarrassingly wrong. What was the industry response to the Vertigan report? The industry response was scathing. The Competitive Carriers' Coalition released a statement calling on the recommendations to be 'binned'. I am sure they are pleased to see that some of those recommendations in the amendments before us today have been binned. They said:

After deliberating all year, the Vertigan panel has recommended that Australia look to emulate 1970s US telephone industry policy to promote investment in 21st century broadband networks.

…   …   …

Most of the Vertigan recommendations represent nothing more than rehashed, discredited theoretical arguments promoted by opponents of regulatory reform and the NBN.

Labor is pleased that the government is finally heeding the recommendations of industry and is binning the recommendations of the Vertigan review in this chamber today.

But I have to spend some time this evening talking about the NBN in the electorate of Lalor, because I have done it so many times in this place since coming here in the 2013 election, because there are so many people in my community who are having difficulty accessing any kind of internet service, let alone the NBN. Last year I sent out a broadband survey to connect with residents about the problems they are facing. The survey showed that suburbs like Tarneit, Truganina, Wyndham Vale and Point Cook are riddled with internet black holes. In those suburbs ADSL1 is not available to residents, there is a waiting list to get onto a port so that you can get ADSL, and many residents are paying high prices to access 4G and other options because they cannot connect to broadband. Many of the new areas being built are fibre ready, but there are no nbn co plans to provide that fibre. These estates have to rely on wireless access, because no new copper has been rolled out. If you live in Point Cook, Wyndham Vale or Seabrook, you will be waiting until 2018 to get off your ADSL, if you have it, or to get from wireless onto something that has a reliable speed. And of course each of those suburbs, such as areas of Wyndham Vale, have the originally planned Labor Party NBN: fibre to the home. Those people are singing its praises, while across the road their neighbours cannot get ADSL1.

In Lalor no new areas have been added to the NBN rollout since the 2013 election. So, sooner? I do not think so, Prime Minister. In our growing community the NBN is a necessity. It is critical for small and medium businesses to be on the NBN. We are talking about a community where people can be in the snarl of a traffic jam for an hour and a half in the morning and an hour and a half in the evening. Many opt to run a microbusiness or a small business from home or locally, and many are struggling to make a profit in those businesses because of limited access to what is now a requirement for business. And most residents have no idea when they will be receiving the NBN.

I recently received an email, one of many, from a gentleman in Wyndham Vale. He said:

When I made an inquiry to the NBN about laying their network in my current area they are either not sure or they don't know how much time it will take more to start laying cables in our area.

His email is representative of the dozens of emails I receive a week on the NBN. From another Wyndham Vale man:

I am writing you this e-mail to raise the unavailability of phone connections and internet services in our area. I have recently purchased my own house in Wyndham Vale. But I am unable to get this very basic facility of internet at my place because of lack of ports in the area, as per told by every provider including Telstra.

And I am wondering what is the reason of lack of ports as the latest internet provision NBN has been started in the area just across Ballan road which is more far to city than my area.

So, the man asks reasonably: when? The man asks reasonably why his neighbour can access this and he is left not just with last century's technology but the technology pre any of our collective memories.

Last year I received a complaint from a concerned mother, and as a former teacher I understand the pressure on students coming home; their schools are digitally ready, and they come home and have all the equipment in the house—the hardware—but they cannot access the internet at a speed that will allow them to do the downloads or the uploads that they need. This is a matter of equity. This mother wrote:

Our internet connection is very slow, impacting on our daily lives and on our children currently doing VCE. It is really unacceptable considering our world and society is now heavily based on technology.

We sit here now listening to a Prime Minister talk about innovation—a Prime Minister who has cut funding to education and who has made a mess of the NBN, who has created a digital divide. He said everyone in Australia would have the NBN this year, and that promise is just not going to be met. There are areas in my electorate where the rollout will not start at least until 2018. There are other areas that will not get the NBN. It is clear; these areas are in the documentation released by nbn co. This government promised high-speed internet by 2016. Malcolm Turnbull said he would get it to all homes in Australia by this year, and that has now blown out more than double—to 2020. The federal government's handling of the project has been nothing short of a disaster. It is a farce—but it is a farce that is hurting people all over this country. It is hurting people in my electorate. Our now Prime Minister had one job as minister for communications—one job—and over the last 2½ years he had one job: to build the NBN. But he has failed. It is an absolute disaster.

We know the NBN is facing mounting delays and rising costs, and the reason we know this is from yet another leaked document. The transparency around the NBN is such that we do not know what is going on until we get a leak from the department. A shroud of secrecy has descended over this project since the Prime Minister took over as the former minister and Prime Minister, with basic information, which was made public under Labor, now being hidden. So, today we saw another leaked document form nbn co that revealed that the Prime Minister's second-rate copper NBN is hopelessly delayed and over budget, so it is going to cost twice as much as Labor's fibre to the home, and what we are going to get is copper to the street corner that relies on mains power. We are rolling out reams and reams of copper when we should have optic fibre. When I was a principal in a school years ago we put optic fibre in our schools, ready for the NBN, and now those schools could be faced with copper at the gate. It is a disaster.

The Prime Minister said today, in question time, that we should let the facts speak for themselves. Well, here we have something we can agree on: let the facts speak for themselves. He said his second-rate NBN would cost $29.5 billion. We now know it will cost almost double—up to $56 billion and growing. He said that his second-rate copper NBN would cost $600 per home for connection; this cost has nearly tripled to $1,600 a home. He said it would cost $55 million to patch up the old copper network; this cost has blown out, by more than 1,000 per cent, to more than $640 million. This is for copper. This is for last century's technology. He said that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the pay TV cables by 2016, but nbn co is now forecasting they will connect only 10,000 homes by June 2016.

I agree, Prime Minister: let the facts speak for themselves. He said his second-rate network would bring in $2.5 billion in revenue in 2016 and 2017, but this has crashed to $1.1 billion. He has blown a $1.4 billion hole in nbn co's revenue line. Time is running out. The excuses are getting longer. Australians know who is responsible. The people in my community deserve better than the ever-increasing waits. They deserve better than what is being delivered. The Prime Minister saw the creation of a digital divide that is embedding itself in my community, not shrinking, under this government.

We have heard a lot about the price of housing in the last few days. We have heard the Prime Minister wax lyrical—sorry, waffle lyrical—at the dispatch box about his knowledge of how much houses cost all over this country. Does he know that in my electorate the key decider on what a house is worth is now whether or not it gets access to the NBN? That is now creating a bubble in the housing market in the electorate of Lalor. This digital divide is playing out in our community. It is having an impact everywhere. The community I represent needs a Prime Minister who will do more than invest in telecommunications—they need a Prime Minister who will invest in this country's future. There is no innovation without education. There is no innovation without a decent NBN for people all over this country.

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