Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015. It is hard to know how to limit my remarks to 15 minutes in this particular debate because I could talk all day about the problems we have had in my electorate regarding the rollout of the NBN. Like the member for Shortland, I would like to take this opportunity to place, again, on the record the frustrations that Bendigo and Central Victoria have had as a result of decisions that this government has made on the NBN.

Let's just, for a moment, stop and remember what this government, when in opposition, promised the people of Central Victoria. They did pop up to Central Victoria quite a bit, including the then shadow minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, later the Minister for Communications and now the Prime Minister. He promised in the lead-up to the last election at a Bendigo Business Council event: 'The Coalition's plans would be cheaper and faster to install by using fibre-to-the-node technology rather than fibre to the premises to the homes and businesses in Bendigo.' That is what the Prime Minister said to a Bendigo Business Council forum held on 26 March 2013. Here we are. Tomorrow is 1 March 2016 and no-one in Bendigo has fibre to the node.

This Prime Minister, when he was the shadow communications minister, stood up at a Bendigo Business Council event and effectively lied. He conned them. He said, at the time, that homes in Bendigo would get fibre to the node by 2016. We are there. We are however many years on from that particular event, and we still do not have fast-speed broadband delivered in Bendigo. We do not have it in the way that was promised by this government. What this government did when they got elected was to rip up the plan, which would have seen Bendigo homes connected to fibre to the premises—the Labor plan. We would have got it under the Labor plan. It would be rolling out, as we speak, to the brown sites that we talk about. We would be getting it, but this government ripped up the plan and threw Bendigo off the map. We are still waiting.

Some in our area are okay with it. They say, 'If Labor wins the next election, can we get fibre to the driveway?'—this hidden concept—'Can we get fibre-to-the-premises?' What the people in Bendigo know is that they cannot trust this government even with their own plan. Not only has it not been built but also it is costing this country a fortune. Replacing copper—what kind of a joke of a government is it that replaces copper with copper? Why not admit it and say, 'All right. Where we have to replace the copper we'll go one step further—we'll replace it with fibre. We'll replace it with a cable that will deliver the internet speeds we need tomorrow and every day after tomorrow'? What kind of ideologically arrogant government do we have that it replaces copper with copper? Maybe it is because they have friends in the copper industry and they want to throw them a bone and try to help their copper prices. No other country in the world is doing what this government is doing and replacing copper with copper at the rate and cost this government is.

It was not just the shadow minister, who has since become Prime Minister, who came to Bendigo and made these promises. We also had the then Leader of the Opposition and now former Prime Minister make the same promises—that, under a coalition, by 2016 there would be minimum download speeds of 25 megabits:

So we will deliver a minimum of 25 megabits … by the end of our first term.

Well, the election is coming round the corner—the clock is ticking; people on the government benches think that we could go to a double dissolution election any day—but the people in Bendigo still do not have their NBN. Do you know what we do have in Bendigo? We have the advertising. The government did not cancel the advertising contracts. We have the 'Connect to the NBN' advertising trucks. We have NBN advertising at our cinemas. We have NBN advertising in our newspapers. Jeez, with the advertising budget of this government, you would think that every house in Bendigo could connect. But they cannot.

The only houses that can connect to the NBN in Bendigo are the houses that could connect because of Labor government decisions, because, under Labor, our greenfield sites, our new estates, got NBN fibre to the premises. We are not a growth area like Melbourne, so we do not have the big estates coming online like Melbourne does, but some of our homes can connect to the NBN. We do have some towers, built under Labor, switched on and connecting to the NBN, but not as a result of any decision that the government have made. Yet they stand in here and claim the credit for these homes being connected, because they were connected under their watch, but it was not their decisions that meant these houses were connected.

What we also have in Bendigo is the government's failure to turn on towers. We have four NBN towers built in the northern part of the electorate that would have serviced homes, businesses and farms in the northern part of the electorate. They were built in 2013 but not switched on. How incompetent are you as a government to not switch on towers that were built? You claim to be people who care about business and are smart at business. Well, you have got to ask the question: how can you build an asset but not switch it on to generate the revenue with which to make the asset sustainable going forward? The reason why they have not been switched on is that the fifth tower, the relay tower at Mount Camel, was knocked back for a planning reason. That was 12 months ago. Over 12 months ago, that tower was knocked back and yet, to this day, there is still not an engineering solution. We still cannot get a switch-on date for the people in that area affected.

There are lots of people in the Bendigo electorate whose delivery for the internet, for the NBN, will be fixed wireless, yet we have no confidence in the government being able to deliver that plan, because of what has happened in the north of the electorate: their failure to consult with the community, their failure to find an engineering solution, their failure to ensure that communities like Huntly, like Ladys Pass, like Goornong, can actually connect to the NBN. What frustration they have, to look out their windows and to drive past NBN towers that have not been switched on. Yet the government are congratulating themselves for doing such a great job. How great has their job been? Their so-called fabulous fibre to the node has been so successful that, since they introduced fibre to the node, under 30,000 homes have been connected to it. That means that every other home that has been connected has been connected because of decisions that the Labor Party made in government. You cannot claim somebody else's achievements or homework. It just does not work.

On this issue, the people in the regions will not be conned. They want access to the internet. They want access to the NBN so that they can do their business. There is currently a massive digital divide between the country and the city, between the regions and the metro areas, and people are being left behind in the regions. We do not even talk about being able to watch Netflix in central Victoria. We just want to be able to log onto the internet to read emails, to do homework, to do online coursework for university—because our universities are shutting down and moving to the metro areas. We just want to be able to have the internet to be able to upload our business activity statements on time and in real time. The people in the areas of central Victoria and regional Victoria are not talking about internet speeds to be able to watch movies; they are talking about internet speeds to be able to do the basic, fundamental aspects of our lives, because so much of our lives is online these days, yet we cannot get decent fast-speed broadband.

In the few moments I have left, I would like to put on the record some of the issues that have been raised with me personally. Like the previous speaker, the member for Shortland, I can say that this issue tops all other issues in my electorate: people's inability to connect to fast-speed broadband. Because under the Labor plan we should be having fibre to the premises being rolled out right now, Telstra stopped adding new ADSL ports into parts of the Bendigo electorate—areas like Castlemaine and Golden Square, where we have had a lot of growth and infilling and building going on within housing estates. Yet, when people ring up to connect to the internet, they are told, 'Sorry; there are no ports available.' When you talk to Telstra, they say, 'That's because we're working to the NBN rollout plan, and they should have access to the NBN right now.' You cannot blame Telstra for the fact that nbn co have failed to build on time.

What it means is that the people in Golden Square, Castlemaine and other parts of the electorate that cannot get access to an ADSL port are told to rely on their mobile phones. People are waiting two to three years to get access to ADSL because there are no available ports for them. They literally call up every day hoping that somebody has dropped off the list so they can go onto the list. If the government had kept their promise then this would not be an issue. But they did not. They ripped up the plan. They threw Bendigo off the map. Two years later, we are back on and we are going to get inferior technology.

So you can understand why the people of central Victoria feel betrayed by this Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister, who went to Bendigo and made these promises, who stood up and said that we would get the NBN sooner, quicker and cheaper. Well, that is wrong. Under the Labor plan, people would have had it rolling out down their streets right now. Under the Liberal plan, they have promises to be able to connect some time by 2018. There is a problem too in that parts of the area are still not on the rollout map. Maiden Gully, a growth area in Bendigo, is still not on this government's map. People living there cannot get ADSL and all I can say to them is, 'Sorry, you're not on the map yet.' It is a growth area with new schools and they cannot get access to the internet. It is a disgrace and this government needs to fix it.

In Redesdale they have a tower. But those who have access to the tower say, 'It's great. Thank you very much, Labor, for building the tower, but we have a problem with the satellite service'—because under this government the satellite service has been oversubscribed. In regional and farming communities, one or two households are supposed to rely on the satellite service. We also have entire townships, such as Queenstown in Tasmania, a township of 3,000, being offered the satellite service. So people in Redesdale say, 'How's it fair that Queenstown is accessing the same service as me?' They are asking for a new tower to be built in their area so everybody in their area has access to towers.

Then we have the famous Spencer Street—famous for all the wrong reasons. In this street there are four different technologies—or five if you include 'none at all'. The four different technologies that one street in one part of the electorate has been offered to connect to the internet are ADSL1, ADSL2, mobile broadband and interim satellite. All who live in that street say their speeds are appalling and low. All of them say they cannot connect to the internet to do the basics.

We also have Newham. We have actually had some fairly constructive meetings with nbn co and they have indicated that they want to build two towers. Learning from the mistakes of Mount Camel, we have been able to convince nbn co to come and meet with us to talk about where to put the two towers in Newham. They are referred to as the south and the north tower, and we are hopeful that they will be built and connected. We have problems with other parts of the electorate that are not able to connect to fast-speed, reliable broadband. Large parts of the electorate—the great township of Moulden and places like Maiden Gully—are still not on the map. And we still have issues with towers that have not been switched on.

And we hear from people about their experiences. Darren Williams, from Kangaroo Flat, has access to no ADSL. In an email about internet services in central Victoria he said: 'We purchased a block of land in Kangaroo Flat. It was not an old subdivision and we built our home.' The email ends up being a very long email that describes their experiences about trying to connect to the ADSL. Bronwyn Gibbs, from Strathfieldsaye, speaks about the digital divide. She used to live in an area where the NBN was being delivered and then she moved into Strathfieldsaye. She said it was like going back a decade, like a time warp, like going from the NBN to ADSL.

A lot of students contact us to talk about how they cannot log on to do their homework because of the lack of access to fast speed broadband. This government does not really care about the regions. They do not really care about ensuring that there is no digital divide in this country. This government does not really commit to ensuring that everybody has access to fast speed broadband. They are not in the interest of building a nation. They are not in the interest of nation-building projects. This bill, and what is trying to do, at the end of the day does not address the real issues when it comes to the— (Time expired)

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