Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Grayndler, who is such a strong advocate for his own electorate but also for infrastructure across the country. He has done a great job today, on the 20th anniversary of his election to this parliament, of really exploring and exposing some of the shocking mismanagement and incompetence in respect of the NBN. As the member for Grayndler said, when it came to the NBN, the now Prime Minister, then communications minister, had one job. He had one job, and what are we seeing? We are seeing headlines that talk about just what a hash of that one job he has—unfortunately and very sadly—made. I guess he has got a lot of difficulties because he has completely failed to deliver on the NBN, the great nation-building reform that our country needs. By 'our country', of course, I am speaking about not just schoolkids, not just small businesses and not just university students who are trying to study but about people across this country, whether you are in the city, whether you are in the bush. Malcolm Turnbull has failed you when it comes to the NBN.

Malcolm Turnbull has failed to provide the 25 megabits per second that we were all promised we were going to get in 2016. Everyone is not getting the NBN by 2016, despite the election commitment that Malcolm Turnbull made. In fact, this NBN rollout plan of his is blowing out to 2020. Given the election was in September 2013, that is more than a doubling of the time period for the delivery of the NBN. But that is far from the only example of incompetence on this issue. Before becoming the communications minister, when the current government were in opposition, Malcolm Turnbull said that the second-rate NBN that the Liberals would deliver would cost $29½ billion. But it has blown out, Mr Deputy Speaker. You would not even believe it. It has almost doubled, to $56 billion in cost. So you have got a doubling in the time frame and a doubling in the cost.

The really sad thing is that, while it is Malcolm Turnbull who has made such a hash of this, it is households and businesses that suffer. Even more disappointing for people is the amount of old technology that is being added into this second-rate version of the NBN. Malcolm Turnbull said that it would cost $55 million to patch up the old copper network, but this cost has blown out by more than 1,000 per cent—it is hard to believe, but it is true—to more than $640 million. He said that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the pay TV cables—for the second-rate version of the NBN that he is using—by 2016. Even on those new figures, only 10,000 homes, not 2.61 million, will be connected by June 2016. He said that this second-rate network of his would bring in $2½ billion in revenue in 2016-17. This has crashed to only $1.1 billion. He has blown a $1.4 billion hole in the nbn co's revenue line.

Given the complete hash that the now Prime Minister made of the NBN, you might think that someone who had so comprehensively failed to meet every one of the KPIs on the one job that he had would suffer some of the ramifications of that. But no. He was promoted. He had one job and he hashed it up, made a complete mess of it, and what did the Liberal and National parties do? They promoted him. And why? Members of the Liberal and National parties must be asking themselves: what was the point of changing? What was the point of axing the member for Warringah from the prime ministership and installing the member for Wentworth? What has it actually delivered? We have seen what can only be described as a repeat of his incompetence on the NBN writ large in tax policy. This running up the flagpole idea after idea—a failure to put anything comprehensive out for the Australian people to consider—is so emblematic of the problem with this government. There is so much hot air and no real concrete solutions being provided to anything. It is something that we are constantly seeing, unfortunately, from the new Prime Minister.

The NBN is a really important issue in my electorate. I have some inner suburbs along the south side of Brisbane's river—that is my electorate. In some of those suburbs in South Brisbane there is fibre. There is fibre because an exchange was demolished during the building of the new children's hospital. The provider decided to lay fibre because that is the new technology. Why would you go to copper? You would not. So fibre was laid and the consequence of that is that I have some haves and have-nots in my electorate. I have the people in South Brisbane who have fibre, and I have everyone else who have 40-year-old crumbling copper wires. Even worse, there are some people in my electorate who cannot get ADSL, they cannot get cable, so they are having to rely on dongles. It is ridiculous that in the inner suburbs in Brisbane, a major metropolitan city in Australia—one of the powerhouses of economic activity in this country—people are having to rely on dongles to get internet access. It is not just households it is also businesses. In fact, I had a business move into Morningside and then contact me to tell me they cannot believe the lack of internet access there.

I have some really high-end new media, new technology, businesses in my electorate that require not only good download speeds but also great upload speeds, because some of them use very high resolution images. There are people in digital design, there are people in online video production and they need a decent NBN. It is such a shock to them when they come into what is an inner suburb, and inner metropolitan area, only to find that the internet speeds are ridiculous.

I undertook a survey of my electorate last year and I was unsurprised, but saddened, to learn of some of the problems people were having. I wrote a letter to the now Prime Minister who, at the time, was the communications minister. I delivered the letter to him by hand, in a meeting I had with him, on 12 August 2015. I told him that 80 per cent of the respondents to my survey—at the time, there were 437 of them—said that their current internet connection did not meet the needs of their business or household. I told him in my letter that the main complaints were related to internet speeds as well as the reliability of the network. I also told him that the complaints were consistent between people who had ADSL and people who had HFC connections.

Here are some of the things residents said to me. Paul of Camp Hill said:

We constantly have delays and wait long periods for downloads, our speeds vary dramatically from day to day and the time of day.

I bet they do. The internet access is terrible around Camp Hill.

Rae of Murarrie, last year, said:

I have two children in grade 9. The past term they had eleven assignments each to complete. At no set time during the day we have no internet or very slow internet. They often have to remain at school to use the computers to complete tasks.

It is just not good enough. These are kids working towards their junior certificate who will, no doubt, want to go on to senior school and possibly on to university—and I certainly hope they do. We cannot have our children being hamstrung by ridiculously slow internet speeds. Firstly, it is terrible for them individually. Secondly, it is terrible for our economy that the people we are relying upon to develop the skills and knowledge that will be needed in the future, for the jobs of the future, do not have internet access. It is ridiculous.

As I said, not everyone can even get an ADSL connection. I have people in Mount Gravatt East and in Carina who were being told, at the time, that the local exchange was at capacity. They could not get a new ADSL connection. It was not possible, so they either had to rely on HFC or, if that was not possible either, they had to rely on dongles.

I had Liam of Camp Hill talk to me about his HFC connection. He said:

It's too slow and drops out all the time. Our household is 2 adults and 4 children (incl 2 high school students). I do some work from home. There are frequent times when the speed is slow it is unworkable - this inhibits both my work and my children's school requirements. There is certainly not enough bandwidth for entertainment e.g. Netflix, YouTube, Spotify on top of school and work. I have the opportunity to do video calls to attend work meetings. The internet connect though is too unreliable for me to do so and as such do not take advantage of the opportunity to work from home - particularly annoying with family commitments.

Of course it is.

The demographics of my electorate are that it is a younger electorate than the Australian average, it is an electorate with more two-income households where both parents are working more than 40 hours a week and it is an electorate where people have a lot of family responsibilities. There are young people and young families. They are very hard working and work very long hours. Of course, they should be able to take the opportunity of flexibility that a lot of firms are providing now, but that requires being able to work from home. What do you need to work from home? You need a decent internet connection.

I wrote to the now Prime Minister. I gave him those stories and many others. I told him that some places have neither ADSL nor HFC. I told him that businesses were being held back. I raised with him my concerns about the deliverability of his government's pre-election commitments. I said:

With respect, the feedback I've received appears to indicate that promises made by you and the now Prime Minister—

at the time the member for Warringah, so he is now the former Prime Minister—

before the election that, "under the coalition's NBN all premises will have access to download speeds 25mbps to 100 mbps by the end of 2016", are unlikely to be met.

And surprise, surprise: they are still unlikely to be met.

This was a ridiculous situation where massive commitments had been made and the government is not honouring them. There is a complete blow- out on every KPI. It is certainly not the case that people are getting 25 to 100 megabits per second by 2016—that is just ridiculous. It is not happening, and no-one, frankly, can have any trust in the credibility of this government led by the person who was the communications minister at the time of this document.

I said to the now Prime Minister that I understood that the coalition's NBN was now not expected to reach all Australians until December 2020. I also drew his attention to the fact that, under Labor's 2013 rollout plan, construction of fibre was due to start for 54,000 homes and businesses in November 2013 but, regrettably, the Abbott government—now Turnbull government—had cancelled that rollout. I raised those concerns in my letter to him and I also raised them in our meeting. He was able to talk to me about some HFC that was there but, when I pressed him on it, he could not even tell me how many houses were passed by HFC. More to the point, just being passed by HFC does not mean there are going to be enough opportunities for people to connect to the HFC—because being passed by the HFC and actually connecting to it are two different propositions.

After we had that meeting on 12 August last year, I wrote to him again on 17 August, referring to my letter of 12 August, and raising further concerns that had arisen from that meeting in respect of HFC, and I asked him some specific questions about the HFC. I asked him how many of the 76,000 residences located within the distribution areas on a particular map were actually passed, how many had connections and, of the ones that did not have connections, how many could get a HFC connection currently. Unfortunately, I have not received a response to either of those two letters that I wrote to the then communications minister, now Prime Minister, in August 2015.

What would the response say? What could they possibly say? As I said, in 2013 our rollout plan was to get out to 54,000 homes and businesses. Our rollout plan was for the Camp Hill and Woolloongabba areas, which covered Bulimba, Camp Hill, Cannon Hill, Carina, Carina Heights, Carindale, Hawthorne, Morningside, Norman Park, Seven Hills, Balmoral, Dutton Park, East Brisbane, Fairfield, Highgate Hill, Kangaroo Point, South Brisbane, West End, Woolloongabba and Annerley. Some of those have fibre now—through no action of the now Prime Minister. As I said earlier, that is because an exchange was bulldozed and the provider laid the fibre. But all of those that did not have the benefit of that change are still waiting for this Prime Minister to deliver decent broadband. And what did we see last year? I have a document that says that the Woolloongabba area, which would cover East Brisbane, Kangaroo Point, Woolloongabba and Annerley, are not getting fibre; they are not getting the fibre-to-the-node that this government wants to roll out. They are getting HFC. And they are not getting it until the second half of 2017. So much for the 25 megabits per second to 100 megabits per second that everyone was going to get this year. That is not happening.

What else have we got? Let's have a look. Camp Hill-Carindale, which is in my electorate, and the Camp Hill exchange—Camp Hill, Carina, Carina Heights, Carindale and Seven Hills—are not getting fibre either. I am shocked! They are not getting their rollout, unfortunately, until the first half of 2018. It is not good enough. (Time expired)

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