Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

What you just heard then was more of what the shadow minister pointed out: just extraordinary claims. We have the suggestion from the minister that they have had to come in and clean up nbn co. What an amazing job they have been doing! We have seen the cost double, slower rollout and people being left with a substandard service and denied an expectation that was fuelled by those opposite that they would deliver more, and they have not. You often hear the line from the coalition, which was repeated by the minister today, that after three years Labor did not do enough, that we did not roll out enough. The biggest infrastructure project in the nation's modern history and we did not do enough in three years—that from a mob who had 19 goes at fixing broadband over the 13 years of their government and they failed.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Nineteen times, member for Wakefield. And then they come in here and say that we did not do enough after three years. But those opposite tried for more than a decade with 19 plans and they constantly failed. What they are doing now is misleading the public about the quality of the rollout itself. They are saying that they have a different way of rolling this out. There is nothing different about relying on copper. There is nothing different about relying on HFC. There is nothing different about their approach when they have failed over 19 times.

There is a reason that there has been a $15 billion blowout in their project. The $15 billion blowout is the responsibility of both the then communications minister, now Prime Minister, and the person opposite, the shadow minister. Sorry; I mean the Minister for Major Projects, Territories and Local Government and Assistant Cabinet Secretary—though we are working on making you a shadow minister. You had a role to play in it. You and the then communications minister were responsible for arguing that HFC was better. The member for Greenway has pointed out on a number of occasions that the ACCC said the HFC network was not fit for purpose.

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