Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I had an early uni job working as an on-site technician for iiNet, and, working through the period of the old dial-up modem and the introduction of DSL, I have to say that my excitement at Labor's NBN program when announced was sky high, although it has now come crashing down over the last three years, as the Luddites on the other side of this chamber have trashed the NBN with their copper fetish, delays and cost blowouts—aka fraudband.

I have said it before and I will say it again in this place now: if the Prime Minister had been in charge in the 1850s and 60s, Australia would never have gotten the telegraph; he would have been telling us that mail services were more than sufficient. But, as they say, the more things change the more they stay the same, because in the 1953 maiden speech of a certain EG Whitlam, he raised concerns with the number of unsatisfied telephone applications due to the then government's cuts causing a three-year delay on the completion of new telephone exchanges. Sixty years may have passed for residents in Australia's outer suburbs, but it may seem to them like we are stuck in the 1950s with a Liberal government that refuses to meet their needs for 21st century internet access.

According to some results published in The West Australian, Perth is officially Australia's broadband wasteland. Perth's 7.1 megabit figure of average internet access speed is slower than Indonesia's average download speed and well below the national average. In fact, even those great some time Liberal supporters, the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have said that internet reliability is a major issue for WA businesses.

This year I was contacted by a Thornlie business in my electorate, Resurfacing WA. Sharron and Greg need to send and receive high-resolution images in order to be able to provide quotes for their customers for kitchen and bathroom renovations. It is a fantastic small business; it is employing a handful of people in Perth's south-east, which is vitally important as we are a high-unemployment area. But Resurfacing WA has hit a snag.

Thornlie is one of those unlucky suburbs that has been entirely left off the NBN rollout plan. Homes and businesses to the south, west and north of Thornlie at least have a glimmer on the horizon—they still have to wait a number of years to receive their fraudband, but at least they are on the rollout. Not so for Thornlie. As in older suburbs across Australia, the existing copper and exchange infrastructure in Thornlie is failing to provide adequate ADSL internet access. For Sharron and Greg, this means running a business from home is almost impossible. The snail-speed internet means they cannot even get their email to work on occasion, and so they are relying on 4G phone hotspots, which is an enormous financial impost to their business.

It also goes without saying that NBN might actually fix this mess if it worked. I have to say that I have gone in to bat for Thornlie; I arranged a meeting with NBN Co., hoping they could provide some clarification to this mess. I asked them why Thornlie has been left off the rollout plan. Their response was to blame Telstra. They told me that it is up to Telstra to get the exchange ready to hand over to them and that they are waiting for that to be dealt with before they can put it into their rollout plan. But when I talk to Telstra, they say, 'Oh, no. It's NBN Co.'s fault.' They blame NBN Co. because they say they set the timetable. It turns out that NBN Co. have not even asked to have that exchange put onto the rollout plan. This is completely unacceptable. While NBN Co. and Telstra bicker and play the blame game, Sharron and Greg can't even send an email, and their business is hurting because of it.

In 2013, Malcolm Turnbull promised that every household and business in Australia would have NBN by the end of 2016 and that the areas with the worst broadband would be prioritised first. Indeed, only a handful of areas in Burt are going to have any hope of NBN by the end of 2016. Homes and businesses across Burt have been forgotten by the Turnbull government's NBN.

To add insult to injury, Cecil Andrews Senior High School in Seville Grove in my electorate, a STEM specialty school which was much feted by the government during the recent election, is in one of these areas. While it moved all its students over to tablets, it is of no use, because the internet connectivity of the school is pretty much useless.

We also have the Forrestdale Business Park, a new industrial development in my electorate. One of my constituents recently contacted me because he found his business is in an internet black hole. He has been left without internet at all—no copper, no fibre. The business park is due to be connected to the NBN apparently in a matter of months, but, under infrastructure provider of last resort and universal service obligations, NBN Co. has a clear responsibility to provide an interim solution until there is a fixed-line rollout for that the business park. But they have been ignoring this responsibility.

This is the model that the Turnbull government has fostered—customer last. And now it is costing us $54 billion. In a 21st century economy, reliable internet is not a luxury; it is a necessity for our homes, education and for business, but 20th century internet access appears to be all we are getting.

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