Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let me say from the start that I am a huge fan of high-speed broadband. Until some months ago I would probably have said I am a huge fan of the NBN. It has the capacity to be a transforming technology for the economy in my seat of Macquarie. Certainly where we have fibre to the premises we are seeing some great stories, but in the last few months the experiences of the rollout of NBN in my electorate make me despair for what might have been.

I am thrilled that the government has failed to achieve its target of delivering NBN by the end of 2016 because it gives me some hope that the massive areas in my electorate that are not getting this second-rate fibre-to-the-node system might, sometime in the future, be entitled to a decent rollout. I hope that the other side sees our sense that fibre to the premises is the way to go. However, we are getting fibre to the node up in the Blue Mountains. Last week, around 200 people joined me for a forum in Wentworth Falls. I made it clear to that audience that I did not think fibre to the node was really going to achieve the things we wanted; however, I did say we needed to try to make the best of a bad bunch. That is what we tried to do. To be fair, not everybody at the forum had had a bad experience with connecting or running NBN, but they were the minority. People do not come out on a Thursday night to talk about an issue like NBN unless they are really driven. I have to tell you, a lot of people in that room were driven. We were overflowing. We had to put extra seats out. I have never seen people as angry about an issue.

I want to acknowledge that in that room I managed to get not just angry people but NBN representatives. I also had Telstra representatives in the room. My office finds that one of the biggest issues is that NBN blames a service provider, usually Telstra, and Telstra blames NBN. I think having them both in the room was a good start. In my view, however, the test of an organisation, and of a government, is not how you deal with an issue when it is going well but how you deal with an issue when it is not going well. I have to say, I am unimpressed with NBN Co's response to many of my constituents. I did not really know why they would respond that way until I heard the member for Bradfield, who seems to have no interest in the challenges that people are having, the hours they are spending on the phone trying to get solutions. Now I can see that this is a top-down approach.

Let me talk a little bit about the frustration that my community is feeling. In one street there are houses where one person has been connected and their neighbour has not. No-one can really work out what the problem is. North Katoomba seems simply to have been plonked in the too-hard basket. People have had weeks without a phone or connection in the switchover period. And, again, no-one can really explain why. Slow speeds are an ongoing issue. Bob Paton from Leura suffered this and, again, no-one really seems to be able to identify if it is the NBN or the RSP.

Can I tell you about dropouts? Michelle McKenzie, who works for a financial services firm, told me that getting connected took three days. They lost hours and hours; their business pretty much had to grind to a halt. By day 3 of the saga, she was getting frustrated—and here is a bit of insight into how well our community is being serviced. In one conversation, the NBN guy—and I am quoting Michelle—'suggested I walk to the nearest Optus shop and grab a dongle so that I could have internet connection.' Here is her response: 'Walk to the nearest Optus shop and grab a dongle? We are in Katoomba and the nearest Optus shop is 50 kilometres away in Penrith.' She does confess that was the moment she lost her temper. And I think that is what this government does not appreciate, that it is pushing people who are having a bad customer experience, a bad technical experience, and no sense that anyone actually cares about their problems. This is just one of the examples that we are seeing.

We also have issues around the wireless rollout and Sky Muster. One of the things I think this government has done is redefine community consultation. I think they believe it means you make a decision and then you tell the community. That is the way our community is being treated—there is no respect. It is not good enough and, like everything this government touches, they know how to take a visionary idea and they know how to destroy it.

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