Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister's mess, and let us be very clear about this: a broadband connection in 2016 is not merely a luxury item; it is an essential utility. I rose in this place on 12 October to speak about how shocked and disappointed I was to discover that the scheduled rollout of the NBN to the suburbs of Pascoe Vale, Glenroy, Fawkner, Gowanbrae, Hadfield and Coburg was sneakily cancelled by this government. That is right, it just quietly disappeared from the NBN website, but many residents noticed. Even though they might be on ADSL, they actually go and look at that website because they are anticipating a rollout into their suburbs. I regularly hear complaints from constituents in those northern suburbs of Melbourne about the quality of their internet connection being so poor. That same week that my constituents were reeling from the disappointment of their long-awaited upgrade being pulled from under them, the Prime Minister proclaimed on 11 October that the coalition's NBN was 'one of the great corporate turnarounds in Australia's history'. I am astounded by that comment, especially in light of what was occurring in my electorate that very same week. But the Prime Minister was right: it did turn around from a world-class, fibre-to-the-premises NBN delivered by a Labor government to the Prime Minister's mess.

The debacle in Wills is not unique. There is a litany of government failures on the NBN since they have taken control. The coalition promised Australia that their version of the NBN would cost $29.5 billion. Apart from the technological inferiority of the fibre-to-the-kerb or the fibre-to-the-node solution that they have presented to Australians, it is now apparent that the cost of their already technologically crippled NBN has blown out to at least $54 billion from $29.5 billion.

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has also reported that complaints about faults on NBN services have jumped by 147 per cent under the coalition's stewardship of the NBN. Complaints about slow internet speeds have soared by 48 per cent. For a service which is supposed to improve internet service for Australians, this is a catastrophic failure by the government.

And I am sure we all remember Mr Turnbull's promise to provide every Australian household with access to the NBN by the end of 2016. Well, he has 39 days left. The Prime Minister has 39 days left to meet this promise—39 days, and almost eight million Australian households are still waiting for any upgrade to their homes and the fibre to their homes. Many of those households and businesses are in my electorate of Wills, and I know from many of the speakers we have heard today that this is replicated right across Australia.

So many people are frustrated, angry and upset that they are being dudded. So I ask: what does the Prime Minister have to say to all these people? What does he have to say to all the people of Wills and all the people across Australia? What has the Prime Minister to say about dudding them with his fizzer of a policy?

See this speech in context