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

It was going to be a game changer, but now all we have is something that is hurting small businesses, hurting the economy, increasing inequality and continually falling short. We were promised big things, very big things, but it has been the fizzer of all fizzers—and, no, I'm not talking about the Prime Minister; I'm talking about the NBN. The government's turning a blind eye to this mess, and my community for one is totally over it. My office, like the member for Dobell's, has had hundreds of emails and mobile phone calls because businesses and individuals have no internet and no landline, all because of the NBN rollout. If they live in one of the many areas in the electorate of Macquarie which have a poor mobile phone signal, they're calling from the top of their street, on tippy-toes, hoping to get a bit of signal.

The most insulting part of all is the insistence by this Prime Minister that nothing is wrong—the delusion that all is well and that the only shortfall is that NBN Co needs to improve its PR and retailers need to lift their game. He maintains copper is king. In fact, we know copper is second-rate. I can't believe the Prime Minister doesn't know the mess he's created. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman clearly knows—it's been a job-creator for them. This is the PM for innovation, but he simply put the NBN in the too-hard basket, along with renewable energy and the rest of his values. In the meantime, communities are suffering as they receive an internet service that is often worse than what they already had.

The experience that I've had in the Blue Mountains part of my electorate is set to be repeated in the Hawkesbury, where, in densely populated suburbs full of small, medium and large businesses, like in McGraths Hill, people will have to make do with fibre to the node, long stretches of copper. Places where the internet could help bridge the divide in accessing mental health services, employment and education—places like Wilberforce and Freemans Reach—will have to make do with FTTN. In fact, there is a one-kilometre stretch in Wilberforce where at one end they're getting fixed wireless, about halfway along they're getting fibre to the node and a few hundred metres down the road they're getting fibre to the curb. How inequitable is that? This is total digital inequality.

It's hard to know where to start when talking about the experience faced by the communities of the upper Blue Mountains with their rollout of FTTN. Let me share a few cases. There are an endless number of them. Terry lives in Leura in the Blue Mountains. Leura went fibre-to-the-node live in August 2016. Terry's been unable to connect ever since. The NBN has identified that there are a number of premises within the FTTN footprint that are unable to receive a connection. Surprise, surprise. They say: 'We're currently investigating options to deliver an NBN solution for these premises. Although we're committed to delivering a fast broadband service as soon as possible, we can't provide a time frame at this stage.' But what we do know is that Leura is going to have its landlines switched off in February 2018. There are no guarantees that these people will even be connected by then.

Nick lives in Lawson. Lawson went live with fibre to the node in August 2016 and Nick switched over. In February this year, Nick's speeds dropped and he logged a fault with his service provider. In September—I think that's about seven months later—NBN was saying it was an issue with the service provider, and the service provider was saying it was an NBN issue. This is something we have all heard multiple times. Nick was persistent; he kept at it. NBN has finally determined that it was a problem with the copper in the street after all—who'd have thought it?—and they have brought about the repairs. Finally, Nick's NBN service is working properly again.

Tim lives in Wentworth Falls. This story will be familiar. Despite a node being only 75 metres from his property, he can't connect, because according to NBN the lines that Telstra has handed over to them are not necessarily direct. So it's not in a straight line. His property cannot be connected to NBN as NBN has identified a high loss of signal on this specific line due to—guess what?—the length of copper. In short, the government have completely blown a chance to make a real difference to the lives of Australians, and they'll go down as the people who took us back to the Dark Ages.

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