Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to condemn this government for its appalling rollout of the NBN across this nation and more specifically in the electorate of Lalor. This government has taken what should have been the biggest infrastructure project in this country's history and turned it into something that is not delivering for the constituents in my community. NBN 2.0 is an absolute fail for the people in my community. Rather than deliver digital technology to the families, to the businesses, to the students—to my community—it is delivering a digital divide. Not only do constituents have the challenges of being in the drive-in, drive-out suburbs, with an hour and a half each way to get to work for some of them, but also they can't work from home. Not only can many not access the NBN as the rollout stalls and is slow, but many cannot get ADSL1 or ADSL2 in areas of my electorate, and there does not seem to be anything this government is prepared to do to fix this issue. No matter how many times I am on my feet in this place, no matter how many times my office connects with the NBN and works with the providers, nothing seems to be in the plans for our area. And that includes our agricultural area, a key national provider of vegetables to this country, which is not even on the rollout maps. There will be no NBN for Werribee South and the businesses down there, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars. No—they are paying to use 4G in their logistic centres. The costs are extraordinary.

Those opposite are talking all the time about costs to business, but they don't want to do anything to fix this cost to business. Their NBN 2.0 is an absolute failure. There is an assumption by government agencies such as Centrelink that people will have access to the internet, but people in my community do not have such access. They are told by Centrelink to go online and use the website. But who's going to pay for the downloads they're doing on wireless? Who's going to pay those costs when they live in a house that does not have ADSL1? The worst part is the absolute failure to understand the communities in which we live. In a growth corridor, people are moving in every week. They go and inspect a house on a Sunday and they show up at an auction the next week and bid for that house. They think the house has an NBN connection or internet access, only to find when they have moved in that there are not enough ports in the area and they don't have any internet service in their home. It is almost false advertising that is occurring in my community. It is an absolute outrage.

And what have we seen today? We've seen the report come down and—surprise, surprise!—my community is in the top 10 in terms of people complaining about internet services in their area. That is no surprise to my office, because we deal with this every day. And, worse, these are complaints about the internet. Hoppers Crossing is listed as having the third highest number of complaints in this country and Werribee the fourth highest. I've got news for this government: Werribee's the area that supposedly was getting the NBN, and it's in the top four in terms of complaints. I have people talking to me about their internet speeds all the time. Some examples: Mr Birch of Point Cook reports to me that he has a download speed of 0.61 megabytes per second and an upload speed of 0.32 megabytes per second. Bad luck if he's trying to run a microbusiness from his home and avoid drive-in, drive-out. Mr Wadsworth of Point Cook reports that he has a download speed of 2.36 megabytes per second and an upload speed of 1.73 megabytes per second. Mr Boucher of Seabrook has a download speed of 1.2 megabytes per second and an upload speed of 0.96 megabytes per second. Note that none of those people live in Hoppers Crossing and Werribee, where we are in the top 10.

I want to finish by trying to drive home to this House just how difficult it is for people in my electorate to run a business, to run a family, to study and to actually be a global citizen in the 21st century.

See this speech in context