Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

One of the public policy geniuses on the other side of the chamber says, 'Five years.' That's your argument. I'll tell you what, mate: there's no statute of limitations on public policy incompetence! When you stuff things up as fundamentally as Kevin Rudd did, that stuff-up stays around for a very long time. Be it NBN, pink batts or Building the Education Revolution, Kevin Rudd was responsible for years and decades of public policy stuff-ups—and this government is working hard to fix them.

The next mistake that we saw from the Labor Party when it came to the NBN was hopelessly mismanaging the rollout. By the time we came to government, barely 50,000 premises were connected to the fixed network and they were hopelessly behind their own business case. They were supposed to be achieving 1.7 million by 30 June 2013. In fact, they had reached 282,799—hopelessly behind. Here's another mistake, another fundamental factor that we never hear from Labor today. They wanted it erased from history, but it's a reality and you can't erase it from history. The contract that they did with Telstra was to pay $11 billion in net present value terms to Telstra and $1 billion to my former employer Optus. And yet they want to wash their hands of the fact that through these contracts they put an incoming government into a position where it had to take the most rational choice in the circumstances, and that's what we've done.

The other big mistake they made was saying, 'We'll build fibre to the premises everywhere.' These geniuses said that. Not one of them had a jot or iota of telecommunications operational experience, and their ripper idea was fibre to the premises to 90 per cent of the population. Let's look at how much fibre to the premises costs to connect to some premises. We've seen some evidence of it just in recent days. A premises in Ravenswood in Tasmania costs $91,000 to connect to fibre. Mount Cotton in Queensland is $40,000. The average cost to connect fibre to the premises is $4,400. The average cost to connect fibre to the node is $2,200. It is for these rational business reasons, these sensible public policy reasons, that, when we came to government having inherited this hopeless train smash of a policy, we reconfigured it under the current Prime Minister—then Minister for Communications—who instituted a rational policy to turn this mess around. This turnaround is one of the most successful turnarounds you are ever going to see, and it was from one of the most disastrous starting points you could imagine.

Why did we do it? First of all, changing to this mix means we're going to save $30 billion. Second of all, it means that we're going to get the rollout completed six years earlier than would otherwise have been the case. Let's just go back to the impact of the reduced cost of the rollout. What we've got is one side of politics with their head in the skies: the dreamers, the visionaries—'Don't talk to me about how its done; we've got the dream.' Actually, your dream is going to cost $43 a month more for the ordinary Australian family on their NBN broadband bill.

This is a very familiar story, members of the House. A bunch of completely impractical dreamers and their ripper idea mean ordinary Australian families have to pay more on their bill every month. Telecommunications, energy—it's the same incompetent public policy approach from this hopeless rabble.

Let me turn to another question, which is a very instructive question for the House to consider: what is Labor's alternative plan? Here's a very instructive quote from The Sydney Morning Herald, not notorious for its friendship with the coalition government, this morning:

Labor communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland was sharply critical of the government's handling of the project, but could not say whether in government it would spend billions more to deliver fibre to the home connections or what it would do to fix speed issues.

There's Labor's policy: Labor's communication spokesman could not say. We can go back to 2016 and we can have a look at the ripper policy that was put forward by the member for Blaxland, who is now very relieved to have got away from this particular policy area. This was a ripper policy. What a genius! This genius said, 'A Shorten Labor government will roll out fibre to the premises to up to two million additional Australian homes and businesses.' That sounds great. Listen to this bit: 'Labor will spend exactly the same amount.' What a miracle. The ordinary rules of economics have been abolished. They're going to find a way to build two million more fibre to the premises at not one extra dollar. It's a miracle! It's a miracle! The conventional rules of economics have been thrown out the window by these geniuses in the Labor Party.

What did the Financial Review have to say about it? Here we go again: 'Labor's announcement it will reinvigorate the NBN fibre optic cable to every home network, but not share any details or even admit it will cost a lot more money than the current mix of technologies, should come as no surprise. Labor has no credibility in this area.' You could not find a better summary of this public policy area. Labor has no credibility in this area. So let's be clear: we inherited a mess, thanks to Labor; we're fixing it up. Over six million premises are able to connect and we are getting on with the job. This hopeless rabble has no idea and no plan.

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