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

The shadow minister has told us that she is concerned about the risk to expenditure of the consequence of the recent HFC decision by NBN. She is about as credible a fiscal hawk as the member for Sydney, who claimed to be concerned about the cost of the same-sex marriage survey. The member for Sydney, of course, has spent her entire parliamentary career carefully and diligently watching taxpayers' money like a hawk. She doesn't want a cent spent that doesn't need to be spent. So, too, apparently, the member for Greenway has suddenly become a fiscal hawk, determined to not see one taxpayer cent spent which doesn't need to be spent. She did gloss over the inconvenient fact that the Turnbull government's NBN strategy is motivated by a range of factors, including rolling out the network more quickly, which it is demonstrably doing, and also saving $30 billion compared to the cost of the hopeless and incoherent plan that we inherited from the disorganised rabble on the other side of this House when they skulked out of office in 2013.

Let's have a look at the record of delivery we have seen on the National Broadband Network from the coalition. Let's look at what was in the business plan that was released after we came to government and what was delivered. The business plan said that, by 30 June 2015, there'd be 1,093,000 premises passed by the NBN. The actual number was 1,165,000, so we beat the target of 30 June 2015. By 30 June 2016, the business plan said that the network would pass 2,632,000 premises. The actual number passed was 2,893,000, so in 2016 we again beat the target. By 30 June 2017, the business plan said that there'd be 5,442,000 premises passed. In fact, the actual number was 5,713,000. For three years in a row, we beat the target, which is a stark contrast to what happened when Labor were in charge of this project, when, year after year after year, they missed the target, not just by a bit but dismally.

By contrast, the coalition has been delivering. You can see the incredulity of Labor. They are just puzzled. They just don't understand why it would be that NBN would say, 'We are concerned about service levels on the HFC, so we are going to pause activations while we fix it.' You could not find something that was more diametrically opposed to Labor's values than saying: 'There is an issue. We want to make sure customers are getting the service we have committed to, so we are going to pause and fix it. We are going to stop and be totally transparent about what we do.' That is because Labor's values are all about the spin, the promise. They don't care about delivery, they have no experience in delivery and they have no capability in delivery.

It is instructive to go and look at service class 0. These are premises which are planned to be serviced by fibre but which are not yet serviceable. There are a number that are at service class 0 right now, as there have been for quite a period of time. That's inevitable as you roll out a network. It is instructive to look at the numbers because, at the end of 2016, that number was 2.8 per cent. At the end of 2014, it was 4.2 per cent. We have been bringing it down. It has gone up a little bit recently because of HFC. We will work on it and we will get it down. But it is instructive to look at the percentage that was service class 0 in 2013 because it wasn't 2.8 per cent; it wasn't 17 per cent; it was 31 per cent. Why did that happen? It happened because Labor were desperately trying to present the best story they could, given their abjectly poor performance, and they were determined to roll out as many premises as possible without caring whether they could actually deliver the customer experience.

We on this side are focused on the customer experience, so focused that when there is an issue which is absolutely capable of resolution, as the company has made perfectly plain, then we pause and we make sure we fix the issue so people get the service standards that they expect. You could not think of an approach which is more puzzling to Labor, which is more at odds with Labor, who just love the press release, love the announcement. They just don't care about the detailed work of delivery and, frankly, they haven't got the skills and capability. The proof of that is not in the rhetoric; the proof of that is in the numbers.

Let me remind the House of what I was pleased to share with the House during question time, when we compared Labor's actual delivery versus planned delivery. In 2011, actual delivery was 10,500 versus a plan where they claimed they were going to do 223,000. It didn't improve by the time they got to 30 June 2013. Labor's plan, developed by Labor under a Labor government, told the world in 2010 what they were going to do in 2013. They said they would have the network passing 1,700,000 premises. They actually passed 283,000. That was a hopeless, hopeless performance. It's no surprise that even objective sources or sources that are not necessarily barrackers for the coalition, such as ABC Fact Check, present an interesting description here. What was it that ABC News had to say in 2016 in an item headed, 'Federal election: NBN promises past and present explained'? In 2009, Mr Rudd promised the NBN would be finished in eight years. Instead, just 154,000 people could access the service when he left office in 2013. The ABC—not consistently, it must be said, barrackers for the coalition—said: 'When Labor was removed from office, the NBN was running well behind its original schedule and was struggling to meet targets.' That's Labor's track record.

The shadow minister has the temerity to talk about broken promises on the NBN. She needs to look in the mirror because the broken promises have come from the Labor Party on the NBN. It is quite instructive if you look at some of the entirely inaccurate things the shadow minister has said publicly. For example, in an interview on ABC's Lateline on 24 October this year, she was admittedly under a bit of pressure, under a bit of questioning. In answer to what was actually a very good question, she said, when she was talking about the amount of funding that Labor had committed, 'We always had peak funding of $45 billion.'

That was her claim. It was totally at odds with the facts. In Labor's NBN corporate plan they committed to $35.9 billion in capital expenditure and peak government equity at $28 billion. When the shadow minister says publicly, 'We always had peak funding of $45 billion,' that is just factually wrong. It is not surprising that she is making factually incorrect statements when you look at how dismal their record is.

It brings me to a question—a question which is one of those abiding mysteries. You could search for the answer to this question for a long time. What is Labor's plan for the NBN? What is Labor actually going to do? We have heard the shadow minister telling us indignantly how much she disagrees with what we are doing with the HFC. The shadow minister works hard to give the impression that, if it were up to her, you wouldn't be using the HFC. That's quite interesting when you look at Labor's 2016 election policy document on NBN, which says:

Under Labor, the rollout of HFC (PayTV) will continue …

It seems that the shadow minister has forgotten about that particular election promise in 2016 as she furiously gives the impression that Labor would do something different.

In that same interview in October she was asked by ABC interviewer Emma Alberici:

So, if Labor wins the next election what's your intention? Do you go back to an all fibre network?

I must say the shadow minister's obfuscation, backsliding and general evasion were world class. She said:

It's always been our preference for fibre, and to have fibre as deep as possible into the network, Emma.

But, after being pressed for a little while, she said:

There is nothing we would want more than to have as much fibre as possible.

But then, finally, she essentially admitted that they're making no commitments—no promises—at all:

Well, our commitment is that we want to see fibre expanded as far as possible. But Emma, the reality is this: we need to be informed by the state of the network as it is, in the event that we are elected at the next election.

She went on to say:

Bill Shorten has made it very clear that we are not in the business of ripping up copper.

Despite the indignation from the shadow minister, there is no plan from Labor. They have got no alternative. But they do have a record track. And so, when the people of Bennelong and the people of Australia look at the choice before them when it comes to the NBN, it is a very stark choice. The coalition has a consistent record of delivery and rollout. Look at what Labor achieved when they were in government. They achieved very little. They have a dismal record and they certainly don't have any plan at all. The choice is very clear. The coalition is delivering the NBN.

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