Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The National Broadband Network was intended to provide all Australians with universal access to high-speed broadband. I'm speaking not just to the two pieces of legislation that are before the House today but also to amendments moved by the shadow minister. It's really important for us to consider the full scope of the amendments that are proposed in the second reading debate. In particular, it's important to sheet home to the Prime Minister responsibility for the issues raised in the amendment. The full extent of the condemnation of this house should fall on the Prime Minister for his actions as the then minister responsible for the National Broadband Network in creating a network, as the amendment sets out, which has cost more to deploy, delivers slower speeds, will cost more to maintain, will require expensive upgrades in the future and, most tellingly, to my mind, will generate less revenue—that is, it exposes the NBN Co to additional commercial risk.

Like the previous speaker, I've had some experience in this area as a lawyer advising people in this technology, extending back in the days when—and it's quite sad for me to say this—a link between my Launceston office and my Hobart office ran at the breathtaking speed of 300 bits per second. That's not megabits; it's 300 bits per second. Of course, in those days you didn't pay $49.95 for a connection between two communication devices; you paid thousands of dollars per month.

The NBN network was designed to provide a really important piece of national infrastructure. It was designed to provide a digital backbone based on fibre technology in order to drive not just economic opportunity but also social opportunity wherever one lived—that is, whether the user lived within one of our major cities or within regional Australia. I'll talk about regional Australia later in my address. The fibre-to-the-premises network was intended, as originally envisioned by Labor, to extend to 93 per cent of the country, with the remaining seven per cent to be served through a combination of fixed wireless and satellite technology as the circumstances and professional advice would dictate. The network would also facilitate retail competition, as the NBN was established to operate as a wholesale service provider, structurally separated from retailers so that retail competition would provide for lower prices, consumer choice and better outcomes for consumers and small businesses.

I mentioned earlier that the NBN was intended to deliver particular outcomes not just for the major cities within Australia but also for regional Australia. Nowhere in Australia is this vision better demonstrated than through the efforts of the Tasmanian retail service provider Launtel, which has delivered Australia's first affordable gigabit commercial connections and domestic connections, which are between two and five times faster than those available even in the central business district of major cities. Launtel's innovation is built on the fibre-to-the-premises model championed originally by Labor. This is because fibre technology enables innovative and progressive retailers to leverage off the fibre backbone to deliver relatively cheap and amazingly fast internet experiences. This is actually an internet experience which exceeds the specifications set down by NBN Co. It demonstrates the potential of the wholesale network. NBN Co does not, at present, offer the sorts of speeds that this retail service provider is providing. Notwithstanding that, they've provided an innovative commercial solution which offers up to 1,000 megabits per second for not only commercial customers but also residential customers.

Contrast this situation with that of some constituents of mine, the Goftons, who live in the north-east of my electorate on their family dairy farm. The family dairy farm lies just six kilometres from Scottsdale, which was one of the first sites in Australia to receive fibre to the premises. The Goftons wanted to improve productivity on their farm. This is a common story. Not many of us in this place appreciate that modern agricultural production requires the use of advanced technology. So they upgraded technology. Kate Gofton contacted me in February last year and indicated that the internet was absolutely critical to the everyday running of their business. She indicated that she'd invested a significant amount of money in infrastructure to overcome the particular issues that she had experienced. Their existing service is unreliable, and they have been regularly forced to pay significantly more for minimal amounts of data. She has to drive the six kilometres into Scottsdale to use the internet in Scottsdale to pay employees and make phone calls for the business.

This example is just one of the stark contrasts between businesses in my electorate suffering under the current government's incompetence in delivering services to rural communities in a timely manner. So, when we talk about the digital divide, it is apparent even within electorates like my electorate of Bass, where you have some consumers and some retail users enjoying absolutely fantastically fast internet experiences, where they can download gigabytes of data within minutes, and, in contrast to that, somebody who relies upon the internet for their business being required to effectively move their business to an adjacent town just to pay their employees.

The statutory infrastructure regime, or the SIP, contained in this bill implements in legislation Labor's original vision of universal access—a vision that was outlined almost a decade ago. This is a welcome development in order to provide certainty to stakeholders, consumers and, importantly, industry. As I said earlier, Labor's vision extended to fibre to the premises being used for all new homes and greenfield estates in the fixed-line footprint. Disappointingly—indeed, some could say disgracefully—this government, in the pursuit of what it calls a multi-technology mix, but which can properly be described as a multi-technology mess, has facilitated the rollout of new copper into new suburbs, despite the fact that this copper cannot deliver the fast speeds already available for retailers like Launtel.

Any question about universal standards of service needs to address the technology mix as a question of principle. This government defines superfast broadband as a service nominally providing 25 megabits per second or more. This definition preserves the government's technology-agnostic approach and would permit the extension of existing fibre-to-the-node networks to newly constructed homes beyond the term of this parliament. Any outcome, however unlikely to be facilitated, is of serious concern to Labor, as it is inconsistent with Labor's policy of fibre to the premises as the preferred approach, with fibre to the kerb being the minimum approach. This bill does nothing to address the issue that is likely to entrench the digital divide that I referred to earlier between those who are fortunate enough to have fibre to the premises and those who are not. I'm fortunate enough to have fibre to the premises at home and, being required to use remote technology in order to access the internet, not just in this place, I sometimes find that, even at 100 megabits per second, what you're seeking to achieve can be constrained.

The NBN rollout demonstrates time and time again the failure in policy of the Turnbull government. The Turnbull NBN, as contemplated by this amendment, costs more and is less effective. The Prime Minister initially promised that his version of the NBN would be delivered for $29.5 billion. The cost has blown out to $49 billion, and I understand from material released recently that it even exceeds that. The Prime Minister promised that every household and small business would have access to the NBN by the end of 2016. Let's test that proposition. How many were left unconnected—that is, not connected to the NBN—as at the end of 2016? It's not a trivial number: seven million homes were left without access to the internet at the end of 2016. There are still more than 5.5 million homes—again, 2½ years after that time—waiting for the present government's deficient NBN.

Instead of taking fibre to 93 per cent of the population, the multi-technology mess will take fibre to only 17 per cent of the population. The balance of the Australian population will not and cannot have access to the innovative services already available from retailers like Launtel—again perpetuating this significant digital divide based upon the technology that the Prime Minister said previously was good enough for ordinary Australians. Mind you, this Prime Minister elected to have a fibre connection for his own residence.

At the same time, consumer complaints are soaring. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman in its 2015-16 report highlighted a 150 per cent increase in complaints about NBN faults. A recent Choice survey reported that 62 per cent of Australians are experiencing slow speeds and unreliable services. The level-playing-field rules are designed, nevertheless, to provide protection for NBN Co to ensure that its significant investment in wholesale infrastructure is not unfairly undermined. This is the commercial risk that I referred to earlier, in my opening comments. The NBN was designed to utilise uniform wholesale pricing to ensure that wholesale access for regional Australia was the same as for the cities. In this respect, the NBN is underpinned by an internal cross-subsidy that uses profits from services in the city to fund services in the region. The service obligation expressly contemplates that NBN Co will provide broadband in areas where it would not be commercial to provide those services. This obligation is unique to NBN Co and is not shared by any of its broadband competitors.

Public policy should ensure that companies seeking to provide high-speed broadband are broadly subject to the same regulatory requirements as NBN Co so as to ensure competitive neutrality. The level-playing-field rules in parts 7 and 8 of the Telecommunications Act date back to 2011. They apply to superfast fixed-line networks that service residential and small-business customers. Part 7 of the act requires operators of these networks to make their networks available to access seekers—that is, retail service providers. In many respects the amendments proposed by this legislation that are necessary in order to impose a charge or levy upon competing networks are a product of this Prime Minister encouraging the construction of a competing network. Obviously, to protect the structural separation of the network, it's important that we protect NBN Co's monopoly as a wholesale service provider. So Labor will support the bill. Thank you.

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