Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm glad to rise to speak today on this particular set of bills, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017, and the proposed amendment. I'm always happy to speak on the NBN, as members in this House would well know. The NBN has, sadly, been a source of constant anguish for my constituents. Whether it's trying to force 21st century technology down 1950s and 1960s copper wiring in the suburbs of Rockingham, Shoalwater and Safety Bay, trying to fix a botched installation down in Port Kennedy or even just trying to get a signal out in Baldivis, in the east of my electorate, my constituents are always very happy to give feedback to Prime Minister Turnbull on his government's 'fraudband' rollout, just as I'm always happy to rise in the parliament to speak about it. Indeed, my colleague and friend the shadow minister for communications, the member for Greenway, had a chance last year, on one of her many visits to Western Australia, to hear from residents in my electorate on their concerns about the National Broadband Network and the rollout in their district. It would appear, from piles and piles of correspondence to my office on this issue, that residents in Brand would do just about anything to be able to access the internet.

In 2018, internet access is as much a universal right as the right to education or the right to social equality. Indeed, access to the internet and its services bridges the gap between rich and poor, the haves and the have-nots, and is responsible for so much of the world's technological advances over the past 20 years. Everyone in my electorate, indeed Australia-wide, deserves to be able to use this technology and access the internet safely and reliably. To this end, we'll be supporting these bills. I'll support anything that seeks to improve the services available to my constituents. However, I will also be supporting the amendment of the member for Greenway.

Turning to the substance of the bills, we can see their necessity, as well as the necessity of other amendments. The Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 established a universal service obligation that nailed down the need for an easily accessible standard telephone service for all Australians. The problem with that is the date—21 years of technology growth, expansion and innovation has outgrown the act and its perfectly well-meaning intentions. Consumer needs have shifted dramatically away from a basic phone service, moving instead towards internet connectivity, although a basic phone service is essential for many in our community—and I will reflect on an instance I have witnessed myself of the inability of our providers to provide even a basic phone service to the elderly. In this digital age, it's perfectly reasonable that many services have gone online. You can pay car registration, power, insurance and other bills online. Gone are the days of going into an office or even ringing up your insurance company or utilities provider to pay your bill. But we must be mindful that this digital transformation does not move too fast and leave the most vulnerable behind, particularly the seniors in our community. Universal access may be a right, but so is the right to be included, the right to be educated and the right to transition at a reasonable pace. Others can transition as fast as they like, but we must ensure that those who find it difficult to cope with new technologies are helped along the way.

Labor understands these needs, which is partly why the NBN was envisaged in the first place, the other part being, of course, that former Prime Minister John Howard had no foresight on broadband policy, and the Nationals, as usual, achieved very little in this regard. When it was first established under Labor, the NBN was the first initiative of any Australian government that provisionally guaranteed universal broadband access. This was implemented through a statement of expectations issued to the NBN board at the time. Whilst this was a good start, we have seen that since Labor left government much of this goodwill has unfortunately been sucked down the drain of political pointscoring by some who choose to cut corners in the name of cutting costs and lowering expectations in a policy they never truly believed in. Despite this, it is good to see the bill presented as another step in the right direction as it seeks to establish a Statutory Infrastructure Provider regime that makes sure that all Australian premises are guaranteed access to high-speed broadband through NBN or another infrastructure provider in certain circumstances. This places universal broadband access into federal legislation and helps provide certainty to metropolitan and regional consumers beyond the scope of the initial NBN broadband rollout. This is sorely needed in my electorate.

I have heard terrible stories about the lack of access in my electorate and how it is impacting on the daily lives of the decent, hardworking people across Rockingham and Kwinana, as well as many others around Australia. There are people like Mr Dewald Pretorius, who works from home in his own small business and requires the internet to do so. Mr Pretorius told me that he had better internet connections in Africa than he does in Baldivis. How is that possible in a purportedly modern Australia and in an outer metropolitan area of Perth? It's unacceptable. Another is a doctor in Port Kennedy who works from home in the area of aged and palliative care. He looks after 200 residents in aged-care facilities. His practice is fully computerised, relying on internet connectivity to ensure communications, medication orders and test results—to name just some areas of his work. But how can these services be met and dealt with in an accurate and timely manner when he doesn't have access to a guaranteed stable internet service? In fact, according to the official NBN rollout map, some parts of Port Kennedy, which is in the southern part of my electorate, will not be connected to the broadband until June 2019—more than a year from now. This is just another example of how denying the right of access to internet service can impact on other rights, like the right to health care and health services.

I have quite often stood in this place to question the government on their approach to the whole National Broadband Network project. They have been there five years and have failed to make much progress. To say that they are delivering when they simply are not is ridiculous. The appalling and inadequate rollout of the NBN has reached such dire proportions that now, just like walking through a clean house with muddy shoes, someone has to go back and mop it up. This mop and bucket takes the form of a new broadband tax of $7.10 per month. It will apply to services on non-NBN networks. This charge is due to increase by $7.80 by 2021. The government's internet tax, which they are cleverly calling a 'levy', is expected to add $84 to the annual bill of up to 400,000 residents and business services on non-NBN networks. Let us be clear about this: the only reason we find ourselves at this point is the Prime Minister's poor judgement at every turn in this very important policy area.

Regional and remote coverage of the NBN was an important Labor initiative when the NBN was started. It was a decision to extend high-speed broadband to unprofitable areas and fund it through a universal wholesale pricing regime across the country. This meant that NBN users in the city could help cross-subsidise higher-cost services in the regions. There was no contemplation of having a universal wholesale pricing regime and a levy. It was supposed to be one or the other, but not both. The decision by the Turnbull government to slug consumers with a new internet tax is both poorly designed and clearly a stopgap solution. The $49 billion 'multi-technology mix' has cost more and achieved less. It doesn't even generate as much revenue as the original plan. The coalition had a 2013 commitment to deliver the NBN by 2016 at a cost of $29.5 billion. What a joke that commitment was! In late 2013, this blew out to $41 billion and in 2015 by another $8 billion. It's now 2018 and the project isn't slated to be completed until 2020, at a cost of $49 billion to the taxpayer. That is $20 billion over budget and four years behind. It's hard to fathom how the promise of the now Prime Minister when he was Minister for Communications could go so wrong, but it has gone wrong.

In 2017 many Australian retail service providers were caught selling speed plans that the NBN could not possibly deliver with a high percentage of copper in the general infrastructure. This resulted in nearly one in two consumers who were on the copper NBN paying for the top speed tier and having their speeds downgraded. They were compensated as a result of the inquiry via the ACCC and assisted by the NBN parliamentary committee. In that regard, I would like to thank the now former member for Fremantle for his diligence on the issue while sitting on the committee. As he points out, Western Australia will continue to receive the bulk of the rotten multi-mix technology this government is pushing out. It was reported that one in three homes on copper cannot achieve 50 megabits per second, and three in four cannot achieve 100 megabits per second, which is far below what was promised by NBN under this government. And yet we have also learnt that no funding has been set aside in the government's NBN business case out to 2040 to upgrade its copper footprint.

I will turn for a moment to a pretty personal story about the NBN and the problem with the copper wiring, its current rollout and the fragility of the infrastructure we had in place. On 22 April, there was a storm in Western Australia. It was a pretty minor storm. There were some lightning strikes. That was a Sunday. I went to visit my mother. I rang her before I got there, and she didn't answer the phone. The phone rang out. I thought: 'That's pretty unusual. Mum's usually home on a Sunday.' She lives in Shoalwater Bay, so I just rocked up at her house. 'Mum, why didn't you answer the phone?' I asked her. She said, 'Well, the phone didn't ring.' I said: 'I rang it. It should have rung.' So we tested it with my mobile—she doesn't use her mobile. It rang on my phone, and rang out, but it was not ringing physically. She could not hear the phone ringing in the house. No-one could hear it. The phone was not working. By all accounts, the same thing happened for the whole street. It is an elderly community. They talk to their neighbours—most Australians do talk to their neighbours—and we quickly found out that, overnight, four or five houses on that street had all lost their landline. They'd all converted to the NBN maybe six months before.

Then the process started. We couldn't ring NBN on a Sunday—well, we could, but we couldn't get any help and we certainly couldn't make any appointments for a technician—so we started this on Monday, 23 April. On behalf of my mother, I rang the NBN, because she didn't have a phone. We had to charge up her rudimentary mobile that she hates to use, like many elderly in the community, but was forced to use. It's a good thing that she was forced to use it, because, if she hadn't made herself use it, she would have been without any form of telephone communication for over a week. We rang NBN on the Monday. We could not get a technician appointment to come and confirm what was happening until Friday, 27 April. My mother has a medic alert because she's quite elderly and has false knees—although they get her around quite well—so falls are a hazard for her. An elderly neighbour had a technician come a day earlier. The other neighbour also had a technician come a day earlier. Everyone was told, 'Your Telstra modems have been shorted out by the storm.'

So I rang NBN and said: 'All the neighbours' modems have been blown out by the storm. How about you get your technician to bring a modem over, just in case, so we can do it all at once and Mum can be back on the phone within a quick four days?' They said: 'No, that is certainly not the case. That is not going to happen. No-one will bring a modem to your mother until it's confirmed that the NBN is not at fault, and then we can dial up Telstra and get them to sort that out.' The technician comes on the Friday and says, unsurprisingly, 'Yes, it was the modem that's blown out; you need a new modem from Telstra.' So we rang them up and they said: 'That's true. We won't be able to get your mother a modem until 2 May.' Okay, that's how it is.

So then I ring and say: 'Can your technician come and install the modem, because I won't be around to help her. How is she going to have a landline and how's she going to get a medic alarm on?' They said, 'You'll have to call when the modem comes and wait another three to five business days for someone to come and connect your mum to a landline.' So, overall, it was going to be anywhere between 15 and 19 days that my mother would not have a phone. She lives on her own. She's an elderly woman in Shoalwater Bay. She has lived in this house, as has my family, since 1959—I kid you not. It is an old, copper-wired house. She has not been without a phone for more than a couple of hours in a big storm, and then, last month, she lost it for nearly 10 days. It is absurd and obscene that people can be put through this.

I rang the NBN every single day. It's not the fault of the operators on the end of the line. We know that. They're just doing their job. But it certainly is unfair on the elderly in that street. They'd all lost their phones for anywhere between four and 10 days. The only reason my mum got her phone connected more quickly is that as an MP—as all my colleagues in this House know—I have priority access to some of the providers and also have a bit of a platform on social media to complain, and that pushed the service forward. On Monday she did get reconnected, but, if I had not been able to use that privilege, she would not have been connected to a landline until today.

Another thing is that triple 0 calls in Western Australia were not working this week. How is it that Telstra can fail to have an adequate triple 0 service to St John Ambulance across Perth because a cable is hit by lightning in New South Wales?

I call on this government to do something, anything—something productive would be best—to fix the communications nightmare you have put the Australian people in, and, most upsetting for me personally, the nightmare you put my mother through last week, because of this rubbish NBN system you have presided over. You should hang your heads in shame.

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