Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Amendment (Infrastructure in New Developments) Bill 2020, and I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes:

(a) that despite the Coalition's promise to deliver a second-rate NBN for $29.5 billion, the cost is now forecast to be $57 billion;

(b) despite the Coalition promising every Australian would have access to a minimum NBN speed of 25 megabits per second by 2016, up to 238,000 premises in 2021 still cannot get this minimum speed;

(c) the shambles that is the deployment of HFC technology; and

(d) that after spending seven years and $51 billion on the NBN, the Coalition Government has begun an embarrassing backflip from copper to fibre; and

(2) calls on the Coalition Government to reign in its technological incompetence across every aspect of the NBN."

The context of this bill, as set out in the explanatory memorandum, is that incorporated developers are currently prohibited from selling or leasing a new building lot or building unit if fibre-ready facilities have not been installed in proximity to the dwelling. This prohibition does not apply to unincorporated developers, as there had been legal uncertainty about what heads of power were available to the Commonwealth to regulate these entities.

The purpose of this bill is to address the lack of enforcement tools and penalties when unincorporated developers fail to install fibre-ready duct and pipe infrastructure in new housing developments, unlike incorporated developers, who are subject to enforceable regulation. Without the necessary telecommunications pit and duct infrastructure, new houses cannot be connected to the National Broadband Network or other fibre telecommunications networks, and clearly this is not an acceptable outcome.

Moving into a new home or estate is both an exciting and a stressful process. There is the excitement of starting afresh and, of course, the stress of sorting out any problems that arise. Very rarely, if ever, do Australians move into a new home and find that no-one has bothered to install the requisite electricity infrastructure. That scenario would strike us as somewhat ridiculous and effectively render the home unusable. Appropriately there are obligations on developers and planners to ensure such circumstances cannot occur.

In the year 2021 we should find offensive the notion that some estates and developments are still being built without the most basic telecommunications pit-and-pipe infrastructure being installed. Regardless of whether this is intentional cost cutting by providers gaming the system or an unintentional lack of coordination around the provision of infrastructure, this is not a scenario federal or state governments should tolerate, given broadband is an essential service and our regulations have to treat it as such.

It is important to note that the sizeable majority of developers do install pit-and-pipe infrastructure. However, complaints received from the occupants of some new developments indicate that some developers do not install pit and pipe. These are typically small and frequently unincorporated developers. It has been estimated that between 3,000 and 6,000 homes are built in Australia every year without pit and pipe, leading to delays and additional costs for the occupants of these newly-built premises. This amounts to an estimated one to 1.5 per cent of new houses every year.

Fibre-ready facilities are key enabling facilities for the installation of fixed-line telecommunications networks. Such networks are increasingly important in allowing people in Australia to engage in the modern economy, with their importance underlined by the need for many people to stay, work and study at home because of the impact of COVID-19. People taking possession of new homes or businesses expect ready access to modern telecommunication services, but if fibre-ready facilities have not been installed there may be delays before such services are available and significant retrofitting costs.

As a general rule of thumb, it is estimated to cost a developer between $600 to $800 to install pit and pipe during the construction phase of a new development project, and the developer can recover this cost when a property is sold or leased. These developments typically occur in broadacre estates and in the outer suburbs when new land is available. In some instances, it occurs when multiple dwellings are built on land that has been subdivided. However, if a developer fails to initially install this infrastructure, it typically costs an estimated $2,100 to remedy, depending on the amount of civil works required to retrofit pit and pipe, and delays can take months. This leads to waste, inefficiency and immense frustration for homeowners, home occupants and consumers, who rely on fast and reliable connectivity. In addition, the homeowner often faces the burden of fixing the problem and having no access to fixed-line broadband whilst this is done.

In 2010, the Telecommunications Act 1997 was amended so that incorporated developers were required to install pit and pipe before selling a building or face a penalty. However, I understand provisions were not extended to unincorporated developers at that time due to the uncertainty within government agencies and the department about whether a Commonwealth head of power existed for unincorporated entities, which typically fall under the jurisdiction of the states and territories. Labor understands the department sought and received updated legal advice and no longer holds the same concern.

What is clear is there must be incentives and penalties such that all developers take this obligation very seriously. Since 2011, the states have had an opportunity to provide these safeguards, but some states and territories have not taken adequate steps to address the non-supply of pit and pipe in new developments and consequently the issue remains persistent, albeit on a small scale.

The bill before us proposes to amend part 20A of the Telecommunications Act to strengthen requirements for the installation of fibre-ready ducts in new property developments by extending to unincorporated developers the existing arrangements and penalties that currently apply to incorporated developers. The practical application of the act is that developers will have to install the necessary pit and pipe or risk a sizeable fine. It is largely up to the Australian Communications and Media Authority how it chooses to enforce the act. When the regulator is made aware pit and pipe hasn't been installed it has the ability to tell the developer to install or retrofit the required infrastructure; otherwise, the ACMA can take them to court under the act, where the developer faces a fine of up to $50,000. We have been advised this framework allows flexibility to be exercised for a graduated form of enforcement, where the developer is given an opportunity to remedy their non-compliance by retrofitting the required infrastructure.

While states and the territories may not prefer the approach of federal regulation, some jurisdictions of these have failed to adequately address this issue themselves. And if the Commonwealth has a head of power to make a solution available, it is the view of Labor that this should be exercised. For these reasons, Labor will support passage of this bill. The proposals are sensible, and I hope and expect the introduction of these obligations will have a positive impact for the segment of households and families who are forced to deal with the frustration of basic infrastructure not being installed to their new residents. Over the years, my electorate office has assisted several constituents caught in this issue and, let me say, the process is quite messy in the absence of a clearly defined safeguard. I do genuinely hope the passage of this bill brings us very close to eliminating the number of instances where this problem arises altogether.

While Labor is prepared to support the passage of this bill, let me be clear about what we will not give this government a leave pass on—that is, spending $57 billion on a second-rate copper NBN. If you want the Oxford definitions of 'incompetence' and 'waste', look no further than the Liberals, this hapless Minister for Communications and their technological omelette known as the NBN multitechnology mix. Let's do a quick go of the litany of failures. It is over budget. The Liberals, with great fanfare standing alongside a hologram of Sonny Bill Williams, promised they would deliver the NBN for $29.5 billion. It now costs $57 billion, nearly $30 billion over budget.

We then have copper failing to deliver minimum speeds. The Liberals promised every Australian would have access to minimum speeds of 25 megabytes per second by 2016. We are now in the year 2021, five years on, and these minimum speeds are still not being delivered over the copper NBN network. According to reports, up to 238,000 households still cannot access minimum speeds, which are actually a requirement of both Australian law and the NBN Statement of Expectations.

Then we have the fact that they have purchased enough copper to wrap around the planet Earth. This Liberal Party, the same Liberal Party who are on track to amass a trillion dollars in debt, have used taxpayers' money to purchase over 49,000 kilometres of new copper for the NBN. That is enough copper to wrap around planet Earth and then some. I have even heard they maxed out the copper supply in Australia, and they had to start importing copper from Turkey and Brazil. If you are a global copper trader, the Morrison government is your best friend.

Then we have the HFC mess. Who can forget when Malcolm Turnbull and now Minister Fletcher said that the HFC technology would be the great game changer? It most certainly did change the game, but for all the wrong reasons. Never has the rollout of network technology in Australia been such an utter shambles. The NBN HFC rollout is the most uneconomical and, arguably, the most unreliable in the entire world. There is a good reason why the former NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow wanted to toss the entire HFC footprint in the bin, and there is a good reason Mike Quigley and his management team also rejected the use of HFC when Labor was in government. After talking it up as the best thing since sliced bread, the Liberals had to scrap the Optus HFC network because it was not fit for purpose—a total humiliation.

Then they had to pause the rollout of the remaining HFC network some years later because the technology was so unreliable. Turning on your vacuum cleaner was enough to cause the internet to drop out. Just this week, we found out that NBN Co will pause activations on the HFC network because they've run out of chips for their modems. What a mess. No wonder Launtel, a Tasmanian ISP, wrote a blog last week referring to the HFC as a 'dog's breakfast' and singling it out as the most unreliable technology on the NBN network.

This brings me to the performance of NBN during lightning storms. We've been getting reports from the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury regions and parts of greater Sydney and outer Melbourne that fibre-to-the-kerb modems on the NBN have literally been getting fried during lightning storms, with some households requiring up to six modem replacements and technicians having to visit their premises each time. There has been an unacceptable lack of transparency on this issue, but, from what we understand, lightning is causing a voltage surge down the copper line and into the modem. The Liberals had one job: to not stuff up fibre to the kerb like they stuffed up everything else. This entailed ensuring the electronics and vendor equipment used to deliver the service were fit for purpose and had adequate surge protections. If storms are capable of blowing up six consecutive NBN modems, then something is not right.

To sum all this up, we have a copper network that is so defunct it still can't deliver the minimum speeds required by law. We have an HFC network that is arguably one of the biggest and most expensive telecommunications debacles in the entire history of the world. We have modems blowing up because of lightning surges down copper lead-in cables. Do it once, do it right and do it with fibre. Had the Liberals simply followed this path, Australians would have a faster and more reliable network at far less cost to the taxpayer. It's little wonder we have a dud NBN today, whose cost is forecast now to reach $57 billion—that's $30 billion over budget—and whose rollout is running more than four years behind schedule. It is no wonder that the Liberals now find themselves backflipping on copper towards the original fibre-to-the-premises plan. It only took them seven years, $50 billion and a worldwide health pandemic to realise that fast and reliable internet might actually be a good thing.

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