Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I don't know where the members opposite have been living to get all of this rubbish that somehow, if Labor had been in government for the last seven years, the NBN would have crashed during the pandemic. Let me tell you: in Parramatta it did. It was inadequate and it did come crashing down. I have people working for me and in my electorate who were not able to have two people online at once. Only one could work from home at a time. I have people in my electorate who were 'lucky enough' to get the NBN finally in 2020 after being promised it in 2014, 2016, 2018 and then 2020. They finally got it in 2020, and it is a disaster.

I have people on the Great Western Highway and in Dundas Valley, completely different areas of the electorate, that each are more than a kilometre from the node through copper: 1.2 kilometres from the node on the Great Western Highway and one kilometre in Dundas. They get 10 to 15 megabits per second if it works at all, and sometimes it crashes 70 times a day. These are medium-density buildings. The technicians are saying that they're coming out every single day with a complaint for the NBN and they're openly saying that it was never NBN-ready, that the NBN announced it was NBN-ready because the government wanted to deliver it so they could make this fabulous announcement that it was all complete, so they connected homes to the NBN with nodes 1.2 kilometres away. It is outrageous. It did come crashing down and it was inadequate during the pandemic.

Of course, in parts of Parramatta we didn't get it in 2020. We're not getting it until 2022—maybe—says the NBN. Maybe. This is Parramatta. This is the geographic heart of Sydney. This is the second Sydney CBD. This is where all of the high-rise development is going on. This is one of the fastest-growing areas in Sydney, and for the CBD itself and the area around it? 2022 maybe.

Now we find out that the great excuse that the government gave for rolling out this piece of trash which they jokingly call the NBN was that it was going to be cheaper and faster. Now we find out that it's not cheaper. In fact, by the time they do their overlay, realising now that it should have been fibre all along and paying for the rollout of fibre as well, it's going to be more expensive for this piece of trash.

What I want to know from the government is how my constituents in the electorate of Parramatta who are sitting with 10 to 15 megabits per second and get dropouts continuously all day get this great thing that the minister is now talking about: one gigabit download speed if they wish when the new fibre rolls out. Where is it going to go, when is it going to be there, how much is it going to cost and how the hell do you get in the queue? If it's going to be available, who is it available for and under what condition? Are the people that are sitting down the end of a 1.2-kilometre copper wire from the node going to get an upgrade, and how much will it cost them? Where is the information on this?

People decide where they live, where they rent, where they build their house, where they send their kids to school—they decide all those things these days—based on how good the internet connection is, because in Australia sometimes it's good and sometimes it's rubbish. People actually care about this, and they need to know, so they can make decisions about their lives, where this is going to roll out and whether they will be able to get it. This is important. This is not the kind of stuff that you keep secret—well, one assumes it will be rorted like everything else. One assumes with this government that if its members are not telling you where they're going to spend the money they're going to spend it in their own electorates, because that's pretty much par for the course with them. But I want to know how my constituents get this. I want to know whether people in red-brick buildings, people who are renting, people who have landlords and people who are in high-rise buildings that didn't get it because they were built before the NBN can get it, and I want to know what it's going to cost. I expect to know that so that people in my electorate can make decisions about their lives based on real information.

We know there have been 47 suburbs named. Some of them are in New South Wales; none of them are around me at all. But this is important. This is yet another case of a complete lack of transparency about an incredibly important project, a life-changing project. It should have been a nation-changing project. My constituents need to know. There were 10 to 15 megabits per second during the pandemic. Any member that gets up on that side and says the NBN was fabulous in the pandemic clearly hasn't been out much. Quite frankly, it wasn't adequate and it did crash.

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