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

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that Western Sydney is Australia's third largest economy, and accounted for more than half of Sydney's population growth from 2012 to 2018;

(2) notes that:

(a) jobs growth in Western Sydney has been increasingly limited to population-driven sectors like construction, which have been hit hard by COVID-19;

(b) there is a jobs deficit affecting Western Sydney's growing professional workforce, which is forced to commute long distances for employment;

(c) a fast, reliable internet connection is basic infrastructure that is needed to attract new businesses and industries, and therefore essential to promoting jobs growth in Western Sydney; and

(d) NBN's recent announcement of 130 'business fibre zones' includes four zones in suburbs on Sydney Harbour, but only one in Western Sydney, in Parramatta; and

(3) calls on the Government to urgently improve NBN connectivity for businesses and households to support sustainable jobs growth in Western Sydney.

I live in Australia's third-largest economy, Western Sydney, accounting for more than half of Sydney's population growth from 2012 to 2018. In fact, 52 per cent of Sydney's population growth was in Western Sydney. In 2018, there were 1.12 million employed residents in Western Sydney, bigger than the workforce in Adelaide and the workforce in Perth and about 10 per cent shy of Brisbane. Fourteen point five per cent of those workers were knowledge workers, a greater proportion than Adelaide, Perth or Brisbane—an extraordinarily skilled workforce and one of the largest workforces in the country.

But we have a jobs deficit in Western Sydney. Our growth in jobs is fuelled almost entirely—in fact, 80 per cent—by growth in population. The population grows, construction grows and that's where the jobs come from. But take out population growth jobs and there's very little else going on in Western Sydney. We have a jobs deficit that is large now and is growing. Around 300,000 workers leave Western Sydney daily—that was in 2018. They commute to the city—sometimes for an hour, an hour and a half or two hours one way—to get to work. Optimistic projections say that job deficit will grow, by 2036, to 420,000 people. If it continues at the current rate, there will be 560,000 people commuting an hour or more to get to work every single day. We need to do something about this, and we need to do it now.

One of the basic things that this government could have got right in the first place is the NBN. In my area of Western Sydney, I have people who don't even get 10 to 15 megabits per second download. They're more than 1.2 kilometres from the node, living in the capital of Western Sydney, and they've got 10 megabits per second, not counting the dropouts, which are daily—in fact, hourly. This is just not good enough. It's not good enough.

When I put this motion in, the NBN had announced 20 business fibre zones, of which only one was in Western Sydney, and it was in Parramatta. Since then, they've announced another 20, including in Guildford-Yennora, Silverwater, and the surrounds of Homebush and Lidcombe. But this is still a drop in the ocean when you look at the size of Western Sydney and the sheer number of people who will be working from home.

In 2018 the department of communications estimated that by 2026 the maximum Australian households made up of two adults and two children would need was 49-megabit download speeds in peak times, but the NBN and the government have got this wrong so many times. The department of communications, if you remember, said that in 2016 a download speed of 25 megabits would be enough. Now they're saying that in 2026 a download speed of 49 megabits will be enough. Let me tell the House that it's not just the speed you have; it's what your competitors have. We're slipping down the rankings; we're 60th now in speed. When we've got countries across the Ditch to the east and to the north with gigabit download speeds, that's who we have to compete with. Now, with proper NBN speeds, it doesn't matter which country you're sitting in when you're working. We know that already. The biggest businesses in Australia and the biggest businesses around the world have fragmented workforces spread across the globe. If we're going to sit on 49 megabits per second in five years time and our competitors are dealing with gigabits, we're just not going to be there. We need better than this.

We know now that the government have realised that they could have actually used fibre for less than they paid for copper; they finally released the report that shows that. We know they could have done that, and they didn't. We know they held to copper for political reasons too. It's really time to come to the party here and acknowledge that fibre is the way to go and make sure that every household gets it and not follow the government's current plan which says that only people who can afford a high speed get fibre and everybody else stays with copper. That is not good enough for Western Sydney. It's not good enough given our growth rate and it's not good enough given out jobs deficit. If they want to get serious about doing the right thing by Western Sydney, they'll deliver fibre to every household and they'll do it now.

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