Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on behalf of and advocate for the community of Bonnet Bay within my electorate of Hughes. In August this year the residents of Bonnet Bay experienced a suburb-wide NBN outage—yes, no internet at all throughout the entire suburb. There are 2,238 men, women and children who call Bonnet Bay home. The NBN outage saw businesses lose thousands of dollars, HSC students miss out on study time and people otherwise unable to access the services which have become such a necessity in this modern age. My office was inundated by frustrated residents from the Bonnet Bay community.

Following that, I have met with many from Bonnet Bay, including at public meetings. I have also advocated to both the communications minister and NBN. Although the immediate outage was resolved within a few weeks, the long-term network concerns raised by the Bonnet Bay community have not yet been properly addressed either by the minister or by NBN Co. In addition the current mobile reception coverage is unacceptable for a community that is a mere 30 kilometres from the Sydney CBD. The reception is on par with, if not worse than, that in many parts of remote Australia.

With intermittent mobile and internet coverage, what concerns me most is that Bonnet Bay has a history of being severely affected by bushfires and floods. This has obviously been creating a real emergency situation down there in the event that they need to evacuate and need to be advised by first responders. I call upon the minister to fix this problem down in Bonnet Bay.

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