Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to hold the Labor government to account for their dismal record on internet and phone connectivity for this country. Under Labor, the NBN was such a train wreck of a project that its network passed only three per cent of Australian premises at a whopping amount of money: $6 billion. The rollout was so badly managed that contractors downed tools and stopped construction work in four states around the country. When the coalition took over responsibility for the NBN, we set about fixing the problem in a methodical way.

Our strategic review recommended using a combination of rollout technologies—the multi-technology mix. We invested $4.5 billion in 2020 to ensure that 75 per cent of premises across Australia could connect to much faster broadband speeds. A key part of this commitment was to upgrade two million fibre-to-the-node sites to fibre to the premises to access these very high speeds. Importantly, this was financed through the NBN accessing private-sector debt at low interest rates over the long term, meaning that no additional investment by the Commonwealth was required. As part of this initiative, NBN Co aim to invest $700 million over the next three years to provide 90 per cent of all Australian businesses with access to business grade fibre at no upfront cost.

Transforming the access and affordability of business grade fibre and increasing competition and choice have proven to have been critical in our economic recovery from COVID-19. This was a game changer for small and medium-sized businesses in boosting productivity, fostering innovation and allowing businesses to embrace opportunities for growth. If the NBN had not been rolled out with such speed and purpose by the former coalition government using all available technologies, millions of premises throughout Australia may have languished on ADSL speeds of eight megabits per second on average or endured, indeed, having no internet service at all. Because of the coalition's approach, the NBN was there for Australians when they desperately needed it after the pandemic hit. Almost overnight, we had to adapt the way we worked, learned, accessed vital services and kept in touch with our loved ones.

Labor's record on the NBN is appalling. During the 2013 election campaign, the then minister for communications, Anthony Albanese, the member for Grayndler, announced with great fanfare that broadband was now available to 5,400 homes and businesses in Sydney. What he didn't say was that close to 1,000 of these homes were service class 0 and a massive 98.6 per cent had no fibre connecting the home at all. At the time of the 2013 federal election, NBN Co said it had passed 209,000 premises but close to 80 per cent of these had no fibre going into the home. We've seen this play before. It's typical Labor—very good with PR but absolutely hopeless when it comes to implementing policy.

NBN is critically important to regional and remote Australian communities, but so too is mobile telephone connectivity. Sadly, Labor has poor form with this technology as well. Their Mobile Black Spot Program was a failure, riddled with dodgy deals and mismanagement. Let me be very clear: the coalition government takes the issue of mobile black spots very seriously. In fact, since 2013, we've invested $308 million in our Mobile Black Spot Program, delivering new or improved mobile coverage to more than 1,200 communities right across the country. Labor claimed their program would deliver 765 new base stations. In reality, it was only 499. To make matters worse, many of the base stations were built in areas that already had coverage, while many areas with no coverage were left to languish.

I was extremely disappointed—shocked, even—to hear that, in Labor's new round of mobile black spot funding, 74 per cent of selected locations are in Labor's electorates. While Labor has once again looked after their own, our regional communities have been ignored, and they are suffering as a result. In my own very large electorate—the largest electorate in the land—there was only one site selected in this latest round. It is quite unbelievable. Minister Rowland needs to fully explain her role in personally selecting this list of sites so that we can clearly understand what the basis of it was. The Labor government has consistently demonstrated that they don't understand Australia, and this is another example.

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