Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll go straight back to this bill. The irony of this bill—and, Mr Deputy Speaker, I'll address and try and go straight back to the bill, to the member 's concerns—is: it's their own bill from 2011. They had the time, if they thought there was something in that bill, when it was drafted, or to amend it shortly afterwards. Why is it that now this has become such a big issue?

The Prime Minister had the opportunity to address issues that mattered before he flew out of the country. He saw this as the biggest priority before he left the country yesterday—to bring this on. I'd love to see him explain to the country why this is the biggest, most pressing problem: something on the NBN—a word he had uttered only six times since the election, five of them to sledge the coalition about copper. He'd uttered the word 'NBN' six times since taking office as the Prime Minister, five of them to sledge us, and now suddenly this bill has come up, as this government is flailing around.

We would much rather deal with our homegrown inflation crisis. It's stubbornly high, at 3.4 per cent—still outside of the RBA zone and still much higher than where we can cut or reduce interest rates.

Under this government's watch, we've actually seen a major decline in the NBN. The previous speaker was telling the House, 'We may not be able to find a local buyer for it.' Well, what a decline we've seen under them. Australians are being hammered with price increases. Service increases aren't going better. We're seeing people go to Starlink. We've seen six million families smashed by NBN price increases of up to 14 per cent.

Australians have dealt with a double whammy of higher internet costs with two price hikes in the space of just eight months since the Albanese government backed a new pricing deal for the NBN last year. We're not talking about that. And what did the communications minister say about this? Infamously, she described these price rises as 'great news for consumers'.

The NBN's satellite business is collapsing. Two years ago, the NBN had more than 120,000 satellite customers, and Starlink had virtually none. Today, the NBN is down to 85,000 customers, so it has shrunk 33 per cent, and Starlink has gone from zero to 270,000 customers. So, under the watch of those across the aisle, the NBN is leaking customers, leaking value and increasing prices. And the last member, in his own speech, was saying he didn't think there would be a buyer within Australia for it. That's not a very good advertisement for the management under this government, is it?

So I would ask the government to return to issues, even bipartisan issues, whether on gambling or on making this place more efficient—which I, personally, would like to work on—rather than discussing farcical bills.

Debate adjourned.

Leave granted for second reading debate to resume at a later hour.

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