Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this, the third report by the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network on the rollout of the National Broadband Network, there are some very important criticisms made of the NBN Co. by the whole committee, not simply by the coalition members, which go to the whole function of the committee and indeed the accountability of the NBN Co. for this massive public investment. The recommendations complain about the failure of the NBN to respond to questions, whether it is questions on notice or questions in committee hearings.

Recommendation 2, for example, calls on the government to include meaningful, consistent KPIs and statistics, such as homes passed, homes connected and services in operation. These are meaningful terms that people can understand, as opposed to the rather bizarre concept that the NBN Co. has invented—I have never seen it anywhere else in the world of telecommunications—where it boasts not of the number of households that have been passed but of the number of households that are contained within areas in which construction has commenced, as though that has any relevance. The fact that you are living in a house which is part of an area of 20,000 households and that the NBN has put a shovel in the ground somewhere in that area does not bring you better broadband services. It does not do anything for you, in fact. It is obviously just a device to get over what has been an extraordinary failure in delivery.

I think it is important to run through some of the NBN's scorecard as at June this year. Let us take the most important metrics. In their corporate plan, the NBN estimated that by 30 June 2012—in other words, by the end of this month—there would be 145,000 households passed with the fibre optic cable. As of May, 18,200 premises were passed; so not even 15 per cent has been achieved.

They also estimated in their corporate plan, which was published just at the end of 2010, that by the end of this month 172,000 households would be passed in greenfields areas—that is, in new housing developments, as opposed to the brownfields areas, which of course are built-up areas. They said, 'We'll have passed 172,000 households in greenfields areas by the end of June 2012.' By the end of December 2011, which is the latest number we have, they had passed a massive 951 households. That is an extraordinary failure, barely five per cent of what they had forecast.

They forecast that by the end of this month there would be 1,000 households with active connections to the fixed wireless service. This is the service that will go into the four per cent of the country which will not be getting the fibre-to-the-premises service or the satellite service. They said, 'One thousand will be connected by fixed wireless as at the end of June.' As at the end of May, they had active connections to 52 households. There is a bit of a pattern here—it is another five per cent achievement. The total number of active connections that they forecast, therefore, by 30 June 2012 was 151,000 active connections, and as of May the active connections are in fact 11,000. Of those 11,000, 7,300 are on the interim satellite service. So in terms of the whole purpose, the whole thrust and the object of the NBN Co., which is the fibre-to-the-premises rollout, supported by the fixed wireless roll-out, it is a colossal failure. When you move out to 30 June 2013, they had estimated in their corporate plan that there would be 805,000 households to be passed in the brownfields areas, and it now appears from their latest publication that there will be only 236,000 households passed.

This is a colossal failure, and the government really provides very little in the way of explanation other than to say that it took some time to finalise the negotiations with Telstra. What they overlook is that the negotiations with Telstra included, from the very outset, an arrangement that the NBN Co.—before all the precedent conditions were satisfied—could have access to Telstra's infrastructure, and they have had access to that for just under a year. So, as an excuse, the Telstra contractual negotiations are very, very thin.

In the industry, there is general amazement at the slowness of the NBN Co.'s rollout. There is general amazement and disappointment at what appears to be much less than competent management on the part of the NBN Co. But I may say that it goes further than that. While you can attribute much of this delay to poor management on the part of the NBN Co—and that is certainly what people in the industry and in the civil engineering world are saying—there is also this problem: the universal experience around the world has been that building fibre-to-the-premises networks is inordinately slow and expensive. Even in Singapore, where they are building a fibre-to-the-premises network—or seeking to do so—it has taken much longer, cost a lot more and resulted in some pretty acrimonious litigation between the various parties in that tiny country, with all of the advantages of density that it offers in terms of a rollout of this kind.

If you want to compare a statistic or a metric between Australia and the United States, Telstra's experience with its small fibre-to-the-premises rollout in South Brisbane, where it has more houses connected just in that little suburb of Brisbane than the NBN Co. has all over Australia, is, as they have told us, that once the fibre is bought to the premises it is still taking one man-day—that is to say, generally it takes two technicians half a day—to cut over the services over to the fibre from the copper, and they have not been able to get that time down. That is obviously very expensive given labour costs. Interestingly, the experience of Verizon, which has done a similar fibre-to-the-premises rollout in America—which they have now stopped because they simply could not make it pay—is that it has taken exactly the same time, one technician-day, to achieve that cut-over. This goes to a key recommendation in the coalition members' and senators' dissenting report here. What we have urged them to do is to investigate ways of speeding up the rollout by using existing infrastructure where possible and deploying different architecture, such as fibre to the node, where appropriate, because the one thing we know—and again this is global experience—is that you can achieve very high speeds using fibre to the node. You do not need to go very far: TransACT is doing it here in Canberra. They are getting 60 megabits per second down and 10 megabits per second up on fibre-to-the-node architecture using VDSL for the last copper piece. They are doing it right here. In the UK they are delivering 80 megabits per second download speed. So in terms of functionality and outcome it is much more than adequate, certainly more than people are likely to pay for. But the government refuses to investigate that, refuses to look at that, in a pig-headed way that is having the consequence of depriving Australians of upgraded broadband services.

The approach we would take and will take if the Australian people return us to government, and the approach we would urge the government to take, is to target the underserved areas first. Don't overbuild areas that are already well served with broadband. This is one of the most extraordinary aspects to the NBN Co., and I look at the member for Chifley over here, who has complained bitterly about areas in his electorate that are not in the three-year rollout, areas which have got little better than dial-up. He quite rightly cannot understand any more than I can why the NBN Co. is not addressing those areas. If his constituents vote for the coalition and a coalition government is returned with the support of a new coalition member for Chifley, he will be able to console himself in his defeat with the thought that they will get their services upgraded more quickly. In his electorate these areas are not getting upgraded and yet here in Canberra in the suburb of Crace, where TransACT has installed fibre to the premises, the best architecture you can get, the NBN Co. is going to overbuild it. In Ballarat, where TransACT, for example, has an HFC network and again is delivering very high speeds, 100 megabits per second, the NBN Co. is going to overbuild that to deliver people—wait for it: 100 megabits per second. The same is true in my electorate. They are going to overbuild areas well served by HFC in my own electorate with their fibre-optic cable and yet neglect areas that are poorly served.

The approach that the government should be taking—if the NBN Co. were run in a businesslike way, in a sensible way as opposed to this ideological obsession with fibre to the premises—is to target the areas that are poorly served first. It would then ensure that those areas receive infrastructure upgrades as a priority. It would use a mix of technologies so that the rollout were cheaper, faster and as a consequence more affordable, bearing in mind that income or lack of it is the biggest obstacle to broadband usage. If it did that, we would see the object of the NBN Co., which we all understand to be giving all Australians access to very fast broadband at an affordable price—that should be the object—achieved much sooner. It is very cold comfort indeed for Australians who have been waiting to have their broadband services upgraded to be told by the NBN, 'Oh, we will get to you sometime in the next decade or perhaps the decade after it,' and then, as they lament the leisurely timetable in the NBN's corporate plan, discover that even on the basis of that timetable, which is slow enough, the NBN is barely able to reach 10 per cent of its targets. In some cases, as I have noted earlier, it is only achieving about five per cent of its target. This is an incompetently managed company, owned by and directed by an incompetent government. It is a lose-lose-lose situation. Australians will be waiting much longer than they need to to get better broadband. Taxpayers will pay much more than they ought to to achieve this broadband upgrade. At the end of the day, as a consequence of this gigantic overinvestment, the services will be more expensive and therefore less affordable.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Perhaps I can clarify for Mr Turnbull, the member for Wentworth. I am pleased to advise the House that, under the three-year construction timetable announced by the government back in March, those areas that I have been championing for some time to drag out of the broadband dark ages—particularly Woodcroft and Doonside, which have been held up—will get the NBN. They are delighted that they have been included in the schedule and, late next year, residents in those areas will start to be connected to the NBN. That is terrific news for them.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Proceedings suspended from 16:46 to 17:01

Just before the break I was indicating to the House that it was my great pleasure to inform members that, following a very active campaign, we were successful in seeing communities that had previously been black spots included in the NBN construction timetable, and that by next year residents in Woodcroft and Doonside would be connected. Some residents were overjoyed to hear that—some of them had not even experienced YouTube—because some suburbs in Western Sydney that were dependent on a dial-up connection are looking forward to the prospect of having superfast broadband. In cooperation with Telstra, we have seen some neighbourhoods in these suburbs be able to connect to the HFC network; others are benefiting from an investment in the ADSL network in the area through the rollout of what is called Top Hat, which will install extra cabinets in existing areas where ADSL is provided. People will now be able to access much faster broadband speeds.

I convened two community forums in the Woodcroft area. The first forum, in December last year, attracted over 100 residents and this was followed up by another forum I held in April, which was attended by a similar number of people. We were able to tell those people that, through a combination of work between Telstra and NBN Co., these suburbs would get access. I am correcting the record, because the member for Wentworth has suggested that these suburbs would still be without a connection under the NBN plans, when in fact that is not the case. The other thing I would point out, which should be taken into consideration by every member of the coalition, is the concern of residents that if the coalition gets in they will be denied access to superfast broadband, because the coalition is failing to support this technology. That is a very real concern for my constituents.

I have a simple challenge for those opposite. We saw last week the Leader of the House highlight the complaints of the member for Mitchell that the NBN was not coming out to his electorate. Mr Hawke was carrying on with the standard, rote lines that those opposite use to rail against the NBN but was then complaining, as those opposite do—as was the member for Wide Bay earlier—that the NBN has not gone to their neck of the woods. My simple challenge for any coalition member who feels that the NBN is a waste of money—to use the coalition's words, not the words of the general public or of most people in Australia—is that they should say to their electorate: 'On your behalf, I have determined that I will write to Senator Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and I will ask that our area be opted out of the rollout,' because there are certainly a lot of other suburbs in this country that would love to see the broadband network rolled out to their area. If those opposite do not recognise the enormous value that this technology is providing to this country, even at the moment, they should opt out. IBM, for example, in commissioned work entitled A Snapshot of Australia’s Digital Future to 2050,predicts that there is, through ICT, superfast broadband and other online applications, a value of up to $131 billion to our economy. That research was just provided in the last two weeks. If those opposite do not see the value of it, they should opt out and tell their constituents that they are turning their back on this equipment, on this infrastructure, on this technology. Have the courage to not say one thing here and then another thing in your own electorates. That is the simple challenge I extend to those opposite. I am absolutely confident that not one of them will write that letter to Minister Conroy, because they know what we know—and what Essential research found—and that is that even their own supporters, the people who vote for the coalition, support the NBN.

I have spoken about the value to the economy and the communities, but I am particularly pleased about what this does from an employment perspective—with nearly 20,000 jobs created as a result of the rollout of the NBN. While there are some jobs that will be created, there will be a period of transition for Telstra, which has operated its copper network for quite a number of decades—I cannot say 'countless' because we can count how many decades they have had it for. As the copper network is decommissioned, there will be changes to the workforce within Telstra. To provide for that situation there was a negotiation between NBN Co. and Telstra. Through the binding definitive agreements, the government agreed to provide $100 million to Telstra under a retraining funding deed to help retain and redeploy those Telstra employees who would be affected by the reforms to the structure of the industry—chiefly, structural separation. That RFD will conclude in 2019.

Over that period of eight years Telstra have to do a number of things. In particular, they need to ensure that, for example, under the deed, they support the availability of an appropriately trained workforce and that they establish a retraining arrangement with the staff who would otherwise face a redundancy as a consequence of the rollout of the NBN. This is detailed in the report. I commend the secretariat for this element of the report, because I think it faithfully reproduces exactly—following the appearance by Telstra back in April at the committee hearing—the nature of the questions from the committee as well as Telstra's responses, which I think were detailed as far as possible given that the actual binding definitive agreements came into effect in March and there was time required to negotiate the actual RFD. The deed operates by identifying an automatically eligible work group or employees who would be eligible for retraining—particularly those who work on the copper and HFC network and the direct field support workforce that conducts copper and HFC field based support, including workforce management, workforce and resource planning and construction program management, along with a number of other areas. Those employees who may face redundancy will be retrained.

This is particularly important to me because I have been concerned, knowing the composition of that workforce. It is an older workforce—on average, they are about 45 years of age—and, for them to face redundancy now, given the specialised skills set that they possess, it would be difficult for them to find work elsewhere. So, given the nature of the copper network versus a fibre network, it is important to be able to retrain them, using their existing skills base to lever off into new skills sets. Certainly that is why I feel this RFD is critical, and I am grateful to the committee chair in agreeing to have this component looked at as part of the joint committee's work and that we look at those workforce planning issues, particularly as it affects this section of the workforce. There are just over 6,000 employees in that automatically eligible workforce category who will be considered for retraining. Registered training organisations will be used, and Telstra itself has those capabilities. They will be able to identify the training needs under a training plan. Courses would be developed and a training methodology and target set for retraining. Telstra is also engaging in consultation with relevant stakeholders such as the unions that are involved with, or have coverage within, Telstra. Under the RFD, the training plan has to use 70 per cent of the funds for accredited training delivered by a registered training organisation, and they must be registered with a state or training authority.

Also I was keen to see that this training be spread out between urban and regional areas, and it was pleasing to see that Telstra indicated that it has a long history of delivering training to all geographic locations nationally. Its training is, to use its terminology, delivered as part of the business-as-usual training plan, and resources for that retraining will be planned on an annual and quarterly basis.

The initial training plans have been submitted to the department. They were supposed to be delivered by 30 April this year. In its appearance, Telstra had said that it was in the process of consulting employees, unions and governments on the first draft of that training plan. We look forward to talking with them further and gauging where they are at in the development of the training plan and how they will take the first steps to implement that plan.

We had also been interested to know how long it would take between the RFD coming into effect and it becoming operational, because there were redundancies that were taking place for employees that potentially would fall under the scope of the automatically identified or eligible work group. Telstra had indicated that they did not believe that there would be a great or significant impact at this stage, because the bulk of their business continues to rely upon the copper network. It is heartening to see to that they will also ensure that they pick up those employees in the meantime, and that they will receive retraining and potential redeployment to ensure that they remain within Telstra and within the sector, because my overwhelming concern is that we have major skills shortages within the sector—I have detailed that in the House previously—and the challenge, if we are to maximise the benefit out of the NBN, is to deal with those skills shortages.

These are the types of issues that I am proud to say will be picked up by a special group that has been formed within the government—the Labor Digital Economy Group. It will be looking at these types of issues, plus ways to maximise the value of the rollout of the NBN within our digital economy. As I indicated earlier, the estimates for that would range—if you take, for example, Google's commissioned work—from $70 billion worth of value to the economy through to, potentially, by 2050, according to IBM, $1 trillion worth of value to our economy, through the application of technology, the internet and the improved productivity that flows from businesses and governments and communities effectively digitising the way that they operate. That enables them to be in much greater touch with communities and customers, and enhances the way that they work.

Certainly, there is a lot that we can look forward to. I am looking forward to the Labor Digital Economy Group engaging with the ICT sector and picking up on issues such as skills shortages, and issues such as to how to get more businesses to embrace the online world and improve the way that they work. That group will, I think, form an important bridge between the sector and government.

Finally, I would like to pick up on a point that the member for Wentworth raised. He indicated—and I suspect others are going to try to indicate that, for instance, the NBN Co. has not met the targets it has set—that there has been no adequate reason as to why that would be the case. In actual fact, he is wrong. The report itself does deal with the ACCC's decision to increase the number of points of interconnect from 14 to over 121, and I draw the House's attention to paragraphs 2.12, 2.13 and 2.14, where it is clearly stated that major regulatory changes or positions by the regulator that had not been foreseen, and could not have been reasonably foreseen, have altered the way in which the corporate plan has to be shaped. Obviously those opposite continue their campaign to denigrate the NBN. I heard the member for Wentworth say that there is general amazement within the industry about NBN. If anything, there is general amazement about the position of those opposite. Most people in the sector cannot fathom how those opposite would say that the NBN would not in one swift move, in one powerful move, address something that they had tried 19 times to address but were simply unable to. If they say the NBN is not worth doing, why did they try 19 times to devise a plan that simply did not work? Their supporters support the NBN. The industry supports the NBN. Everyone knows the value of this technology to our nation. (Time expired)

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased, as a member of the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network, to speak in this debate in the House today and to make some comments about the recommendations ,but also some reflections as a rural and regional member of this parliament. Given the serious and urgent issues about broadband, wireless and mobiles or any sort of communication in rural and regional Australia, I think those experiences from the electorate of Farrer should be reflected in the context of today's debate.

The member for Chifley talked about this side of the House attacking NBN Co., making negative comments and denigrating the process. What I would say is that I am actually tired of making excuses for NBN Co. There can always be reasons why things do not get done on time, presented on time or provided in a thorough enough manner, but what the government seems to be doing over and over is just making excuse after excuse for this incredibly well-resourced company, which is moving towards using $50 billion of public taxpayers' funding.

I know the issues are that it is off balance sheet, it is an investment, it will provide a return and so on. It is rationalised away that it is not really government spending to the level that you might think. But it will not provide a return unless people pay for the NBN—what they believe the NBN is worth and what the NBN actually charges them as householders. We continually receive information that indicates that those costs are going to be quite high. Why would you, as a householder, pay $100, $120 or $150 a month for something that you are already getting for quite a bit less than that? Sure, there might be a few more bells and whistles; but, if you do not want those bells and whistles, why should you pay more? There is just so much lose, lose, lose in this for the constituents that I represent.

The opposition spokesperson for communications, the member for Wentworth, put it very well in his remarks a little while ago when he said that, under a coalition, we would not target areas that already have fast broadband. It seems like a no-brainer but it is one that the government and NBN Co. cannot get right. We would target underserved areas first. We would not overbuild high-speed networks that already have high fibre cable—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

High fibre?

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

High fibre? Healthy!

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fibre optic cable. I am happy for the government to correct my momentary lapse there, but that will not save them from the real criticism of NBN Co. and its lack of activity in regional areas.

I will just go back to my seat of Farrer, which covers a third of all New South Wales. The NBN fibre rollout plans to reach—just wait for it, members of the government—0.12 per cent of my electorate by 2015. That is 0.12 per cent, which is just the city of Albury—a city that already has pretty good, pretty sufficient broadband technology.

On 9 December 2009, when announcing the Regional Backbone Blackspots Program, Minister Conroy said that the 6,000 kilometres of fibre in the ground will benefit 395,000 residents in more than 100 regional communities. But what he did not say was 'when'. It was a cruel hoax, because everybody got so excited. People who were waiting for this got so excited. But they are not excited anymore. They are seriously disappointed. He did not say 'when'. The backbone network was completed in time to be part of the infrastructure for the future, and the backhaul is something that the government has done that I do support and I thank them for it. The backhaul runs parallel to the Murray from Echuca-Moama, right up to Mildura, north to Broken Hill, passing through or nearby at least half a dozen major urban communities. How many were announced in the initial three-year NBN rollout? Zero. None. Confusion by being snubbed in this way is particularly felt, can I say, in the major inland cities of Mildura and Broken Hill—and I want to focus on Broken Hill; it is in my electorate. It was not just local residents, by the way, that were confused. Even the government's own spruiker for the NBN was staggered. Peter Blasina, otherwise known as the Gadget Guy, said he was shocked when Broken Hill was not in the rollout:

I thought that Broken Hill would be connected to the NBN before I was connected in Sydney … If I was in Broken Hill I'd be getting a group together and knocking on Steven Conroy—

the minister's—

door.

If we thought it would do any good that is exactly what we would do, but we know that it would not do any good.

The confusion even extends to the NBN's own people, because, when quizzed why Broken Hill was not in the initial rollout, a spokesperson for the NBN Co. said it was because the technology was not ready. This is how incorrect that statement was. The local council had already dug up a local footpath at the corner of Blende and Chloride streets at its own cost, watched as the fibre-optic cable was laid and refurbished the nature strip over it. That was in early February, six weeks before NBN's rollout announcement. Adding some insult to all of this is the wall-to-wall advertising blitz the government is spending taxpayers' money on in these local markets, telling us all how wonderful the world will be one day. I forgot, Madam Deputy Speaker—and you will be pleased because you would have had to rule it an unreliable prop—the little cardboard NBN truck that I have in my office, which I sometimes say to people is as close as my electorate will ever actually get to the NBN. The actual NBN truck was at Parliament House last week, I think. It popped up in Albury as well. I think it even went to Deniliquin. So there is no expense spared on the advertising for the NBN in the regional areas that are not even slated to get it in the first rollout, and goodness knows how long after 2015 it will be before they might even be mentioned as being part of the rollout. What confusion!

The truck rolled up in Deniliquin last month. Everybody was saying, 'What does this mean? Does this mean we are getting the NBN?' The drought support van was an initiative of the member for North Sydney when he was the Minister for Human Services. He said we should travel the drought affected areas of rural Australia. We should take good people from Centrelink—social workers and drought support officers. We should visit the small towns that we do not often see and we should even have a little satellite dish on the roof so we can get people's application processes happening from within the truck. That drought support truck, which morphed into a Centrelink truck, which I occasionally see on the dusty miles in the far west of New South Wales, did a really good thing. This NBN truck is just a sick joke. It cannot tell anybody when the NBN is coming, it cannot give any comfort to anyone about when faster broadband might enter their lives or their homes and it certainly cannot tell anyone what any of this will cost, either for the community as a whole or for people as individual householders. People are waiting so much longer than they need to under this government. They are going to pay so much more than they should. This gigantic, monstrous overinvestment is such a tragic waste of public dollars.

I know that there will be criticism from those opposite, and there are criticisms regularly from people on telecommunications blog type websites who send me snaky little emails saying: 'But you in the coalition didn't vote for the NBN.' No, we did not, but that does not mean that we would not bring fast broadband to people's homes with fibre to the node. We certainly would not overbuild areas that already have fast broadband. Our policy would have seen so much happen so much faster. So, when I fight for my communities and I say, 'Where is the NBN? Why has Broken Hill, a town of 20,000 people with incredible regional investment opportunities, been so overlooked?' it is not because I think the NBN is the best solution, but, if this government is spending all these taxpayer dollars on this in many cases gigantic white elephant, I do want to see some improvement in communications in the areas that I represent. Until we come to government, if indeed we are lucky enough at the next election to do so, and start fixing up this mess, I have to deal with what I have. I have to deal with what is in front of me and so I will continue to fight for the communities that I represent to appear on the map of this government and of the people in NBN Co., who seem so willing to do its bidding. I want to touch on the recommendations. I want to thank, by the way, my colleagues on the committee and the chair, the member for Lyne, and say that we on this committee are in the process of uncovering some serious failings, I believe, in the processes, the management and the rollout, which after all is what we are here to report on.

I just want to look at recommendation 3, which is quite close to my heart. It says:

The committee recommends that the NBN Co as soon as possible, provide further key information on its website in a user-friendly format … This information should include:

We made many good recommendations but I really want to highlight this one because, from the minute the NBN became a sort of reality in people's lives I thought, 'Well, there should be a website, because there's always a website.' You should be able to go to the website, type in your postcode and use the services of Google Earth to focus on your street. You should be provided with information on a website run by a company that is spending up to $50 billion of taxpayers' money. It should tell you what you can expect, when you can expect it, who might be delivering it, what it might cost and who you can talk to about it. But nothing like that exists. There is this dense sort of nonsense and motherhood statements about what fast broadband means but nothing that really is user-friendly. So I am glad we have got that recommendation, and I really encourage NBN Co. to pay close attention to it.

We had a group of recommendations relating to services in regional and remote areas. I particularly highlight recommendation 9, which is:

The committee recommends that the NBN Co revise its terminology and language to clarify community understanding of what the three National Broadband Network services can and cannot support, to enable the community to prepare for the network's services appropriately and become fully informed.

As I said, it is dense language, a meaningless truck which cannot really tell people anything and cannot really explain anything.

Recommendation 10 is:

The committee recommends that the NBN Co include in its web-based interactive rollout map specific information on the provision of voice services for communities in fixed wireless and satellite access areas.

The reason that is necessary is that it has never occurred to anyone in this government, and it probably has not occurred to anyone in the NBN, that there are areas where we do not have sufficient voice communications and we do not have sufficient mobile services, and that maybe a voice over internet protocol is the way that we could achieve some of that. So do take note, please, NBN Co.: there are areas of Australia where you will be coming with this project that do not even have a decent mobile signal, so voice communication is probably a priority for them areas before anything else.

While regional and remote Australia has been spruiked as being very well looked after, it certainly has not been. I quickly want to conclude by talking about some evidence that was presented to a public hearing we had in Sydney relating to the rollout in the Berrigan Shire. The director of corporate services from the Berrigan Shire Council spoke to the committee and indicated—

A division having been called in the House of representatives—

Sitting suspended from 17 : 28 to 17 : 41

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise tonight to speak on the third report of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network, entitled Review of the rollout of the National Broadband Network. This report covers the period from 1 July to 31 March 2012. Throughout this period of reporting there has been a number of landmark achievements reached to support the NBN rollout. The achievements in the rollout include NBN Co reaching an agreement and signing contracts for fibre rollout with: Syntheo in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory; Visionstream in Tasmania; Silcar in Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT; and Transfield in my home state of Victoria. NBN has released a three-year national fibre rollout plan which details a list for some 3.5 million homes and businesses where work is underway already or due to begin up to mid-2015. It has also released a 12-month rollout schedule. NBN Co. has commenced its short-term satellite service, which will be of enormous benefit to Australians—particularly those in provincial and remote Australia—in its improvement of high-speed broadband services. This will be coupled with the announcement by NBN Co. that it has entered into an agreement with Space Systems/Loral which will deliver two new satellites to support the long-term satellite service. We have seen housing developments turned on to the NBN in western Sydney, and the member for Chifley was talking about before. We have also seen the final version of the wholesale broadband agreement. This means that we have seen some 40 retail service providers sign the WBA, and this includes Australia's largest ISP providers: Telstra, Optus and iiNet.

Over the same period we have seen a number of regulatory milestones, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's consideration and approval of the structural separation of Telstra and the accompanying draft customer migration plan. These are very important steps in delivering a national broadband network to all Australians, no matter where they live. The ACCC's approval of the definitive agreements will also see the NBN able to use existing Telstra pit-and-pipe infrastructure. That is going to allow for cheaper, faster and easier rollout with less overhead cabling and destruction to communities. The ACCC also approved an agreement with Optus for the decommissioning of Optus's HFC network. It should be noted that the NBN Co. special access undertaking which deals with the NBN access terms and conditions, is constantly being improved. It is an evolutionary process that has continued to grow, and it has developed out of feedback from businesses and industry. The ACCC and the committee will monitor this during the next review that we have. The report also notes that the committee is aware that the NBN Co. is still in the early stage of the rollout and that due to delays with the Telstra agreement, a change to the number of points of interconnect and changes to the government's greenfields policy there has been a delay. That happens when you are undertaking a nationally significant piece of infrastructure such as the NBN.

The committee feels that because these targets are not able to be compared between performance reports, it notes that NBN Co. considers it perfectly legitimate to measure its performance against the targets contained in the 12-month and 3-year rollout plans. The committee has recommended that the shareholder minister's report include key performance indicator information for targets in the business plan for homes passed, homes connected and services in operation.

During the time of this reporting we have been out and we have had a look at sites that are already up and running; places like Willunga in South Australia, where we went out and visited and saw cable being put into the ground. We went and saw the nodes being put there and we spoke to the many small businesses who were going to benefit from having a high-speed broadband network, something they have never had in the past. A lot of those businesses were really excited about it. There have been examples— and there are some in the report—that talk about how they had spoken to their providers and got nowhere for a long period of time—got nowhere in being able to access high-speed broadband.

With the NBN coming through it should be noted that the work of member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth, has been very strong. Amanda took us to a lot of businesses and the local council and the library. The library is now running programs for seniors that are getting them in there and teaching them about the internet and computers and high-speed broadband. They are saying that it is just flat out; they cannot keep up with the amount of people who want to know and want to get onto this 21st century thinking. It was important that we go and see these things happening on the ground.

In my own electorate of McEwen, South Morang started putting the cable into the ground, and one of the fantastic things about this is that we are getting students from Peter Lalor College—kids who were on the cusp of going bad or good—and giving them an opportunity to learn and be part of the fitting of fibre and the laying of fibre out in the streets and to homes. There are some fantastic young kids, all good young blokes, that are out there and learning this sort of stuff—they are learning to splice. It is giving them an opportunity to take a career that they may not have had previously and it may have been pretty tough for them. But these are just some of the small benefits that happen through the NBN as a side thing while we are delivering this fantastic piece of infrastructure.

I want to compare this to what we have heard from those opposite. We have heard again tonight this false figure of $50 billion. They make this figure up and not one person has ever been able to come and back that figure up.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You do not even know what it is going to cost!

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not one person has backed it up.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So, you are admitting you are making it up?

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will take the interjection there, that it is an admission that it a false claim. It has just been made up for something to do.

I have a look back to the 11 years when they were in government and I remember that Opel, which was plan number 18 or 19 or 20—I cannot remember because they all failed. I remember the maps that were brought out by the then Howard government—those wonderful masters of technology—that had the big Opel plan and the big map saying, 'We are going to service 75 per cent of your electorate'. You think communities would go, 'Wow wee isn't this great? How exciting is this?' The problem was, when you actually had a look at the map it never took into consideration things that we have in country areas like mountains, trees, buildings and lakes. All these things. None of that was taken into consideration. If we had got a great big iron and flattened the earth to dead flat and cut all the trees down then, maybe, the Opel contract they had may have worked. I say 'may have' because even they could not prove that it was going to work. The NBN project will deliver high-speed broadband to places that were never, ever in consideration by those opposite. During all their plans—failed plans, because every single one of them failed—

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not true.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Goldstein says that that is not true. I would be happy for you to leave your little inner-city coven and come out to anywhere around the outskirts of Melbourne and say: 'We didn't fail. You haven't got broadband.' Why? Because everything that you did failed. Not one of them worked, and that is why these programs are being delivered now and people are screaming. I am happy for you, member for Goldstein, to write to your constituents and say, 'You don't want the NBN,' because, like the rest of your crew, you bag it. You say that it is not worth it and that it is too expensive, and then you bitch and whinge and carp and whine because it is not in your areas—you are absolute jokes.

Mr Robb interjecting—

We know about your ability to do these things. You are part of the financial team that got an auditor's fine because of your inability to tell the truth. While you sit there carping, whingeing and whining about the NBN we are actually getting on the ground and delivering it, and we are delivering it to places that would never have seen it under your government—never did and never will. You had 11 years and you did not do a thing. You sat there and did nothing; meanwhile Australia fell behind—

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How long is it going to take them to pay off?

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let us just take that interjection. I remember back in 2003, when I was in the state government, we did a report on rural and regional telecommunications in Victoria. It is worth having a read. Have a read about what happened then. Even your coalition partners, the Nationals, were complaining. The Victorian Nationals were complaining that the Howard government failed to deliver telecommunications to regional areas. I tell you what, Bert, I will even give you a signed copy. I have plenty of them sitting around because I was actually part of that.

At the same time that we are delivering the NBN, other carping from over there comes from the member for Gilmore. The member for Gilmore does not tell her community that she does not want the NBN and that she does not think they deserve it, but, when it does come to her electorate, what does she do? She gets up in the House, in front of everyone, and says: 'They're digging up the nature strip. Who's going to reseed the grass in the nature strip?' You have to be absolutely kidding yourselves if you think that the biggest concern of the world is that the nature strip is getting dug up. But, again, you do not see her out there saying to her community, 'I'm voting against this; I don't want the NBN.' The fact of the matter is that every single bit of polling and all the questionnaires show that people desperately want it.

What I have found to be the biggest issue with the NBN is not getting it delivered quickly enough. In my electorate and everywhere else I go people say: 'We want this. When are we getting it?' That is one of the issues that the committee is dealing with at the moment. We are talking about Telstra workforce issues and about how we can get people out on the ground faster and quicker to get this out there, because getting enough people on the ground to put the cable into the pipes and the pits to get it to the homes as quickly as possible is the biggest shortfall we have.

Mr Van Manen interjecting—

We do use local businesses. The member opposite interjects but, again—

Mr Van Manen interjecting—

Stand on your credibility and we will watch you fall flat on your face.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Members, through the chair.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We hear all these things but, when it comes to evidence, those on the other side have nothing—not a thing—to talk about. They sit there and say: 'We know how to do it faster. We know how to do it cheaper.' To those on the other side I say go down to the Parliamentary Library and grab yourself a book called The Wired Brown Land. I am sure that if you read it, Madam Deputy Speaker, you would say, 'Wow, this sounds amazing!' It was written by a bloke by the name of Paul Fletcher—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know that guy!

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, you know that guy! He was out there talking about, 'We need fibre to the home; this is the greatest thing to happen.' Well, blow me down, when I got to the committee meeting there was a bloke with exactly the same name sitting there saying: 'We don't need it. It's wrong.' It is typical hypocrisy from those opposite, whether it is on carbon pricing or the NBN. The member for Flinders is out there saying in his thesis, the one he wrote with his words of wisdom, that Liberal constituents will be upset, but bad luck, we have to do this. Paul Fletcher goes out and says, 'We need fibre to the home and we need it now. It is the only way we can keep up in the 21st century economy,' but then goes to the committee and says, 'Oh, no, we don't need this. We can make it work through the technology, just like we did in the 11 years that we were in government, which left us with about 15 per cent of people connected.' The NBN is an important thing to have done. It is like the railways of the 19th century. We know that. Early Hansards show that, back then, the forefathers of the Liberal Party and the Country Party were asking why we needed an Australia-wide rail network.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

That is right! The Luddites on the other side back then said, 'We don't need trains. What good are they?' Now they say, 'We don't need broadband. What do we need broadband for?' We need it because in every single field that this country deals in—education, health, business and personal use—it is going to deliver faster and better broadband and some absolutely exciting things. Even those opposite might learn something. But, as usual, they will sit in their little caves and say, 'No, we don't need this.' But they will still shy away from going out and telling their communities that each and every day they are in here saying 'no' to the NBN. (Time expired)

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few comments on the third report of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network, which deals with the time from 1 July 2011 to March 2012. Obviously, the National Broadband Network is very important for the national interest. It is great to hear from the member for McEwen about the actual rollout and about the 3.5 million homes that are about to be connected or are in the process of being connected and which have already had the nature strips in front of their homes dug up. Obviously, that is an inconvenience, but when you are talking about the productivity agenda of the nation and the education agenda of the nation, it is a small sacrifice for the good of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Sadly, as all of those in an economic or shadow economic portfolio would know, productivity in Australia has been flatlining for approximately 10 years. Productivity is the real indicator—the most significant indicator—of whether the economic engine is finely tuned. How do we improve our productivity? Not by lowering wages. The reality is that we will never compete with India, China or Indonesia when it comes to wages. That is not the way to compete in terms of the future of the nation. The way to compete is by doing things smarter and by delivering services more cheaply and more efficiently. How do you do that? Obviously, by investing in education. We on this side can tick that box—we have doubled the education budget. The last budget was a tough budget, but we have kept the investment in higher learning. Those opposite were obsessed with making sure that everyone had a flag and/or a flagpole. That is important; our national symbols are important—I do not take that away—but I will stack our 3,000 libraries up against their 3,000 flagpoles any day. So we can proudly tick the education box.

What else can you do? You have to be able to invest in doing things smarter—invest in the health agenda and the education agenda. It is not enough to build new classrooms; you have to give people the opportunity to learn and you have to deliver services in a new way. That is how we are going to improve productivity in this nation. The NBN is an important part of this. We have heard the Leader of the Opposition say, 'Well, I'm not really very technologically savvy,' in fact, I think he said that he could not even send emails. Well, the reality is that the NBN is so much more than that. It is not just about sending emails. It is about letting businesses in the remote parts of Blair compete with businesses in the southern parts of the United States or the southern parts of China. It will let Australian businesses compete on the world stage in the niche markets with the products that we do so well, particularly when it comes to setting up a new Switzerland in the south in terms of managing funds. That is a great way by which we can compete, and the NBN is a part of that. I look forward to the next report from the NBN committee and the great news that they are delivering for Australia.

Debate adjourned.