Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Wentworth proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The threat posed by the government's mismanagement of the National Broadband Network rollout.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

The National Broadband Network is the largest infrastructure project in our nation's history. It is also the most mismanaged. This project was undertaken by the Rudd and Gillard governments without any analysis of any kind as to whether the approach they were taking was the most cost-effective or, indeed, the most safe.

Despite going to the 2007 election with a policy that said the Commonwealth would not invest in any infrastructure project without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, and despite having established a specialist agency—Infrastructure Australia—to do precisely that, in this, the biggest project in our nation's history, no such analysis was done. This is the biggest blank cheque written in our country's history. The government had no idea how long this project would take. It does not know what it will cost. Our own analysis suggests, making some very conservative changes to the financial assumptions, that it is likely to cost $94 billion as opposed to the $44 billion in the now utterly discredited corporate plan.

The project is running so far behind schedule it would put an arthritic snail to shame. I refer you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to these numbers: in its corporate plan published at the end of 2010—the first corporate plan—it said the NBN was going to pass 950,000 brownfield premises by 30 June. In August last year it scaled that back to 286,000 premises to be passed by 30 June. As of the end of March it was scaled back again, saying it would only reach between 155,000 and 175,000. As of mid-May, we are told they had passed just over 70,000 homes.

This is a classic case. It would remind those honourable members who have had anything to do with marketing or sales of an unsuccessful salesman who has an annual target. He does not make any sales in January but says: 'Don't worry, boss. It's going to ramp up.' There are no sales in February, no sales in March, no sales in April, until he finally gets to November and has not made any sales, but he says: 'Don't worry. It's going to be a brilliant Christmas. We're going to get the whole year—the hockey stick will become so steep it's vertical.' That is what the NBN Co.'s plan looks like at the moment.

In the second half of last year, they passed 137 houses per working day. So far this year they have been passing 353 houses per working day. The only problem is that their plan, their target, is at this time to be passing 1,028 houses per working day. They would have us believe that in two years they will be passing 5½ thousand every working day, so they are going to increase their rollout volume by a factor of 15. This project is failing.

We have had the unedifying spectacle of the new Chairman of NBN Co., Ms Siobhan McKenna, saying that she does not want the minister to speak to the chief executive officer other than through her. We have had reports in the press saying that she wants the chief executive to be sacked—she wants to be the executive chairman. When this rather disturbing news was put to Mr Quigley in Senate estimates, the minister Senator Conroy intervened and would not allow him to answer the question and would not rebut the proposition himself. Can you imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker, a situation where you had a public-listed company and the chairman was reported as having no confidence in the chief executive and wanted to have him sacked, and that matter not being put to rest almost immediately? It would be a completely untenable situation. But this is the disaster that the government is presiding over.

I turn to the latest example of mismanagement: the question of asbestos. It has been known for many, many years that there are pits and ducts in Telstra's network which are made of asbestos-containing material—in other words, asbestos fibre cement. This has been a matter that Telstra has taken seriously and it has elaborate procedures to deal with it. So, when pits are broken—a truck might run over them or new holes have to be bored in them for new ducts, or anything of that kind—there are elaborate procedures for attending to that.

However, in 2009 we know that an AWU official known to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations wrote to Mr Shorten, then the parliamentary secretary, and raised the issue of the asbestos in the Telstra ducts and pits. The then parliamentary secretary, now the minister, wrote to Telstra and sought some explanation. Telstra responded, as we know, and said that they had a whole procedure for dealing with asbestos-containing material but, where the infrastructure was not friable and when it was buried, it was safer left in situ because it was not exposed to air and there was not any interference with it. And they had a logical risk-management process. That is what the minister was told, because he was proposing then that Telstra should literally dig up every pit it had and remove any asbestos-containing material in its ducts. It would have been a gigantic exercise. As Telstra's chief executive advised him, it would obviously have raised real issues of health risk. It was a risk-management question.

As of 2009, of course, the NBN was only just established. The company was formed in April 2009, and there was no plan to disturb Telstra's pits. Work was done to replace them from time to time when they had to be repaired, when things broke or when there was some upgrade. But then along came the NBN. The deal between the NBN and Telstra was for the NBN to use all of Telstra's infrastructure—all of its pits and ducts. What has happened is that Telstra has an obligation to upgrade those pits that are too small for the multiport device that the NBN is using for its fibre rollout. Many of these pits—hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pits—are too small and have to be removed and replaced with a plastic pit. That is Telstra's responsibility to do that work. So you go from a position in 2009 where interference with and disturbance of Telstra's pits was an infrequent occurrence—and it was well known that many did contain asbestos—to the position where virtually every single pit in the country was or was likely or liable to be disturbed in this fashion.

Furthermore, Telstra's ducts—the pipes that carry the various cables, be they copper or fibre, around the country—are filled with copper and in many cases do not have the space to take the new fibre optic cables of the NBN Co., and have to be augmented with new pipes in the ground. That responsibility is actually not Telstra's; that is the NBN Co.'s. If those new pipes have to enter into an existing pit that is made out of fibrocement then of course there is an asbestos issue. The minister, Senator Conroy, was quite wrong yesterday when he said that the asbestos management issue was only an issue for Telstra. It is an issue for the NBN Co. as well. In any event, all of the work that is being done by Telstra is for and on behalf of the NBN Co.

So in 2009 the minister was very alert and very much on notice to the asbestos issue with Telstra's infrastructure, but at the time that infrastructure was being rarely disturbed. Fast forward 18 months or so later and the Telstra infrastructure is being entirely disturbed—it is being remediated and augmented almost in its entirety. It follows therefore—and the minister knew this very well because he noted this in his own correspondence—that asbestos becomes a much bigger issue. The question that the opposition has been pursuing is: why did the minister apparently not raise this with the minister for communication—and by this stage in 2011 he had come into cabinet—or did he, and we have not yet learned about it? Why did the minister not raise it with Telstra or NBN Co. prior to Ray Hadley making a big issue of the asbestos risk in Penrith last week—a member of parliament whose history and experience in the trade union movement gave him a special awareness of asbestos issues? Fixed with that actual knowledge of the risk associated with Telstra's pits and ducts and knowing that they were all going to be disturbed, why did he then apparently take no action? We have no answer to that.

Today, the minister said that the coalition was somehow or other being irresponsible in suggesting that all of the Telstra asbestos-containing material should not be immediately dug up and replaced. This is a risk-management issue. Telstra's current asbestos management procedures, a public document, state on page 9:

Asbestos containing conduits and pits in good condition do not need to be removed as a matter course, however where they present a hazard to staff or members of the public, they will be made safe or replaced following the removal practice in this procedure.

It is interesting that the minister has accused the opposition of seeking to make a political issue out of this, when in fact he has created a massive scare campaign, which runs the risk of becoming a sort of public hysteria and creating enormous anxiety about asbestos. In the House today he said that all of the asbestos-containing material in Telstra's network, even if it is buried under the ground, should be replaced. What are people to think about asbestos that is built into their houses, into schools, into hospitals and into industrial buildings—asbestos-containing material that is inert, that is intact? In his effort to place all of the blame for this on Telstra and to try to make himself a hero on this issue, he is on the verge of creating something in the order of a national panic. There is no question that asbestos is a very serious issue—there is no doubt about that. But there is also a very important risk-management issue here. If asbestos is in a building structure—particularly if it is buried under the ground, if it is intact, if it is inert, if it is not exposed to the air, if it is not being broken or damaged and if people are not drilling through it—then one has to take a very hardheaded and practical view as to whether it should be proactively removed. In any process of removal, no matter how well managed, you have some risk of the asbestos fibres escaping.

There are very disturbing resonances between this and the pink batts episode. With pink batts, we had a roof insulation industry that was putting in roof insulation as and when required, and was doing so in accordance with safety standards. Then the government turbocharged that industry and poured so much money into it. Many, many more people became involved and, of necessity, safety standards were much harder to enforce and compliance was much harder to supervise, and the tragedies that occurred did occur.

And this is what has happened here. You had asbestos being treated as an important issue by Telstra, as and when it was necessary to do so, but with the pits and the ducts rarely being disturbed. But now, of course, they are being disturbed—all of them. And as a consequence you have many more people working on it and it is harder to enforce standards—I am not making any excuses; the standard should be enforced and I hope will be enforced. But you have of necessity a much greater challenge.

And yet knowing all of that, and knowing the experience of pink batts, this minister, unless there is something that he has not told us, did nothing. (Time expired)

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the member for Wentworth providing us with a chance to set the record straight on what has been a disgraceful fear campaign by the coalition. As with any major national project there are important conversations that policymakers need to have about what we want to achieve and how best to set about achieving it. So I want to speak first about why Australia needs the National Broadband Network—a fibre-to-the-home network—and then discuss the issues of asbestos that the honourable member has raised and how the government is responding to those.

The simple fact is that, in a 21st century developed country, access to the internet is a form of basic infrastructure. It is to our generation as the water and electricity networks were to generations before. The member for Wentworth knows this; he has great knowledge of the information technology industry—certainly unlike his leader, who has confessed 'I'm no tech-head'.

The member for Wentworth might cast his mind back to 1923, when construction began on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Back then, Sydney was home to fewer than 40,000 cars—not enough to cause a single traffic jam. But when construction on that bridge began the policymakers of the era built a bridge capable of carrying six lanes of traffic flanked by an extra two lanes for trains. It might have seemed a bold move but, as the member for Wentworth well knows, and as his constituents would well know, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is now an indispensable artery of the city's transport system. Over 160,000 cars cross the bridge daily, four times the entire number of cars that existed in the city of Sydney when construction of the bridge first began.

The point here is that the Sydney Harbour Bridge was not designed for the Sydney of the 1920s; it was designed for, and it continues to serve, a Sydney of the future. And it is that same spirit with which Labor first proposed a national broadband network. We do not know precisely how our technological use will change in the future. But one way of thinking about this is to think about how our own IT usage has changed just in the past 10 years, and then imagine it changing just as dramatically again.

That is why we need the National Broadband Network. Under the NBN, every home and every business will have access to superfast internet via optic fibre, fixed wireless and satellite technologies. For 93 per cent of homes and businesses this will be a national fibre network. The point here is that unlike copper, which transmits electrical current, fibre uses pulses of light to transmit information. Over recent years, engineers have steadily been achieving more rapid fibre transmission speeds: up from 100 megabits a second a few years ago to 1,000 megabits a second today. That is the difference between being able to download a CD full of information every five seconds and doing so every 50 seconds. And the boffins do not think that they have found the limit on fibre just yet. Some tests suggest that it could be up to 1,000 times faster again. Unlike copper, fibre to the premises is an information superhighway without a speed limit.

People in my own electorate of Fraser are already seeing the benefits the NBN has to offer. Gungahlin Library is part of the Gungahlin Digital Hub, where residents are able to learn more about how to access the NBN. They are running free training sessions, covering a range of computer basics, everyday online activities, online safety and security and connection options. I would encourage those opposite, whether or not they call themselves tech-heads—especially if they do not—to visit the Gungahlin Library to learn about how the NBN is delivering.

I have welcomed the release of detailed maps by NBN Co. which show where the construction of the National Broadband Network will start. The maps show that NBN fibre has been rolling out across Civic, Acton and parts of Braddon, as well as in Gungahlin. It is worth making the point that, for all its conniptions about Labor's National Broadband Network, the coalition has now adopted a policy which has a multibillion-dollar price tag and which has the same accounting treatment as Labor's NBN, but which ultimately will deliver far slower speeds than the NBN. So the need for the National Broadband Network is clear.

I want to turn now, though, to the issue that the member for Wentworth has raised over managing asbestos risk during the rollout. As has been made clear during question time, the health and safety of Australian workers and Australian communities is our No. 1 priority. As the opposition would be well aware, Telstra has accepted full responsibility for the issue. The government is expecting Telstra and its contractors to follow Australia's strict laws on the handling and removal of asbestos in preparing its pits and ducts for the rollout of the NBN. Those pits and ducts are owned by Telstra and used by NBN Co.

We have announced that the first National Asbestos Exposure Register will be created and maintained by the new National Asbestos Safety and Eradication Authority. This continues the strong tradition in the Australian labour movement of leading the national charge on identifying and eradicating the scourge of asbestos and asbestos-related disease. It was the labour movement that got asbestos banned: blue in 1967, brown in the mid-1980s, white in 2003. That happened thanks to pressure from the labour movement. There cannot be any shortcuts in asbestos safety. We understand that and we have acted.

There have been a number of incidents in recent times through the remediation of Telstra's pits and ducts, and that includes in Penrith. There has been at least one as a result of work being done by contractors to NBN Co. When you are working in the telecommunications industry and doing this type of work, you will deal with asbestos. That is well known. But the most important issue, and the one the government has continued to focus on, is to ensure that the strict laws in place for the handling and removal of asbestos are followed at all times. It does not matter if you are Telstra, if you are NBN Co. or if you are a builder doing renovations: asbestos has to be dealt with in a safe and appropriate way.

The coalition cannot pretend that this issue would not arise under their policy. If you are advancing fibre-to-the-node technology, as the opposition does—and they have accepted that it is a slower technology that will deliver slower broadband speeds—it will involve working in areas with asbestos risk. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that perhaps we are intending to leave the copper in the ground forever, that Australia will forever have a copper network. Copper to the home is not something that anyone believes Australia will have in a century's time.

NBN Co. is continuing to assess the situation but it does not expect it to impede the overall rollout. The construction process already takes into account a period of several months in each area for Telstra to remediate its infrastructure. The remediation of Telstra's infrastructure is carried out by Telstra and it is paid for by Telstra. Telstra has known for 30 years about the presence of asbestos in its pits, and this is a process which will be managed by Telstra.

Since 2007 Labor has done more than any previous government to combat the problem of asbestos. We have established the national asbestos agency, the national asbestos plan and the National Asbestos Exposure Register. Under the Gillard government we established the asbestos management review in 2010. Before that there was no coordinated or consistent approach to managing asbestos beyond workplaces. That is why earlier this year we also introduced legislation to parliament to establish the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency. In the 2013-14 budget we provided that agency with $10½ million in funding over the next four years to help protect Australians from asbestos related diseases. The agency will pave a new way for a national approach to asbestos eradication. It will handle asbestos awareness and education. It will administer a national strategic plan.

Conversely, what can we say about the record of the coalition on asbestos management? I am sure some of the speakers who will follow me will say something about the Leader of the Opposition's track record in this regard. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition was a lawyer who fought to deny compensation to thousands of victims of CSR's asbestos mine in Wittenoom. Back in 2004 it was Labor who shamed the coalition into returning donations given to them by James Hardie. In 2007, as health minister, the Leader of the Opposition refused to list on the PBS a drug known as Alimta, which would ease the suffering of asbestosis patients.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: the remarks that the honourable member has made about the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Opposition are not relevant to this MPI. He is just having a free kick.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wentworth will resume his seat. The parliamentary secretary will speak to the motion.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I understand why those opposite are concerned about the track record of the two major parties when it comes to asbestos. As Fairfax media has reported, in 2001 Telstra wanted to create an independent body to fast-track compensation payments to employees exposed to asbestos and sought approval from the then department of workplace relations. The then minister for workplace relations was the now opposition leader, so the fact is that the opposition leader knew as far back as 2001 that Telstra was aware of asbestos in its infrastructure and sat on his hands. It is time for the opposition leader to explain what he knew, what correspondence he had with Telstra about asbestos in 2001 when he was workplace relations minister and why he chose to ignore it.

In 2005 a question on notice was asked of then Minister McGauran, representing the then communications minister, Senator Coonan, about Telstra's use of asbestos. The minister provided an answer in February 2006—not exactly a speedy answer, but an answer nonetheless—that explained Telstra's use of asbestos in pits, ducts and exchanges and the possibility of exposure. So those opposite cannot argue that the Howard government was ignorant of this issue. The Howard government was in fact well aware of the issues with asbestos and Telstra's infrastructure. Those opposite have a track record of this standing up for James Hardie, while those on this side of the House have a track record of standing up for those who have been affected by asbestos, of standing up for workers, of standing up for people like Bernie Banton.

We know the National Broadband Network is a necessity. We are working to mitigate the risks that are generated by building the NBN, but only someone who argues that they will never open a single pit again can promise that this asbestos will not be disturbed. The coalition's policy is a policy which builds fibre to suburban nodes. It is a kind of 'get your water at the village well' approach. If you want to build fibre from the node to the home you will have to pay for it yourself, at $5,000 a pop. That not only is inequitable but will mean that for many Australian households their connections are 25 megabits a second at best. That is around one-40th the speed that the NBN can provide. I am sure slow upload and download speeds trouble the member for Wentworth, but they do not trouble the Leader of the Opposition. He has made the brash statement that he is 'confident 25 megs is enough for the average household'. I have talked about what that kind of thinking in the 1920s would have meant for the Sydney Harbour Bridge: the Leader of the Opposition would have built a single-lane bridge because that was enough for the then 40,000 cars in Sydney.

But we do not have to use infrastructure analogies; we can use IT analogies. When I bought my first computer in 1984 it had 3½ kilobytes of memory. I do not think that we send emails that small these days. But in fact in that period the then computer editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Gareth Powell, wrote that he thought no program would ever need more than 16 kilobytes. Statements like that are a warning to anyone who forgets that the things we can do with technology far outpace our imagination. The sorts of statements by the Leader of the Opposition suggesting that 25 megabits a second is enough ought to embarrass the member for Wentworth, and I know they trouble many prominent Australians. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki recently told me that he regularly talks to school classes using Skype. With the Australian classes the copper connection is unreliable and has to be reset a couple of times an hour. But if he talks to Korean or Japanese students, he can expect uninterrupted high-resolution videoconference. That is what the national broadband will deliver to Australians.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important matter before the House. This is a debate about competence and integrity. It is about competence, because the government and NBN Co. knew that asbestos would be a key challenge for the NBN project and they have miserably failed to meet that challenge. It is about integrity, because the government's dishonesty and lack of accountability mean that Australian families cannot believe a word spoken by this Labor minister. But ultimately, today's debate is about ensuring that Australian families are not forced from their own homes because a Telstra or NBN Co. contractor releases asbestos fibres into the air. This is about making sure that no worker contracts mesothelioma because he was working on the NBN rollout. This is about keeping Australian families safe.

Although we do have our differences of opinion on many things, I think it is clear that both sides of parliament do take this issue seriously. Ultimately, we have the best interests of Australian workers and families at heart. However there is one member of parliament who does not seem to care a whole lot about this particular issue. At 4:53pm yesterday, the member for Lyne tweeted this extraordinary comment:

This asbestos beat up on NBN is extraordinary politics.

The Australian public can make of that what they will. However, I wonder whether the member for Lyne would still claim this is a beat-up if it was his family that was forced to leave their home due to fears of asbestos contamination. Would he think it is still a beat-up if it was his son or his daughter who may have been exposed to asbestos? I wonder whether the residents of Lyne would be pleased to know that their local member thinks that a poorly trained contractor hacking into an asbestos contaminated pit outside their house is just a 'beat-up'. We may not all agree, but at the very least I think it is reasonable to expect every member of this House to take this issue seriously.

While most of us take the issue of asbestos management seriously, the government clearly lacks the competence to go with their concern. Asbestos was always going to be a key challenge of the NBN rollout. We know that the current Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations was aware of this issue as far back as 2009. Telstra has been aware of this issue for years. NBN Co. has also been aware of this issue for years. So why are we having this debate? Why are we having families living in hotels in Sydney because their houses are contaminated with asbestos? Why did the government have to call a crisis meeting yesterday? Why is there a crisis at all?

The answer is very simple. This government is completely incompetent. This government makes the Hollow Men and Yes, Minister look like the very models of an effective government. This government could not even give away free ceiling insulation without burning down people's houses. The government could not give away money to Australians during the GFC without also sending cheques to dead people and pets. The Gillard Labor government will probably go down as Australia's worst government in history.

But in the worst government in Australian history, the Minister for Broadband and Communications is a special type of incompetent. He tried to regulate the print media for the first time in our peacetime history, and lost that battle in a fortnight. It seems that he has just given up on anti-siphoning. His first try at a national broadband network died a quick death and taxpayers had to pay compensation to Sky because of the way Senator Conroy handled the Australia network tender. Even if we set aside our philosophical differences about the best way to roll out the NBN to all Australians, the NBN is still a failure because of this government's incompetence and inability to implement even the most basic of policies.

On an issue this serious, the least Australians can expect is that the government will be honest and open about the scale of the problem and the potential risks to families and the taxpayer. Unfortunately, as with other aspects of the NBN, you cannot trust a word that is said by NBN Co. or the government. We have endured for years vague and misleading information from the government and NBN Co. on every aspect of the project. I could provide the House with dozens of examples of misleading and vague information being provided by NBN Co. and the government, but to save time I will mention just one. The following exchange is from a public hearing of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the NBN in April. Mr Fletcher asked:

Are you finding that asbestos is a big issue across the board?

NBN CEO Mike Quigley, replied:

What is your view, Ralph? I would not say it is a big issue.

Then the Chief Operating Officer, Ralph Steffens, added:

No. It is present, as it would be anywhere, in any geography. But it does not seem to be a huge problem at this stage.

So apparently two months ago asbestos was not 'a big issue'. These are not my words; these are the words of Senator Conroy's handpicked CEO of NBN Co.

Well, it is a big issue. Families have been indefinitely moved out of their homes. Workers have been put at risk. The NBN rollout has been stopped at various locations all around Australia. In some areas Telstra says the rollout has stopped, while NBN says it is still going ahead. Who can we believe? Yesterday, I must say I was impressed by the CEO of Telstra, David Thodey, who admitted there were problems with the way the issue had been handled by Telstra and promised to do everything he could to fix the problem.

But we have not seen the same level of accountability or honesty from Senator Conroy or NBN Co. Senator Conroy has big questions to answer. The key question here is whether the government pushed NBN Co. to accelerate the rollout to avoid even more embarrassment than it currently suffers as to the very slow pace of the project and, in doing so, pushed contractors to cut corners. That is a question this minister must answer. We know the NBN is massively behind schedule, and we know it is getting further behind each and every day. Senator Thistlethwaite came into my electorate in March last year and told my constituents that construction of the NBN would be complete in Toormina within 12 months. Fourteen months later, there is still no NBN in Toormina.

And every day the rollout is delayed, the cost blows out just a little more

Senator Conroy says that asbestos-related issues will not increase the cost of the network, but that is just more deceit from the government. Every day of delay increases the cost of the project. Proper management of the NBN requires integrity and honesty.

This project is being propped up by Australian taxpayers, who deserve to know the true state of the rollout and the risks and challenges of the project. Even my local paper, the Coffs Coast Advocate, has started questioning the lack of accountability of NBN Co., with an article last week highlighting just how difficult it is to get any meaningful information out of NBN Co. The local paper said:

The figures of how many customers have taken up high-speed broadband, however, remains firmly under wraps. NBN Co has refused to divulge localised sign-up figures to the media …

Australians deserve to know the truth about the NBN rollout.

Unfortunately, the current situation is just the latest blunder in a series of massive blunders by Senator Conroy and the Labor government. There are disturbing parallels between this situation, the pink batts debacle and the BER fiasco. On one hand we have cost blowouts and waste typified in the BER debacle, and on the other hand we have the risk to public safety created in relation to the giving away of pink batts.

The NBN project is beset by delays and cost blowouts. Universal, affordable broadband access has the potential to improve business productivity and community amenity. Unfortunately, this latest crisis means that Australians with poor broadband services will be waiting even longer for decent broadband. This is not a beat-up. This is all about the government's mismanagement of the NBN. It is a national disgrace, and it is time to get adults in charge of this project.

The opposition has not been politicising this matter. We have approached it in a sober and measured way. We have brought it to the attention of the relevant authorities. It is the government's incompetence that is the problem here. Senator Conroy cannot just rest on the fact that Telstra is undertaking certain works. Senator Conroy is responsible for what is happening here. He has to take full responsibility. We have a situation where families right around the country do not feel safe in their homes because of the actions of this government, and it is Senator Conroy who clearly bears the responsibility for this. It is a project that has shown very poor levels of management. It is a project that is massively behind time. It is a project that is way over budget. It is a project that needs decent management if it is to be brought on track. I am very pleased to be able to contribute to this matter of public importance today because it very much is a matter of the utmost importance to this nation both for its future in relation to technology rollouts but also in relation to public health and safety.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an important public debate around one of the most important pieces of infrastructure to be built in this country this century. It is unfortunate in many respects that the debate that surrounds this important piece of infrastructure does not live up to the importance of the project itself. In his 15-minute submission in this debate the member for Wentworth amused us with an analogy about the salesman who found it very difficult to shift a product. I have got a salesman's analogy of my own and I think it is more apt. The truth that gets told to every salesman who is sent out there to flog a lousy product and the rule of every salesman knows is that if you have got to go out there and flog a lousy product, an inferior product, one that is not nearly as good as the competition, you do not talk about it. You do not talk about your own product—go out there and fling as much mud and do as much nitpicking as possible, do as much bagging and carping and whingeing as possible about your competition's product. But for God's sake never mention your own, because once you mention your own everybody will realise what a lousy product it is.

The member for Wentworth actually understands his policy. He does not believe in it but he understands it, unlike the Leader of the Opposition. The most awkward press conference we have seen in the last 12 months was the press conference where the Leader of the Opposition was standing alongside the member for Wentworth to announce their policy. You could see that the member for Wentworth could not get out of there quick enough. His hands were in his pockets, he was fidgeting. The Leader of the Opposition was reading from notes and had a very puzzled look on his face because he did not have a clue what he was talking about. That lies at the heart of this argument. You have got a Leader of the Opposition who does not understand his policy and a spokesman for that policy who does not believe in it. Is there any wonder that they are standing by that salesman's maxim that if you have got a lousy product in the marketplace, don't talk about it. Just go out there and bag the opposition because you do not want anyone to focus on your own product. It is a slower product that is going to cost the punters more for less. These guys have turned Joyce Mayne on her head: they are offering less for more.

They are proposing a three-tier program. For those who live in inner-city suburbs like the member for Wentworth they have probably already got fibre running past their houses and they have got the money to have it connected or they have got a cable provision or they can afford to buy the best sort of products and the best sort of services, unlike the rest of us. That is the top tier, those people who live in those inner-city suburbs who have the money and have the wealth to be able to buy the best broadband that is available.

Then there is the second tier of people under the opposition's program, the people who can afford to upgrade. The member for Wentworth is only proposing that they are going to bring fibre to the node, and in common speak that could be three kilometres from your house. One of those little grey cabinets that sits in every suburb is what he is talking about. The opposition will bring fibre to the node and if you have got the dough you might be able to spend a minimum of $5,000, more like $10,000, to drag the cable up to your street, up to your premises and get it connected. Then if you have the money you may be able to enjoy the same sort of broadband speeds, the same quality of service that the member for Wentworth enjoys in his very comfortable inner-city electorate. That is the second tier of people.

Then there is the third tier of people—people who live in the electorate that I represent; people who do not live in the inner city and are unlikely to have the dough for the upgrade. They will get the worst service, a service that they will no longer be able to afford, because the opposition's plan—have no doubt about it—is to scrap the NBN and provide less for more. There will be no joy in it for the residents of my electorate, people who know that under Labor's plan 67,000 houses and businesses within the electorate of Throsby are going to get the NBN. By June 2016, 67,000 houses and businesses are going to get the National Broadband Network. It is already rolling past houses and businesses in my electorate, and the only calls I have had from people in my electorate is, 'How quick can we get it on?' and 'I am very afraid of what the other mob might do.'

People in suburbs like Albion Park do not even get ADSL at the moment, after 11, 12 or 13 plans from those who sit opposite, who have the temerity to lecture us on broadband policy. After all the years that they were in government and all the plans, all the 'networking the nation', and the squandering of the resources of the Telstra sale—with a few boondoggles here and there for members in National Party seats—there is still no broadband for people who live in suburbs like Albion Park, Oak Flats or East Bowral, where they do not even have access to ADSL at the moment. They will not have it under those opposite. They know that under a Labor plan they will have access to faster, cheaper and reliable broadband—dragging them into the 21st century. All that is at threat from those on the other side.

So is it any wonder that those opposite—those good salesmen for a lousy product—will not talk about their own product? Is it any wonder that their strategy is to stand in this place and throw as much muck as they can possibly find—even going to the desperate depths of attempting to get some political advantage out of citizens' legitimate concern about exposure to asbestos? They have tried to whip that up into public hysteria for their own political advantage. I do not know how much lower you can go, if that is what you have stooped to in political debate.

I have to say that, if you are going to engage in a debate in this parliament about asbestos, you should at least have some standing on the matter. When I look across at those on the other side of the chamber, I see people who are left wanting—as has the debate over the last 24 hours been wanting from those opposite. Those opposite represent parties that, whenever they have been given the opportunity in any of the state parliaments around this country to do something for occupational health and safety for the working men and women of this country have done their darnedest to dismantle the protections and the compensation provisions that are currently enjoyed by working men and women in this country. Whenever they have had the chance to do something for the working men and women of this country, they have taken a hatchet to the protections that currently exist in all the state jurisdictions around the country. So, if you are going to enter this debate, you should make sure that you are doing it on firm ground and you should ensure that you have some standing on the matter.

I have quite a bit of expertise on this matter. I spent three years of my life campaigning for justice for people who are suffering from asbestos diseases. I spent three years of my life running a campaign with other members in this House, including the minister for industrial relations and the minister for industry, to bring rogue companies like James Hardy to justice and to ensure they put in place a perpetual fund to look after the former workers and those who have been exposed to asbestos products produced by James Hardy. That is what we did with our lives before we came to parliament. We looked after people to ensure that they or, more often than not, their families got some justice. By the time that their legal challenges and their compensation claims were dealt with by the company, more often than not the victim was dead and the compensation was there for their families. So we have standing on this issue.

Those on the opposite side of the chamber had the choice of fighting for the company or fighting for the workers who were exposed to asbestos products and they made their choice. Like the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, they chose to fight for the company. They have absolutely no standing on this matter, and this matter of public importance should be seen for what it is—a conflated exercise in mud-throwing. The product that they are out there peddling in the market is a disgrace. They are offering less for more, and the people see through it. The people of Australia want the National Broadband Network. The longest line in my electorate is made up of Liberal Party members lining up trying to take credit for the fact that the NBN is rolling past the houses in the streets of their electorates. (Time expired)

Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listened closely to the debate not only in the chamber this afternoon but also over the last couple of days and want to put some thoughts on the record. As far as I can read, at the heart of this issue are two claims. One is that government did not have the foresight with regard to asbestos management in the pits and pipes that are owned by Telstra management and shareholders and therefore have somehow been found wanting on issues in and around Penrith and potentially beyond. The other charge, as best as I can work through, is that one side of this chamber has an NBN policy that goes to all pits and pipes and the other does not and therefore the one that does not is somehow to get a brownie point for being a safer alternative to access to all pipes and pits.

To take on both of those charges, the first thing I would say is that asbestos is not new. That should be stating the bleeding obvious. This has been around for a long time. It is a scourge in the building and construction industry. The level of knowledge in Australia around what asbestos is and its health implications has certainly changed behaviour within the industry across the board, and therefore the way asbestos is handled has a very high level of occupational health and safety attached to it across the board. Within the telecommunications industry and within communications, electrical and plumbing unions, they could all tell you that there are manuals and standards in place, and that Telstra/Telecom and equivalents in other providers all know the rules of the game when handling asbestos.

Therefore, to then say, 'There was a lack of foresight in agreements reached,' I judge to be wrong. There was an option that this chamber could have taken, in a significant and much-needed upgrade to telecommunications in Australia today, where the copper network is full and our use of data by fixed wire is going through the roof—we do need, whoever is in government, to upgrade the telecommunications network in this country. To argue a case that there was no foresight is wrong. The option that government could have taken, in reaching an agreement with Telstra, was to buy the pits and pipes; that was a very real option on the table. And, oh, what a mistake that would have been!

This is rubbish infrastructure. I would be surprised if Telstra today even has a clear map of where all the pits and pipes in our country are, as they have been developed over 60 years going back to PMG days, and they are rubbish infrastructure—waterlogged, asbestos-riddled. Yes, there is rust in there, and, yes, this is infrastructure the government should not own and—I think, happily—does not own.

The words of the CEO of Telstra, David Thodey, yesterday should have weight placed upon them in this debate. He accepted full responsibility for the management of asbestos in their pits and pipes. The manuals are in place; the rules of engagement on safe handling of asbestos are there. I think this chamber rightly, with the government, should push the CEO, the management and the shareholders of Telstra to make sure they follow the rules that have been long established in how to handle asbestos in their pits and pipes.

But then, in this debate, to try and draw a link and say that we should halt the National Broadband Network—as seems to be the agreed position between the union and the Liberal-National party—is wrong. We just need to follow the long-established rules on the safe handling and management of asbestos. And we need to do that for the next decade, regardless of who is in office.

There is going to be a completion of an upgrade of telecommunications. The words of the Liberal-National party in launching their NBN policy were that they would complete the NBN. Fibre to the node does not mean that you are bailing out. If, as to the last 500 metres to a kilometre, there is a voluntary engagement, as part of the Liberal-National party policy, that a home can buy access to fibre to the premises—and, sure, we can argue about price another time, whether it is between $2,000 or $6,000—then to actually have that on offer means that the pits and pipes over that last 500 metres to a kilometre are not just going to be accessed once; they are going to be accessed every single time a home wants to take up the option, as per the policy, of fibre to the premises.

So both parties in this chamber, whoever is the government of the day after 15 September, have a policy that every single pit and pipe in this country over the next decade will be accessed. And I would hope that we push Telstra, their management and their shareholders to handle asbestos according to the long-established principles on the safe handling of a very dangerous product.

But to turn it into some sort of political divide and an exercise in political expediency, to blow up an agreed position on the completion of the National Broadband Network, is just cheap. And it is wrong. And it is disingenuous in this debate to try and imply that one policy will be safer than the other and that one side of the parliament has more foresight than the other.

Telstra owns the pits and pipes. They have taken the money from government to upgrade those pits and pipes, including dealing with asbestos as part of that upgrade. Whichever policy, after 15 September, is the one that leads to the completion of the National Broadband Network, access over the next decade to every single pit and pipe in this country will be a necessity. It is a lie to suggest otherwise.

So the agreed principles on handling asbestos should certainly be an issue that this chamber pushes Telstra to deliver upon. But that does not mean that one policy is better than the other. It does not mean that one policy is safer than the other. And it certainly does not mean that the principle of equity should not be delivered to communities like mine in a telecommunications upgrade that is desperately needed in this country.

Our copper network is full. The infrastructure around the copper network is rubbish. The industry does need to be restructured—split between retail and poles-and-wires—as part of agreements reached to date. We do deserve in this country of ours to have ubiquity across a wholesale platform. We do deserve to have speeds better than 25 megs as part of engaging with the globe around us. We do deserve to have reliability. We do deserve to have retail competition under that wholesale platform that is actually at a good, decent and fair price. This is all part of the biggest infrastructure upgrade of our time, going on right now. I have heard people talk about the want and desire for vision. Well, this is the vision for this nation. It is the largest infrastructure build of our time.

The rules around asbestos are clear and the same for both sides. The impact in dealing with the pits and pipes will be the same. Let us get on with the job and by all means push Telstra, the union, the Liberal Party, Ray Hadley, the people of Penrith and whoever. But do not turn an issue around mishandling of asbestos, according to the current rules, into an exercise of trying to blow up a really important infrastructure bill for our nation, one that finally delivers on the principle of equity. We are a big, isolated country. Our telecommunication systems should match the best in the world. This is it. Let us deliver it. Let us get over the politics.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make some very brief comments in contributing to this debate. The first is the very title of this matter of public importance that is being brought towards the House, that being the issue of a threat. As the member for Lyne so rightly pointed out, there is indeed a threat in this parliament. There is a threat to high-speed broadband on an equitable, accessible and ubiquitous level. The threat is any plan other than something that delivers absolute equivalence in wholesale pricing to ensure that we eliminate the digital divide between regional and metropolitan areas and outer metropolitan areas.

What I have heard here today from those opposite, including the member for Wentworth, have been the same old arguments to put Labor's NBN down, to try and promote the very aptly named fraudband policy, the uncosted policy that they released that was universally lampooned. I know this does strike a very raw nerve for the member for Wentworth because prior to their long-awaited plan 73 per cent prior supported Labor's NBN and, after the coalition plan was released, that went up to 78 per cent. So it is very clear that this does strike a very raw nerve with those opposite.

Some of those who have come into this debate here today and over the last few days have suddenly become experts on asbestos. No-one needs to tell me about asbestos and how harmful it is, because, as the AMWU has well documented, two out of three homes in Australia built between World War II and the early 1980s still contain asbestos. There is what is called the asbestos belt around metropolitan Sydney, the suburbs in which asbestos is rife in dwellings. The top three on that list are actually in my electorate and include the suburb in which I was born and where my family home, which probably does contain asbestos, still is. Those suburbs are Seven Hills, Lalor Park and Blacktown.

No-one needs to tell me about the importance of making sure that this material is properly handled and disposed of. When you go around those suburbs, and many of the other suburbs in what is known as the asbestos belt, you see a lot of knockdown rebuilds happening, a lot of fences up, a lot of asbestos removal taking place. So the importance of safe asbestos handling practices is very well-known to people of my community and not lost on me.

People have come here in this debate in the last few days suddenly bemoaning the issue of asbestos and things we need to do to protect people. Where were they, particularly those from New South Wales, when the New South Wales Liberal state government recently slashed workers compensation laws, resulting in the prospect of asbestos victims losing access to their rightful workers compensation entitlements in New South Wales? I find it absolutely extraordinary that those people come in here and start talking about their commitment to asbestos clearance.

I probably could not have put it better than Bernard Keane, just reading some of his comments from today about the performance of the member for Wentworth. I think the member for Lyne put it very succinctly when he talked about this being an attempt to promote a policy of the opposition which is actually failing and a policy from Labor which is actually very popular in the community. I think Bernard Keane took the words out of my mouth, listening to the member for Wentworth yesterday in particular. He wrote:

Alas, the Turnbull of Godwin Grech fame, rather than Spycatcher fame, showed up …

Well, Turnbull, perhaps humming Janet Jackson's What Have You Done for Me Lately, demanded to know what else Shorten had done, beyond stray outside his own responsibilities to pursue the issue.

Then we reached the point in question time yesterday where the opposition reached to the old faithful of turn back the boats.

I find it absolutely extraordinary also that the member for Wentworth should come in here and again talk about and out down the National Broadband Network and say that it is not meeting its targets. As could be very clearly seen at the end of May, NBN Co. is on track to beat its revised June rollouts. It is on track to pass between 171,836 and 185,808 premises with fibre by the end of June, far exceeding the target that is set.

On the issue of the opposition claiming Labor's NBN is going to cost $90 billion, this figure somehow appeared on the day fraudband was released. Shortly after that we had an NBN public hearing where questions were put directly to NBN Co. specifically asking—and the chairman knows that very well—(a) how could you possibly come up with this $90 billion figure with no credibility to that figure whatsoever and (b) if you were to properly cost an alternative proposal, what are all the other things you would have to do such as the operation and maintenance of the pits and the ducts and so forth?

I will end by saying the member for Lyne very rightly points out that, if you look at this fraudband document where the opposition is saying publicly that the risk is far diminished under their policy, it is exactly the same risk and same pits. So we will not have any of this nonsense coming from the opposition. They have no credibility on this issue whatsoever.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on this very worthy motion, I want to note that the member for Greenway—the only thing that is failing in relation to this is the NBN rollout. The member for Greenway is disingenuous to say that our policy is failing when the targets for the NBN rollout have been downgraded for a third time by the government. Can the member for Greenway answer this question: now, with the third downgrading, it will take 109 years for the full rollout of the NBN to happen, so why has she neglected to mention it? It is 109 years on the current targets, but the member for Greenway comes in here and says that the revised targets are being met. After three downgrades—three downgrades, member for Greenway! 'We didn't meet the first target, so we'll downgrade them. We didn't meet the second target, so we'll downgrade them. We didn't meet the third target, so they'll be downgraded.' That is straight out of the New South Wales Labor play book. 'The trains aren't running on time? Our solution is let's change the timetables. The trains still don't run on time? Well now operating running is going to be 20 minutes instead of five minutes either way.' That is straight out of the New South Wales Labor play book, and nobody in this country is going to fall for it.

Today, on a much more serious issue raised in this matter of public importance by the member for Wentworth, I will talk in relation to the botching of the NBN rollout in suburbs around our country. This is a serious issue. I do think it is disingenuous of the member for Lyne to get up here and say this chamber has to ensure that pits are managed safely. That is the problem about this approach to government by the government supported by the member for Lyne: it thinks it is expert in telecommunications. We have so many frustrated telecommunications executives standing in this chamber, but perhaps there is really only one—that is, the member for Bradfield—I would say to you, Member for Lyne. The reality is we do not know how to roll out these things properly; they have to be done by the experts, the telecommunications companies.

When government gets involved, when government tries to rush these things for a political agenda, this is the thing that happens. If you do not do a cost-benefit analysis for a major project like an NBN, and if you do not support us in moving for a cost-benefit analysis, Member for Lyne, you will find that these are the consequences: things are rushed; things get missed. A cost-benefit analysis was not conducted in relation to the biggest piece of infrastructure expenditure in this country's history. No cost-benefit analysis. Are we then surprised that nobody thought, 'What is the cost of ameliorating asbestos in pits?' That would have been one of the considerations of a cost-benefit analysis in relation to the NBN, consideration could have been given. That is the problem with government taking over this style of project and that is the problem with what is happening today.

With the time I have remaining I particularly want to turn to the experience in Western Sydney. This is where this problem with asbestos first got raised. In the rushed pre-election broadband rollout, we have seen a potentially risky situation emerge in the seat of Lindsay. I am surprised that the member for Lindsay has not chosen to speak on this matter of public importance given that in his electorate today we have his residents in the Penrith City Star raising the concerns of asbestos in their front yards and asbestos in their houses. It might have been prudent of him to come in here and speak on this matter of public importance today given it started in his electorate.

The matter was raised, as we saw, by many of his constituents, who found and had to bring it up themselves that asbestos had been leaked into their front yards, where their children play. We have seen many concerns raised by the Penrith City Council and by the local Liberal representative there, Fiona Scott, who is our Liberal candidate, who has had to take on the member for Lindsay in relation to this because he will not answer the questions, just as the government will not answer the questions, in relation to the NBN rollout.

The questions are real. When you see Mr O'Farrell from Lindsay raise the concern that his wife and two daughters, aged six and nine weeks, have been moved to a nearby hotel in Penrith while authorities decide what to do with the asbestos filled pits, everybody in this chamber ought to be concerned. It is not conflated, as the member for Throsby said, to raise that people in ordinary situations in Lindsay now are finding themselves with pits in their streets with asbestos signs around them. Why is that the case? Is that an accident? Is that something that has just occurred out of nothing? Of course it is not.

This is unseemly haste that we have seen in major infrastructure projects, because they are politically driven. Let us not run away from that. The pink batts program was politically driven. It was politically driven to attempt, as some sort of conflated economic policy, to change the global financial crisis, to say, 'If we can stimulate the insulation industry, we can change the climate and we can produce better economic results.' This is just nonsense. What we saw there, in that mad rush to rush pink batts into people's roofs, was the industry collapse. We saw many good providers collapse, we saw the unreliable providers receive money and benefit, and we saw, sadly, many people's houses burn and people lose their lives from a mad political rush.

And now here we are again: before an election, in a mad rush to meet unreasonable targets. The government's own targets for the rollout of the NBN have been revised downwards three times, showing everybody in this nation that the original targets were unreasonable, could never have been met. Trying to provide fibre to every single premise in this country on the timetable the government said was untenable by any of the experts' predictions, any of the experts in this field. It was never going to be possible and it was never going to be affordable, which is why our own costings show that not only will this cost $40 billion—the biggest expenditure at $40 billion—but this could also cost up to $90 billion to run this into everybody's houses. That is because most of the cost comes from the final end production, what we are seeing now. The issue with the pits, the issue with the infrastructure. And if you rush it—if you do not do a cost-benefit analysis; if you do politically driven infrastructure rather than properly funded infrastructure and properly planned infrastructure—you get a bad outcome, and that is why we should not have had government driving this.

The reality is in most of our metropolitan cities people get the internet speeds they need and they get good telecommunications provision in our country. It is the third most profitable sector in the country, telecommunications; it has a well-established foundation in this country. And you could argue for government to get involved to provide better broadband services to those areas that cannot afford it or that cannot receive it because of the nature of our geography, but that is not what the government is doing. That is not what the member for Lyne is supporting them to do. The rollout just happens to be in Western Sydney. You can draw a map of key Liberal electorates, like my electorate, and there is no NBN rollout in my electorate for another four years. But across the road in Greenway, a one per cent margin seat, they are rolling out NBN straight away. You can go to Liberal electorates across this country and you will find no NBN rollout for years to come. Yet if you go to a marginal seat you can bet your bottom dollar there will be an NBN rollout going through it right now.

So who is to blame in Lindsay when you have an unseemly rollout there and you have got this situation? These questions are very pertinent and they ought to be asked of this government, because it is not the expertise of this government to run a telecommunications company. I note the member for Throsby said, 'We helped Bernie Banton in his situation.' Bernie Banton happened to be one of my constituents when I came to this place and his untimely demise was very unfortunate. The efforts of unions in fighting for his case are where unions are at their best. It is where they do the right thing for those kinds of workers who have been in this situation against a company and receive justice. But that does not qualify the member for Throsby to then go on and talk about his expertise in the telecommunications field. Standing up for an injured worker in a compensation claim against a company does not give him any special knowledge of how the telecommunications sector works. The two do not translate. His argument is false. He knows as little about telecommunications as I do and yet he is attempting to tell us how to run a telecommunications company in this country. Can you see why we are going wrong in this place?

There is no doubt that this rollout is being mismanaged by this government. They have form in mismanaging major projects. They do not do government well, and we know it—everybody in this chamber knows it. Not only is government being badly done but this infrastructure rollout is being mismanaged. It is being mismanaged because of unrealistic expectations, no proper planning and no cost-benefit analysis. It is being mismanaged because of the political drive from the government to achieve political objectives—not telecommunications objectives, not objectives for ordinary Australians, but to meet an unrealistic set of political objectives of the government. So when they say, 'Don't politicise this,' well, when I look at the map of Western Sydney and I look at Liberal seats and marginal seats and I see the NBN rolling out in those marginal seats, who has politicised this debate? Who has already sought to put it where they need it the most rather than look at the real telecommunications needs of this country?

There is a better way to do government and that is to have an adult government—to have a measured government, a government which does a cost-benefit analysis for the biggest infrastructure project in Australian history, a government which has former telecommunications executives in its ranks and people of stature like the shadow minister for communications and the member for Bradfield. These are people who understand that government cannot solve all our problems all at once but can fix those areas of need which need it the most. That is the policy of the coalition—to rein in NBN Co. to something that can be managed, can be delivered, is affordable and is reasonable.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on today's MPI, 'The threat posed by the Government's mismanagement of the National Broadband Network rollout'. There have been quite passionate speeches here tonight. I have heard supposed Independent members raising their voices and the member for Mitchell talking about his issues. There was also the member for Fraser saying that some people should not talk on this. The reason I am talking on this is the fact that in my electorate of Swan, which is a marginal seat, the government decided to promise at the 2010 election to roll out the NBN and start in June 2011. They did not get around to starting until about October 2012. I agree with the member for Mitchell that it was a political move.

With the problems we have heard from the member for Wentworth, it is clear that once again the government is demonstrating that it cannot handle major projects. The government's NBN has been a disaster from day one. Three years ago at the start of this parliament they promised 1.3 million premises would be passed by the end of this month. They will struggle to pass 200,000 premises instead. As we heard from the member for Mitchell, it has been downgraded three times.

Labor is seriously incompetent when it comes to managing major projects. What makes this matter worse is that the government is refusing to take any responsibility for the problem. Yesterday, we saw Telstra do what Labor's communications minister and the Prime Minister will not do, and that is take responsibility. This is something the government has not done well. We all know it is its incompetent management and policy settings that have created a situation that is utterly unacceptable when it comes to the management of asbestos.

Telstra are taking responsibility for getting things right from their end. This government needs to take responsibility for policy settings. They need to acknowledge that contractors for the NBN are dealing with asbestos on a daily basis, that there has been a mishandling of the asbestos and that their practices have failed.

This government knew there was a problem with the NBN as early as 2009. To be frank, ever since these types of projects have been envisaged, everybody has known Telstra's pits carried risks with asbestos. It should have been understood that the NBN construction involved remediating ducts where asbestos was present. The government's NBN contractors should have planned for this and should have been aware of their responsibilities and obligations. What the government needed to do was make sure they had the policies in place to handle it properly from day one. The government did not do their homework and they have let the Australian people down yet again.

History has always been kind to people who observe it. Cast-iron pipes were originally laid down in Victoria to run town gas to all the residences around Melbourne. That was to be replaced by natural gas. In that particular period of time they found out that natural gas actually dried out the joints on the cast-iron pipes and created leaks, so they had to work out that eventually those pipes were to be replaced—they went to PVC. That is a simple story telling anyone who is going to do a major infrastructure project that there are lessons to be learned from previous situations. Putting new fibre through old pits is a very obvious one.

Telstra announced an audit of its contractors yet there has been no such move by NBN Co. Both Telstra and NBN Co. are responsible for the contractors' work in asbestos lined pits and ducts. NBN Co. is responsible for enlarging ducts where there is insufficient room for the fibre. This issue first came to my attention in February when I was contacted by a resident in Teague Street, Victoria Park in my electorate. Syntheo at the time were involved in the rollout of fibre. Syntheo was a subcontractor to the government. The constituent reported a serious risk of asbestos spores being liberated into the air after an old Telstra hub was hit with a mash hammer to break it down by a worker wearing latex gloves and a P95 mask. I was told the worker picked up bits of asbestos from the sand and put them in a bag while a Syntheo worker without a mask worked close by. I actually have a photo of that. I seek leave to table that. It shows a worker without a mask working close by. Syntheo cannot say that they have got their processes and procedures in correct order for dealing with asbestos.

The highest priority for NBN Co. here must be the safety of these workers and the communities where this work is taking place. We can have all the rhetoric about who is right and who is wrong, but at the end of the day major infrastructure projects must protect the workers and the people in the communities who could be affected by such things as asbestos spores.

I reported this incident at the time to WorkSafe and then Comcare on 19 and 20 February. I am yet to receive a response from Comcare, another government department. I find it unbelievable if they say it is not relevant or not really an issue. They have taken so long to respond to an issue that is deeply concerning within the electorate of Swan. I did receive a written response from Syntheo and I will go into that later.

We heard the member for Wentworth talk about this as being the most mismanaged infrastructure project ever in Australia. As we have also heard from other speakers, there was no cost-benefit analysis done when we went to the election with the promise of rolling out the NBN. As I said before, if they had done a cost-benefit analysis maybe they would have taken into consideration the fact that these pits needed to be upgraded. They should have done a cost-benefit analysis when they did the pink batts as well. The pink batts debacle has been mentioned by a few coalition speakers. This is just a gentle reminder that this government is out of control and cannot handle major infrastructure projects.

I mentioned just before dealing with the communities and the people who are actually affected or potentially affected by the asbestos. Because of what happened in Teague Street in Victoria Park in my electorate I ran a survey through that street to find out what sort of reaction those people had to the NBN experience. I would like to read some of them out to you. One person in the street said in an email:

We had a street meeting at the weekend and discussed issues relating to the damage caused by the NBN Co / Syntheo.

A high percentage of residence on the even numbered side of Teague street from No 72 onwards have lodged complaints with the NBN regarding the damage caused to their properties and damage to the nature strip and items such as reticulation. The response from NBN, anecdotally, has been abysmal. There seems to be a lot of platitudes but no action.

It sounds familiar. The email continues:

We wonder if the NBN/contractors think the residents will just go away?

Two residents came home to their property and the NBN/contractors had entered the grounds and used their watering hose/s to water down machinery used for digging up the path, breaking the hose fittings and leaving the water running.

The neighbourhood is looking disgraceful and we wonder who in authority is going to champion on behalf of the residents the restitution of the streets back to how they looked prior to the NBN arrival.

I have attached some images taken of the damage, concrete splatter on walls and general mess left by the NBN/contractors.

We had a flyer delivered recently to offer connection via Telstra to the NBN and in the Centro shopping Centre is a large advertisement for residents to connect to the NBN in this suburb. It asked residents to check availability for your area and we did, but surprisingly there is no connection in 6100 postcode—

which is where we live. It continues:

We are aware that there is NO ONE able to connect to the NBN in this suburb and there is no availability for the foreseeable future, what is the point of sending out this flyer? Is this simply NBN propaganda?

We are keeping you updated as it seems nothing is tangibly happening at street level.

In response to one of my surveys, Mr John Vivian and Mrs Glynn Vivian wrote to me. Their comments on their experience were initially negative. They said:

In 2012 contractors dug up our footpath and road to lay cable to Ursula Frayne High School. Contractors were rude, lazy and totally unskilled. Damage was sustained to our water meter when contractors stepped over the fence, through the hedge to prepare and lay new footpath. A leak was developed within a short period (approx 7 days) and had to be repaired at our expense. Spoke to supervisor who would not take responsibility.

John's wife also wrote:

Please note that my husband had cause to speak to the Supervisor on several occasions regarding the quality of the workmanship that was used to replace the footpath that had been dug up. When he drew the water leak to his attention, the claim was dismissed our claim as being irrelevant and "not possible". It's a shame he (the Supervisor) was not around to see the workmen climbing through our fence and stomping through our front yard with their picks and shovels.

They then received a bill for $370 from Charter Plumbing and Gas to fix their plumbing, which NBN and Syntheo refused to do. This is again another debacle of an infrastructure project by the government. We must remember that it is about the communities and the workers, who must be kept safe. (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers in this discussion, this discussion is now concluded.