Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I met with around 100 Canberrans who are extremely frustrated by the delay in the National Broadband Network. I want to thank the shadow minister for communications for attending this community forum on a very cool Canberra evening. It was great of him to get out there in Tuggeranong and meet and listen to more than 100 Canberrans who are very concerned about this issue.

I will read from an email I received from Lauree Stewart and George Pass, who came to the community forum.

We live in Theodore and are appalled by the lack of Internet services to our home. We moved here in November 2013 when we bought our first home, only to discover that we could not access broadband internet over the phone line. Naively, we did not think that this was even possible, especially in Canberra.

Since then we have been using a 3G wireless dongle for our home internet which is very expensive and very unreliable. Depending on the weather and time of day, sometimes it doesn't work at all.

It makes our cost of living very expensive and we do not have access to a service that much of Canberra does. The inequity is frustrating. We pay our taxes and rates like the rest of Canberra but our service is severely lacking and it's impacting on the way we contribute to society.

In this society I believe every Australian needs to have access to affordable Internet and considering Canberra is the capital of this country the lack of adequate Internet service is even more appalling.