Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) places on the record that:

(a) the National Broadband Network (NBN) is rolling out too slowly under the current Government, and there are many difficulties being faced by constituents who are trying to access and connect to the NBN;

(b) areas without the NBN are facing significant obstacles in accessing internet services, including ADSL and wireless;

(c) Australians are being left in the dark by this Government about when they will have access to the NBN, with some areas being removed from the NBN roll out map without explanation and with no information forthcoming; and

(d) the Government's second rate NBN will not be sufficient to meet future demand, and will need to be upgraded in the future at great cost; and

(2) recognises that access to the NBN is a necessity for all Australian businesses, students and individuals, and Australians deserve better than a second rate NBN.

It is two years on from the 2013 election, when the member for Warringah was elected Prime Minister and the member for Wentworth became the Minister for Communications. They promised that they would build the National Broadband Network; their promise now lies in tatters. They promised they would build it for $29.5 billion; that has now blown out to almost double the cost, at $56 billion. They promised the NBN could be rolled out to all homes and businesses within three years, by the end of 2016; that has now more than doubled to seven years, by the end of 2020.

The Australian people deserve the National Broadband Network. Due to a lack of effort, a lack of organisation, a lack of foresight and a lack of commitment, we are currently in a situation where, in my electorate of Lalor, people are living in what is now a digital divide—a digital divide where some have the NBN, some have cable, some have ADSL1 and some have ADSL2. Those using ADSL are not shy in coming forward to say that their service is not good enough, that it is not keeping up and that people running businesses and families trying to get ahead with their children are being limited. Their productivity is being limited by limited access to the National Broadband Network. The people of Lalor deserve so much better. We are a resilient community. We are a community that is collaborative and that is working together to overcome the challenges that we confront. Some of those challenges are around employment. On Friday morning I met with BizBuddyHub, a collection of small and micro business operators who have banded together to find a space to work, where they can collaborate and create jobs, where they can work locally inside the community, and where they can have their children with them if they need to. But, most importantly, they are desperately trying to find a home where they can access fast broadband, because it is imperative for their businesses that they do. So I move this motion to say clearly that this is not good enough, that a digital divide is not what we need in our community and that our productivity depends on us having the best.

There have been no new areas in the electorate of Lalor added to the NBN rollout map since the election in 2013. In fact, there have been parts of Lalor taken off the future maps, and it is incredibly unfair that now people are going to be waiting possibly for five years to even know when the NBN will be coming. I have covered those with slow access to the internet, but there are those in greenfields with no access, who are relying on very expensive wireless internet.

The pits are being dug. Telstra are not connecting because they are waiting for the NBN to be rolled out. This is incredibly unfair. Many in the electorate have contacted me in recent weeks to say: 'We have looked at the maps, Joanne. Can you tell us when we will get the NBN in our area?' From different parts of the electorate the questions come thick and fast. People are aware that this is an unfair situation and they are aware that they are being put at a disadvantage.

I have had contact recently from many people in the electorate who are actually lucky enough to be having the NBN rolled out, but again it is fraught with difficulties. People are losing days at work as they book and re-book to have the connections done because the NBN arrives and is connected and then their provider arrives and says, 'No, it's not working,' and they have to start the process again. Many in the electorate are contacting me to complain about the effectiveness of the NBN rollout. We have people without the internet, people with slow speeds and people who are lucky enough to be getting the NBN but who are losing productivity. This really is not good enough from this government, and we really need to hold them to account.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for the motion?

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the NBN because Townsville was chosen as an early rollout site. Of course, the NBN was done in response to the GFC. It raised many questions. One of the first questions was: why was the rollout done in a higgledy-piggledy style? It was to bring fibre to the premise of everyone's house. As the member for Lalor, who is now leaving the chamber, has said, it is not being rolled out to businesses. It would make more sense to me if we had rolled it out to business first. This is not a social enterprise or a social enhancement; this is an asset that will be sold by government. If you are going to get an asset that is going to be sold by government, surely you want it to be where the money is going to be made. If you roll the NBN out to my 84-year-old mother's house, where she checks her Facebook maybe once or twice a day and answers one email, there would be no real return on investment.

Townsville was an early rollout site, which was a gift and a curse. My city, which had suburbs with ADSL2+ already in abundance, was chosen as an NBN rollout site. Suburbs like Condon and Kirwan, parts of Belgian Gardens and other parts of my city were still on dial-up and are still on dial-up. The member for Lalor mentioned the relationship between NBN and Telstra. I have to tell you in my city now the relationship between Telstra and NBN is getting better and better and better, but I agree with her that the relationship at first was fraught because of the fractious and difficult ideological approach by the previous Labor government. They told Telstra that no matter what they did they would not get paid for it. So in all those new greenfield sites that were coming in and in all the areas where they had advanced capacity or they could bring in more ADSL2+ or shift it around, there was no reason for Telstra to do any work because they were never going to get paid for it. One of the first things that Malcolm Turnbull did when he took over as the Minister for Communications was repair that relationship with Telstra. It has borne great fruit. We are now in a better situation when it comes to the way we roll out this thing.

It depends where you want to go. It seems to me that the member for Lalor was saying that we should have rolled this out to business first and was asking why we are doing it to the home. It seems to me that she wants to change the rules of the game halfway through. The previous Minister for Communications, Stephen Conroy, said it would be led by bringing everyone onto the NBN with fibre to the premise, except for those people in remote and rural Australia. That was the difficult part. When both parties took up their position in 2007 their policies were very similar about needing to bring people in from the out and not build it again.

You had the ridiculous situation in the member the Chifley's electorate, which had UHF cabling for pay TV and full ADSL2 and then had the NBN hauled all over the top of it. Areas of my electorate, very much like areas of the member for Lalor's electorate, cannot understand why this map was originally done. What we are doing is rolling it out faster, more affordably to the customer and cheaper for the entire nation because we have to make sure that this thing is saleable at the end. To do that we must make sure that we have versatility in the rollout. In Townsville we had the entire CBD wired for the NBN for a good 12 to 14 months before we even had the technology to take it from the footpath to a multidwelling unit of offices.

We are trying to make sure that we do roll this thing out. This is not just about being able to watch Netflix or stream videos; this is about the future, and Townsville is seeing that future now. It still gets down to how much you want to spend on it. It still gets down to how much you are prepared to do, and fibre to the premises especially in difficult places is very expensive. I have a friend who is an engineer. He lives in Mundingburra, an early rollout site which had fibre to the premise. He reckoned it cost the NBN over $25,000 to get it from the footpath to his house because of the difficulty in accessing it. He is an engineer. He is on basic internet at home. He will pay about $50 a month for the NBN. It is going to take an awfully long time to get any return on that investment. Those are the sorts of things that we must do. I congratulate this government because in the entire time of the previous government we rolled it out to nearly 30,000 places and we have over 70,000 places already connected in Townsville.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to second this motion of the member for Ryan. I think this is an incredibly serious issue, as has been acknowledged on both sides of the House. NBN is essentially about our future, our international competitiveness. We are constantly telling our community that we have to be prepared to be globally competitive yet, unfortunately, this government has decided that they are going to lump us with an infrastructure rollout that is going to be substandard, that will put us well behind where our regional competitors already are. We are going to be left with a broadband product that is nowhere as good as that that we see in Singapore, in Korea, in Japan and increasingly in parts of China. Basically we getting a late 20th century product rather than a 21st century product.

On Saturday we had a great NBN forum in central Armadale in the seat of Canning. People there are acutely aware of just how bad their internet services have always been. They were indeed on Labor's rollout plan and under Labor's plan they were scheduled to get fibre-to-the-premises by June 2016. Now under the great Malcolm Turnbull scheme—'NBN light' or 'fraud band'—they are scheduled to get a lesser product and get that six months later. So now they are scheduled to get fibre-to-the-node and they are scheduled to get that six months later.

But our real concern is not only are we putting a lot of money into a substandard system but we believe that this is going to be simply not deliverable. The minister has acknowledged that he does not actually have any awareness of the state of the copper in Kelmscott and Armadale. As we heard over and over again from the community at this forum on Saturday, when it rains voice calls drop out routinely in this area. It gives us some idea of just what the state of this copper wire is.

The minister, when I questioned him during consideration in detail of the budget bills, claimed that this was all just a question of pair gains and that the problem is that we have made too many pair gains. Quite frankly, my advice is that there is a very limited number of the pair gains that he is talking about in this area and the problem is fundamentally that of the state of the copper. A voice call would not drop-out when it rains because of a pair gain system or a deficiency in the pair gain system. We have a minister here that is failing to realise and appreciate and take in hand this fundamental problem that exists—that much of the area over which he wants to lay out this fibre-to-the-node really has in that last kilometre a very degraded network, which simply is not going to be capable of delivering even the modest late-20th century speeds that he is undertaking.

There was also great concern expressed in the area about the potential for vandalism of those nodes in areas where there are social problems. Not taken into account is the much greater expense that is involved in maintaining this system. With fibre-to-the-node you need to have power boxes, you need to change the nature of the signal as it moves from fibre to copper and you need to keep it cool. This is going to be, I think at the end of the day, a system that will be greatly discredited. My very great concern for the people of Canning, for the people of Armadale and Kelmscott who have got very poor internet services, is that it is simply not going to be possible for them to deliver, even by December 2016. The infrastructure just simply is not up to it. We are going to find that out, unfortunately, only at the very last moment when they dig up the pits and find out exactly what is going on.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure I rise to speak on this private member's motion because this is one of the big issues that we face. When we came to government, the NBN was a complete shambles—and that is being kind. Across most of the country, the project had completely stalled. I have started about eight companies in the course of my career. If there is one thing I have learnt in starting a new company it is that it is hard, it is risky and you rarely meet your time lines and budgets. In fact, the great Guy Kawasaki, who is a famous Silicon Valley investor, has always said, 'As a rule of thumb, I multiply revenues by 10 per cent when I look at a new start up.'

What the Labor Party was trying to do was to start up the largest infrastructure project in Australian history inside a start-up vehicle. It was never going to work. The numbers tell us everything we need to know. Labor totally underestimated the cost, the complexity and the time frames required for this project. As a result, released rollout schedules were unrealistic and totally inaccurate. They were always on one side and they were always way above what was going to be achieved. I cannot believe they are still defending the extraordinary pitiful work of Senator Conroy on this start-up vehicle which was never going to be successful. For instance, Labor originally forecasted that 2.7 million houses would be passed by fibre in the year they left government. It did not even come close. They then revised their forecast to 1.3 million passed by fibre. Again, they were never going to be close such was the bungling of this project.

The comprehensive strategic review, which was completed in December 2013 soon after we got into government, found that the new broadband network would only pass 467,000 houses—and that is pass, let alone connect. So that is 467,000 versus the original forecast of 2.7 million. Anyone who has been in a new business venture, who has started a new business venture of this level of complexity would know that is what is going to happen. But no-one over that side of that parliament really understands new business ventures. They do not understand how to start something new so they make these extraordinary mistakes and they end up with a shambles, a total shambles, which is what we had to deal with when we got into government.

To be able to access the NBN, you actually have to build it. I know it is a revelation for those opposite and they have failed on that most fundamental front. Their interim satellite solution in the bush was a total debacle. I have constituent after constituent coming to me saying that they are no longer connected to the internet. Why? Four times more people subscribed to the interim satellite service than the capacity that was established for it. It was a total disaster. Again, the work was not done. The visionary had no understanding of the detail that was necessary to deliver a genuine solution that was going to solve people's real problems.

The good news is that the NBN is now under new, competent management and is powering ahead, with more than 1.2 million premises now able to order a service and 546,000 families and businesses already online as paying customers. As the NBN announced last week, within three years about 9.1 million premises—where 76 per cent of Australians live and work—will be able to order a service. Under the coalition, the NBN will be completed by 2020, as against Labor's plan which conservatively, I think, would take until 2028. There is no point promising everybody a Rolls Royce if you are never going to get it, and that is exactly what those opposite did with the NBN. My electorate is suffering; I am suffering because I cannot connect to the ADSL where I live. It is a battle I have every day. Those opposite were going to get us there by 2028.

In Hume, we are making very, very good progress. We already have about 4½ thousand premises that are able to be connected on fixed wireless and 31,000 premises are to be rolled out over the coming weeks and months. Thank God that we have taken over the NBN.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motion is very timely because two weeks ago the government released the NBN Corporate plan2016 and it reveals a massive blow-out in the cost of the National Broadband Network, a $26½ billion blow-out. The cost of the Abbott government's second-rate version of the NBN has now gone from $29½ billion to up to $56 billion—in other words, it has almost doubled.

As we know, today is the second anniversary of the election of the Abbott government. They have now been in power for two years and they have no-one else to blame for this mess than themselves, because this has happened because they got their assumptions wrong in opposition and because they seriously underestimated how difficult it would be to switch from building a world-class NBN using fibre to one using copper or HFC. Let me give you some examples.

The negotiations with Telstra to buy back the old copper network were supposed to be finalised by June last year. Instead, they were only finalised in June this year. It took a year longer than expected. As a result, the fibre-to-the-node network is now at least a year behind schedule. The Minister for Communications promised it would be rolling out at scale a year ago and it still is not. The HFC network is also way behind schedule. We were promised that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the NBN via HFC by the end of next year. The Corporate plan, released two weeks ago, now reveals that they will hit less than one-third of this target. These mistakes are based on these documents here, the coalition's election policy and the much-vaunted strategic review. What the corporate plan reveals is that both of these documents were hopelessly wrong.

In the first document, the 2013 election policy, the opposition said that they would be able to build the NBN, a second-rate version of the NBN, for $29½ billion. When the policy was released, the now minister said that the assumptions that he had made were 'conservative'. Well, he was wrong. The second document, the strategic review, said that this cost had blown out by $15 billion—from $29½ billion up to $41 billion. I remember when this report was released, the minister again said that the costings were 'conservative and achievable'. Again, he was wrong. The cost of their second-rate NBN is not going to be $29½ billion, not $41 billion, but now up to $56 billion—so much for the Liberal Party's great economic management. They have doubled the deficit and now they have almost doubled the cost of their second-rate NBN. It is not just the cost that has blown out; it is also the time that they promised they would build it.

As I mentioned, this is the second anniversary of the election of the Abbott government. On that night two years ago when the Abbott government was elected, the Prime Minister issued a public letter to the people of Australia, where he said:

I want our NBN to be delivered within three years and Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to make this happen.

Well, that is not going to happen either. It will not be finished by the end of next year. According to the Corporate plan, it will not be finished until the end of 2020. That itself will require a massive increase in the speed of the rollout. Instead of three years, it will take seven, or more than double what the Prime Minister said two years ago today.

When in opposition, this government was very critical of the former Labor government on the NBN. Now, in government, they are responsible and they should be held accountable for their promises that they have broken as well as for the mistakes that they have made. Not only are they building a second-rate version of the NBN; it is going to cost almost double what they promised the people of Australia it would cost and it will take more than twice as long as they promised. No wonder the people of Australia are now calling the NBN the 'national blow-out network'. No wonder the people of Australia are so disappointed with this hopeless, hapless, divided, backward-looking government.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak on this motion. When I was given the honour of representing the Lyne electorate two years ago, I was advised as the local new member at the time that some areas in my electorate, including the metropolis of Port Macquarie, were not on the books anywhere in NBN's plans for over 10 years. Can you believe it? The old Labor Party back-of-the-coaster model did not have the biggest economic centre in the electorate on the radar for any of their Rolls-Royce pie-in-the-sky NBN for more than 10 years. I was flabbergasted.

Fast forward just two years after this botched rollout, this pie-in-the-sky plan that was built on the back of a coaster and—thanks to the efforts of coalition management and getting more business- and telco-minded people running the NBN, and minister Malcolm Turnbull directing them—we now have a much more sensible plan. A multitechnology mix is being employed so that there will be better horses for courses. There is all the new technology that is happening in the vector DSL space, with the fixed wireless space and the open wireless space. The coalition management plan is bringing the NBN much sooner to many more areas, rather than the old open-cheque-book approach. We have also got runs on the board in terms of revenue. There was so much being spent under the previous administration but hardly any revenue. Finally we have over half a million paying customers on the NBN.

But let's talk more about the Lyne electorate. As I mentioned when I was given the honour of representing the people of Lyne, there were only a couple of thousand people—despite six years of talk—that had potential access to the NBN. As we speak today, there are over 15,000 premises—probably 30,000 or 40,000 people—who can ring up and ask for a connection to the NBN. And, in the 2015-16 works program, there are another 21,000 premises that are included in the rollout—again, across the northern part of the Manning into the Hastings and the Gloucester valleys. As well as that, we have two satellites that will be coming online for a lot of the people in my electorate of Lyne that are not eligible to get a fixed radio wave from the wireless towers or fibre to the premises in the Manning. They will be able to get a much more capable satellite network. We all know about the fiasco of the previous satellite network. They underestimated the number of people it needed by over 150,000 people. The capacity was way under what was needed. I look forward to them coming online as well.

New areas that will be covered in the forward rollout plan are Black Head, Diamond Beach, Failford, Hallidays Point, Nabiac, Red Head, Tallwoods Village—and inside the fixed wireless footprint of Gloucester the actual township—as well as Harrington, Old Bar, Wallabi Point. And, thank goodness, along Hastings River Drive and on the north shore of Port Macquarie, the rollout of the multitechnology mix will be coming.

We already have a couple of greenfield sites with fibre to the premises. But, now that this rollout has been announced in the Hastings-Port Macquarie local government area, they will be there and delivering much sooner than the 'pie-in-the-sky 10 years away with hardly a mention' of the previous government. So people on the north shore—on Riverside, Thrumster, Lakewood, Laurieton, North Haven, West Haven—and in Wauchope, Camden Head and Dunbogan, can look forward to a realistic time frame for delivery of the NBN.

Also in the Manning where there is fibre to the premises, we now have over 7,500 premises that can get access as we speak. The middle of the Manning, the Taree central business district, was a hole in the network. It was not even covered. Due to negotiations with the NBN and the minister we have the hole in the CBD now available for NBN. Thank you.

Debate adjourned.