Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am aggrieved on behalf of the people of Blair and also the nation. Before the last election, the current Prime Minister made promise after promise to the Australian people. In the last two years, he has broken almost every one of those promises, with cuts to health, cuts to education and cuts to the pension, as well as cuts to the ABC and SBS, and he wants to increase the GST. Before the last election, there was a debt and deficit crisis, but the current government have doubled the deficit and have added more than $100 billion to the debt. Unemployment has fixed itself with a '6' in front. It has gone up from 5.7 per cent to, at one stage, 6.3 per cent, and then it was at a 13-year high. For the first time in over 20 years, we have had more than 800,000 Australians out of work and the Australian economy seems stuck at below-trend growth of two per cent. Consumer sentiment is about 11 per cent below where it was before the last election and new taxes and charges mean that Australians are paying more tax than ever before.

This is a government that was supposed to be a government of adults; it was supposed to be a government that would not disappoint the Australian public. It does not matter who your Prime Minister is, because every person, including the member for Wentworth, has voted for every one of those cuts and every broken promise, including in my electorate where I am particularly aggrieved at their failure to 'fast-track'. I quote 'fast-track' because it is what they said they would do for the last six kilometres of the Ipswich Motorway, which is mostly in the electorate of Morton, but it is important for Ipswich and Brisbane. Two hundred and seventy nine million dollars was across the forward estimates for the 2015 budget, but no serious money is available until 2018-19—yet another broken promise from the Prime Minister and the member for Wentworth. We saw, of course, Campbell Newman's LNP government ignore the Ipswich Motorway, just as we saw the Howard government ignore the motorway. It was built from Dinmore to Darra and it was designed, built and completed at $2.8 billion by the then federal Labor government.

It is not just that infrastructure highway; there is also another kind of highway—the NBN—and it is just as vital to local residents and businesses in the electorate of Blair. The lack of fast, reliable and affordable internet services is a substantial problem for the people of Blair. The telecommunications problems are a concern, and I believe that my electorate is a microcosm of Australia. There is rapid suburban expansion in Redbank Plains, Springfield, Brassall and Ripley Valley, where 120,000 new residents will make their home in the decades ahead. Since the 2013 election, I have held 177 mobile offices across the electorate of Blair and telecommunications is close to the No. 1 issue raised by constituents. They have raised concerns about mobile phone coverage and fixed line issues, particularly in the rural parts of Blair. There are issues for a young mum in Flinders View whose kids cannot access the internet to do their homework because the local exchange has no free ADSL ports, a small business owner in Coominya has a property that is too far from the exchange to get ADSL service, and a mature-age university student in Brassall lives close to an exchange with free ADSL ports but cannot get a service because their property is connected to the internet by a pair-gain system. Issues were reported across the electorate and every suburban town and suburb. There were reports of a cost of more than $100 each month for a service with a capped data download limit of 15 gigabytes.

Of course, before the last election the member for Wentworth was going to solve all of these problems. In particular, he was going to do a special NBN that was going to be faster and cheaper. In April 2013, the coalition promised that what has proved to be a second-rate NBN would cost $29.5 billion. In December 2013—two months after they won government—the cost had blown out to $41 billion. In August 2014, the cost had increased yet again to $42 billion. By August 2015, the cost had spiralled to $56 billion.

The minister has no-one but himself to blame—I should call him the former Minister for Communications, the member for Wentworth—for this blight, purely as a result of his poor decisions and incorrect assumptions. The then Minister for Communications was just $26.5 billion off in his calculations for the cost of the network. He promised that the coalition would roll out his version faster than the NBN.

The current Prime Minister went further. In an open letter to Australians—a letter that included the now infamous promise that he would lead 'a government of no surprises and no excuses'—he said:

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

The former Minister for Communication must have believed this slogan or hype as well. Before the election he promised that, under the coalition, every home and business would access an internet connection of at least 25 megabytes per second by 2016. The member for Wentworth has failed in his duty and responsibility as the Minister for Communications.

In the 2015 budget papers, it reveals that just 3.1 million premises will have the NBN or have it under construction by September 2016. The then Minister for Communications was—as I said—$26.5 billion out on his own costings. He is about 8.2 million short on the number of premises he promised would connect to his second-rate NBN by the end of 2016. His most recent guesstimate is that his NBN will be rolled out to all homes and businesses by 2020. He promised his fibre-to-the-node rollout would be at scale by now. It is not. The member for Wentworth has failed. The large-scale rollout of his fibre-to-the-node network has still not started properly.

The current Prime Minister and the now former Minister for Communications promised the people of Blair that they would get a second-rate NBN by 2016. All they get is a second-rate NBN at least four years later and at a cost of $26.5 billion more than promised. These country towns, like Rosewood, Esk, Toogoolawah, Kilcoy and Lowood would all get fibre to the premises under a Labor government with Labor's NBN, but not under the current Liberal Party government. Rural and regional Australians have been taken for granted by this dysfunctional government. Why do I use the word 'dysfunctional'? Because the member for Wentworth has used every word but 'dysfunctional' over the last two years.

This government will go down as one of the worst governments in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia. Don't take my word for it; take the member for Wentworth's word for it. Cabinet consultation has failed and economic management failed. Those were his words this afternoon, just after 4 pm. We have been saying for the last two years that they have been failing. But the member for Wentworth has belled the cat. He has actually told the truth about this government and how dysfunctional they are.

The timid souls of those opposite will have to vote between two failures: a Prime Minister who has failed and the member for Wentworth, who has failed as the Minister for Communication. They cannot get their figures right. Every broken promise each one of them has voted for in the cabinet: the cuts to pension, the cuts to health, the cuts to education, the cuts to Indigenous affairs, the cuts to aged care and the cuts to infrastructure. Every council in the country has had cuts as a result of the fixing of the financial assistance grants and the freezing of those grants—every council in the country.

Of course we know that regional and rural Australians are suffering from a lack of communication. They say it in my mobile offices and they say that every single time they come to see me about this. I have had the member for Blaxland, Labor's spokesperson for communications, come to my electorate and speak, and we had Telstra speaking with people about these issues as well. One of the big issues for people in rural areas is the ABC and SBS: a $43.5 million cut from the ABC and SBS, with more promised to come. This government has failed. The member for Wentworth has said it. We have been saying it for the last two years. I agree with the member for Wentworth, and the Liberal Party will have to make a decision between two failures and possibly three or more in the next couple of days. We look forward to it on this side of the chamber.