Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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

The Prime Minister's mismanagement of the NBN.

I call upon those 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—

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

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and the Prime Minister has waited a very, very long time to get his revenge. It is almost six years now since he was brought down by the former Prime Minister in a leadership spill late in the year, almost in the dead of night, but the bad blood between these two men, the Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister, goes back much further than that. It goes back at least 16 years, to when they were opposite each other in the republic debate, when the former Prime Minister defeated the now Prime Minister on the issue of the republic, cost Australia a republic and broke the nation's heart.

But it goes back even further than that. I have recently stumbled upon an article that the new Prime Minister wrote 37 years ago in The Bulletin of 7 February 1978, when he was a journalist. In this article he gives a free character analysis of the former Prime Minister. Reporting about an AUS conference, he says:

The leading light of the right-wingers in NSW is twenty-year-old Tony Abbott. He has written a number of articles on AUS in the Australian and his press coverage has accordingly given him a stature his rather boisterous and immature rhetoric doesn't really deserve.

It is almost as if it could have been written this week, isn't it?

So he had the motive: revenge. He had the argument, because by any objective analysis this has been a pretty ordinary government for the last two years, a government which has made lots of mistakes and broken lots of promises. But the thing that he fails to recognise is that he has been part of that government and that a lot of those broken promises have been his—broken promises on the ABC, broken promises on SBS and broken promises on the NBN. This is the now Prime Minister's election policy on the NBN that he took to the last election in 2013.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It looks thin.

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

It is at least 18 pages, and the most important point is on the back page, Member for Chifley, because there he says that he will build the NBN—a second-rate copper version of the NBN, but he will build the NBN—for a total cost of $29½ billion. Now, unfortunately, we know that that is not true, because last month the now Prime Minister released this document, the corporate plan on the NBN for 2016—a lot thicker and a lot more expensive. What this report shows is that the cost of the NBN has now blown out by $26.5 billion. It has gone from $29½ billion to $56 billion. I am telling you the truth. You just need to read the document: $29½ billion to $56 billion. In other words, the cost of the NBN has now almost doubled.

Why is this happening? It is happening for this reason: because the now Prime Minister, when he was an opposition shadow minister, made mistakes in his assumptions when he was putting this policy together, and he underestimated how difficult it would be to move from building a fibre NBN to a second-rate copper NBN. I will give you some examples. He said that he would be able to negotiate an agreement with Telstra by the middle of last year. That agreement was not finalised until the middle of this year, a year behind what he promised. As a result, the rollout of the second-rate fibre-to-the-node technology is at least a year behind schedule as well. Malcolm Turnbull, when he was minister, said that he would have fibre to the node rolling out at scale by the middle of last year. Well, it is now the second half of this year and it is still not rolling out at scale.

But it gets worse, because he also said that part of his second-rate NBN would be connecting people to the NBN via HFC. In the much-vaunted strategic review document, he said that 2.61 million Australians would be connected to the NBN via HFC by the end of next year. But the corporate plan that has now been released tells us that less than one-third of Australians will be connected to the NBN via HFC, not by the end of next year but by the middle of 2017. It gets worse than that, because the IT system to run all of these different technologies, we were told, was going to cost between $180 million and $290 million. That has now ballooned out to almost $1 billion.

All of these mistakes are based on these documents, including the election policy that said it would only cost $29½ billion—at the time I remember the then shadow minister saying that this was based on assumptions which were conservative—and mistakes made in the strategic review, which said the cost had blown out from $29½ billion to $41 billion. At the time I remember the now Prime Minister saying that these assumptions were conservative and achievable, but on both occasions they were wrong—hopelessly wrong. It is not $29½ billion. It is not even $41 billion. It is now $56 billion. You have to give it to Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. I know they doubled the deficit, but this Prime Minister has almost doubled the cost of the second-rate NBN.

It is not just the cost that has blown out. Last week was the second anniversary of the election of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, and that night, when he was elected, he issued a public letter to the people of Australia. He said this in the letter:

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

Three years—that means the NBN would be done by the end of next year, doesn't it? Well, that is not going to happen. It is another broken promise. The corporate plan that I referred to tells us now that the NBN will not be completed until the end of 2020, so instead of three years it will take seven years. In other words, he has doubled the cost of the NBN and he has more than doubled the time that it is going to take to roll it out. This is the failed record of the former communications minister: just like the former Prime Minister, a shopping list of broken promises. It is now going to cost double what he promised and take twice as long to build as they promised.

But it gets worse than this, because at the end of it, when it is all built, what do Australians end up with? A second-rate NBN—an NBN that Simon Hackett, the man Malcolm Turnbull appointed to the board of the NBN, said this of. I do not know what to do, Deputy Speaker, other than to just read it out, 'FTTN sucks' and:

If I could wave a wand, it's the bit I'd erase.

There you have it. There is the expert, the man that the now Prime Minister appointed to the NBN board who says that his second-rate version of the NBN 'sucks'. Why has all this happened? It has happened, I think, because the now Prime Minister has been a bit distracted for the last few months. He has been focused on something else, focused, I think, on getting ready for something a little different.

We have seen evidence that he has been prepared to do whatever it takes to move jobs from Communications to the Prime Minister by the answers that he has given on climate change and on marriage equality over the course of the last few days. In response to our criticisms of this, he says, 'Come now, it's not the means; it's the ends.' What a most appropriate answer because, for this Prime Minister, it has always been about the ends.

If you want evidence of that, you just need to read the Good Weekendfrom 13 April 1991—Malcolm Turnbull, 'Humility is for saints'. In there, you get a good idea of how it has always been about the ends. In this story that is told, we hear from David Dale, the former radio broadcaster, who knew Malcolm Turnbull as 'the footballer' because of his solid frame. At a meeting, Malcolm Turnbull announced to Dale that he wanted to be Prime Minister by the time he was 40. Dale asked, 'For which party?' Malcolm the footballer responded, 'It doesn't matter.'

It tells you everything you need to know about this Prime Minister—it is not about the means; it has always been about the ends.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a measure of chutzpah. What a measure of sheer, brazen effrontery it takes for the Labor Party to stand up and criticise the coalition on the NBN. This is like somebody who has crashed his car who runs away and then comes back to the scene later to berate the tow truck driver about how he is doing the fix-up job. So passionate are Labor about this topic, so effective has the member for Blaxland been as a spokesman on this topic that he has asked only three questions of the Minister for Communications in two years of government! Only one of them was about the NBN and, fascinatingly, it was about a 1923 wooden boat co-owned by the minister and an NBN executive. This is extraordinary. The member for Blaxland seems to be keen on prompting discussion about conspicuous areas of Labor failure and coalition success, boats and NBN. We are doing what you failed to do. We are stopping the boats and we are delivering the NBN.

We inherited a hopeless mess. Labor took a plan to the 2007 election, promising 12 megabits per second, fibre to the node—a private sector government joint venture, $4.7 billion of government money only. But, of course, they hopelessly failed to execute on that plan. Their plans collapsed and, by April 2009, they were forced to go for the double-or-nothing strategy, shock and awe. So, as is now well-known, on a VIP flight between Melbourne and Brisbane, the only time that the then broadband minister, Senator Conroy—now supposedly the shadow minister for defence, but his main priority seems to be shadow minister for defending his broadband legacy—had a chance to catch the then Prime Minister, on the back of a beer coaster with no detailed analysis they came up with a plan for a 100 megabit per second network. This was a chaotic failure of public administration. The eminent public servant Bill Scales was commissioned to conduct an independent audit of the NBN public policy process, and he had this to say:

The public policy process for developing NBN Mark II was rushed, chaotic and inadequate, with only perfunctory consideration by the Cabinet. After just 11 weeks of consideration, the Government had decided to establish a completely new 'start-up' company … There was no business case or any cost benefit analysis, or independent studies of the policy undertaken …

It was one of the worst pieces of public policy execution we have ever seen in Australia. But, supposedly, according to then Prime Minister Rudd: 'Not to worry. There will still be private sector investment and the mums and dads should consider investing in the bonds that will be issued to fund it.' What a grossly irresponsible thing to say. Surprise, surprise! When the implementation report came out a year later, it turned out that the private sector experts, McKinsey and KPMG, said, 'Oh, forget about that bit where there's going to be private sector investment because this plan is so hopeless that the private sector would not touch it with a barge pole.'

Of course, they had nobody with any experience of telecommunications on the board. The chairman of the board was an investment banker. The chief executive was not somebody from a telecommunications operator background; he was, instead, somebody from a telecommunications vendor background—a critical difference, one absolutely lost on the then minister who has no private sector experience.

What did they actually deliver in government? They delivered a lot of glossy brochures, a lot of press releases, a lot of media events and a lot of promises but not much actual network. They consistently missed milestones. By the time we came to government in September 2013, after six years they had achieved a mere 348,000 premises of the 2.2 million premises that were supposed to be passed. So we saw a chaotic and incompetent approach on the part of the previous government, and they had the extraordinary chutzpah to criticise the diligent and successful delivery, which has characterised the approach of the former Minister for Communications and now Prime Minister, who has done an extraordinary job of turning it around.

Let us look at where we up to, a mere two years after coming to government—now 1.32 million premises are able to connect. That is more than triple what Labor achieved in six years. There has been a step-change in rollout speed. Some 13,000 premises per week are now being regularly passed, as this rollout scales up to an industrial-scale operation—systematic and businesslike. With the corporate plan just released, there is a credible and well-developed path forward to 75 per cent of premises being able to connect to this network by mid-2018. In achieving that extraordinary turnaround, which in years to come I am certain will be a business-school case study, we have seen very detailed analysis conducted with the strategic review to understand actually what the issues are.

The former Minister for Communications appointed competent, experienced people to the board. What a good idea! Let's have some people on the board who actually have some experience in the telecommunications industry—not particularly revolutionary, you would have thought, but not something that Labor bothered to do. We put onto the board Ziggy Switkowski, the former chief executive of both Telstra and Optus; Justin Milne, a very experienced internet executive at OzEmail and Telstra; Simon Hackett, the former chief executive of Internode.

Mr Clare interjecting—

Isn't the member for Blaxland surprised that we would have on the board somebody who would give a full and nuanced view? We want expertise and we want people to give their views and then we form a view. Under Labor, of course, already he would have been sent off to a re-education camp. He would be incurring thought re-education if Labor were in power. They just cannot understand our approach, which is to get the expertise we need to get the job done.

The minister carried out a spectacular success in renegotiating the deals with Telstra and Optus. I spent eight years of my professional life before coming into this parliament as a senior executive at Optus, on a near daily basis dealing with Telstra and negotiating with Telstra. It is tough job. Telstra has a very, very capable executive team. Under the previous government, then Minister Conroy got absolutely taken to the cleaners by Telstra. He had no idea what he was doing. It took the present Minister for Communications—the present Prime Minister—to turn it around. It is a spectacular achievement. Of course, the approach of openness and transparency that we have now seen—

Ms Rowland interjecting—

Mr Clare interjecting—

Mr Husic interjecting—

The rollout numbers are published every week! There is nothing to hide. It is all out there. There is a culture of transparency that NBN has been directed to achieve. This is an ambitious project with a lot to do and we have always been very clear about it. There has been an enormous amount achieved. Revenue has risen from $17 million in 2013, the last full year that Labor had control of NBN, to $164 million in the year just completed. So revenue is ramping up, connections are ramping up and the rollout is ramping up. We have 283,000 premises now passed by fixed wireless, up from 39,000 when we came to power. The first satellite is due to launch on 1 October, with services to commence by halfway through next year. So there is sustained progress and sustained delivery.

Let me make the point that the NBN is really a very telling insight into two different approaches on two different sides of the parliament. Labor think it is all about the announcement: they whip out the press release and that is all they need to do. Government is about delivery. Labor announced the fibre-to-the-premises plan in 2009. They had no idea how to deliver it. A few weeks ago, they announced that now their RET—their renewable energy target—is 50 per cent. The have no idea how to deliver it. They promised free trade agreements for years, without delivering them. They promised that they could stop the boats. They said, 'The Malaysian solution is going to fix it. The regional processing centre is going to fix it,' and they never delivered it.

On this side of the parliament, we are about a sensible plan and about execution and delivery: free trade agreements with Korea, Japan and China—delivered; stopping the boats—delivered; an NBN rollout with a relentless focus on delivery, and in two years we have tripled what Labor managed to achieve in six years of government. The Australian people expect their government to deliver. What they have seen, when it comes to the NBN, is the Minister for Communications—now the Prime Minister—leading a relentless focus on execution, with a credible strategy based on the detail and getting the job done so that the number of people who are able to connect and who are able to get the service is steadily rising. There is a credible path forward so that by mid-2018 75 per cent of premises around the country will be able to connect to the network. This is the systematic, business-like, fact based, rational approach of the Minister for Communications as he remains and, as the Prime Minister, as he now is. He has delivered a remarkable turnaround on the chaotic incompetence that we inherited from Labor when it came to the NBN. We will see the same approach across all of government as the Minister for Communications becomes the Prime Minister.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned chutzpah a few times. As I said on Monday, my concern with the NBN is that we had a communications minister not focused on his day job. But, talking about chutzpah, we will start with a quick quiz. On 1 July 2013:

… Australians want an election so they can choose their government and prime minister.

As I talk with people … they are telling me that they feel let down and disappointed in a government that is focused on itself rather than the challenges facing the country …

Once again the faceless men of the Labor Party, rather than the people, have chosen a Prime Minister.

For too long, we've had chaos, division and dysfunction.

From The Telegraph yesterday:

Shrewd frontbench operators Simon Birmingham, Scott Ryan and Mitch Fifield had been appointed number-crunchers—

This was to do the PM in—

but the job was headed by Mr Turnbull's parliamentary secretary Paul Fletcher …

It is no wonder that on the Lower North Shore they are calling him 'faceless man Fletcher'. He looks in the mirror and there is nothing! Nothing!

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Member for Greenway!

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask the member opposite to return to the subject matter of the MPI. What she has said is totally inappropriate. She needs to return to the subject matter of the MPI. Thank you.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Greenway has the call. It has been wide-ranging on both sides, I have to say, but I will remind the member for Greenway of the MPI which has come from that side of the House.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It certainly is about the NBN. On this point, we even had the Prime Minister giving us one of his pompous little lectures today about how we need to lift this place. We need to rise above politics in this place. And he said that on the first day that he came in.

Well, here is an interesting story: last night, I received an invitation from NBN Co to meet the team and learn about Australia's broadband network. It was on for two hours last night. The invitation did not say anything partisan. I was getting ready to go down and rang a few of my colleagues and said, 'Are you going down?' They said, 'We've just come back.' I said, 'Why?' They said, 'It is a waste of time.' It got hijacked by the Prime Minister, who just gave a rant about Stephen Conroy. It was a totally un-prime ministerial little session, a little display of what he really is. It just shows you that he is just as much a pugilist as the bloke he knifed—just as much a pugilist! Let's have a look at one of these Twitter exchanges. It is pretty typical to form. This is a good one from March last year. This person says:

Bought a house in Ocean Grove. No NBN. No Cable. No ADSL 2 or 1. Back to the dongle.

Malcolm Turnbull replied:

… just curious:- if connectivity was so vital to you why did you buy a house where there was no broadband available?

Lifestyle choices! When you hear this Prime Minister, he always talks about his experiences. For the last five years, especially when we were in government, you would be debating this bloke and he would always talk about—he is a big namedropper: 'Yes, I was having a brandy with Rupert the other day.' He never ever talks about consumers. But I tell you the consumers who should be concerned, Mr Deputy Speaker Bruce Scott—I know you will be very alive to this. It is the Nationals, the bush, because they have been sold out again by this Minister for Communications. Not only has he absolutely put an axe to universal wholesale pricing in a very sneaky way—

Government members interjecting—

You do not need to take it from me. Have a look at Nationals' Senator Barry O'Sullivan here in Queensland Country Life:

SPARKS are flying within the coalition as fiery Nationals senator Barry O'Sullivan takes aim at the Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull for subjecting rural communities to "third world" services.

        …         …         …

"It's a shame on our nation," Mr O'Sullivan said.

"I'm embarrassed to be part of a party whose government would allow this to continue.

"I think Malcolm should roll his swag out and run his ministry from out here for a month and then I think Malcolm will change his opinion.

But we know that this is a government that said, when it was in opposition, of these long-term satellites: 'Rolls-Royce! Just get NewSat to do it'—NewSat, which has gone into administration, by the way—but now it is saying that the satellites are going to be a game changer. I know the Deputy Speaker is the member for Maranoa, the area that was promised, on handshake, by the last Prime Minister to get fibre optic cable.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

I am reflecting on the former minister in this area and on his failure to deliver for the bush! (Time expired)

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I could not believe my eyes when the member for Blaxland's matter of public importance landed on my desk. Initially, I thought it was two of my amigo colleagues having a bit of a go at me. I thought this could not be serious—Labor talking about the NBN, Labor talking about fiscal responsibility—but it appears that in moving this motion the member for Blaxland is absolutely intent on reaching the pinnacle of 'Mount Hypocrisy'. Labor's record with this national program is an exemplar of how not to deliver a major infrastructure project. The reason why Australia, at the end of the 2013 election, was on a trajectory to $667 billion of debt was exactly because of this sort of wilful, disrespectful, wanton waste of taxpayer dollars.

Let us address some of the facts that the member for Blaxland so conveniently avoided. Labor's approach to the NBN was conceived on the back of an envelope in a 34 Squadron VIP aircraft. I understand it was the Baldric approach to policy development—pairs of underpants on the head and two pencils up the nose—and no cabinet process. It was rubber stamped by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the then communications minister Stephen Conroy. Think about that for a moment: no business case, no cabinet process for the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on the biggest, most complex infrastructure project in Australia's history. It is characterised by chaotic planning, flawed advice, inadequate governance and no benchmarking. You would think, if you are going to spend tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, you would look at other parts of the world for best practice where this has been rolled out, you would go and talk to companies like Alcatel-Lucent that, with noise reduction technology approved, you can shift data at 100 megabits per second across copper, and you would go and talk to the exemplars of the wireless world that can move data at incredible speeds. But, no, Senator Conroy and Prime Mister Rudd knew best. They always knew best because they always thought they were the smartest men in the room.

What history shows us is that, despite extravagant promises that were never realised over three elections, this was probably the most poorly managed project in the Australian Commonwealth's history. My home state of Tasmania is a compelling case study of Labor's NBN catastrophe being turned around by this government. The early NBN rollout in Tassie had ground to a halt. The lead construction partner, Visionstream, had downed tools. Hundreds of contractors had no work. They were contacting me. Having made a significant investment in this project, their future was enormously uncertain. Only 32,000 households had fibre running down their streets, yet one-quarter did not even have a direct link into the network, so they could not order a service. The then communications minister, now Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, saw this firsthand when he came to Launceston on 4 April. He met with some of those contractors, he helped me run a public communications forum in Launceston and he saw the gulf between the Labor maps and the reality on the ground.

In government, Labor's embarrassment is obvious. We saw that in the first two Labor speakers, who talked about everything but their record when it comes to the NBN. It is a clear indicator of them wanting to put distance between them and their own record on this project. During the past two years, much has been done by Minister Turnbull, now the Prime Minister, to remedy Labor's NBN disaster. I was pleased to publicise a week ago that the NBN has topped 100,000 premises in Tasmania—more than tripling in two years—73,000 premises now have an active fixed line footprint and 27,000 homes and businesses in smaller towns have access to superfast wireless. By any measure, this is a dramatic turnaround that has seen 13,000 premises added to the network footprint in Tasmania alone. Construction in Launceston is scheduled to finish by August 2016, which will make Launceston one of the first cities in Australia to be fully networked, and NBN anticipates being able to offer a service to every home or business in Tasmania within two years. So I say to those opposite: reflect on your own record, stop trying to reinvent history, congratulate Minister Turnbull, congratulate his department, congratulate Bill Morrow and NBN Co on getting this project back on track.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is this for real? Are we supposed to congratulate Prime Minister Turnbull? What are you on? Every single thing that should be happening with this project is not happening. What they are desperately trying to do is go back. It is always about looking back with the Liberal Party. It is never about looking forward. It is never about taking account, right now.

They promised us a project that would cost $29 billion. It is now going to cost $56 billion. They promised us a project that would be done and dusted by 2019. Now they are looking at getting it done by 2020. They promised us a whole lot of stuff along the way, including that they would get the agreement done with Telstra. We have seen the sheer prowess of the Prime Minister! He wants to ask questions of himself so he can answer them himself. He was going to roll out, as a result of his great commercial acumen, an agreement with Telstra just by virtue of his presence! He thought that, like a Sonny Bill hologram, those negotiations would just magically transform and he would be able to get that agreement—bam, it would all happen!

Everything is being delayed, and why is that? I heard the member for Blaxland say that maybe the member for Wentworth, now Prime Minister, has been a bit distracted. Well, he sort of has been. It is the modern version of the Howard-Peacock battle. It is now all about Abbott and Turnbull. In fact, it is so good that, when Malcolm Turnbull types in 'Tony Abbott' in Google, Google asks, 'Do you mean 'revenge'?' That is all he has been focused on lately, instead of actually getting the job of rolling out the network done. It has been held up.

Those opposite operate in the belief that everything about fibre to the premises is bad and that it should not have been done. But what did Malcolm Turnbull, now the Prime Minister, first invest in? He invested in fibre networks. When he had a choice to make investments in projects in Europe, he thought, 'I'm going to make money on a smart investment. When people roll out fibre networks, I'll support that.' His own investments show what he has supported and the telcos that he has invested in in times past. But he was forced by the previous Prime Minister to embrace the notions that everything about the NBN was bad and that they would have their own alternative model. The only problem is their alternative model is nothing that Australia wants or, importantly, needs. The commercial acumen of those opposite is again on full display. When talking about fibre and what we might be able to do in getting that out to premises, what did they do? Their great commercial plan, like someone who had just been fooled by one of the best car salesmen on the planet, was that, instead of rolling out fibre, they said, 'You know what we're going to do? We're going to buy back the copper network that John Howard sold off.' That is great! That is fantastic planning! What great acumen they have!

I also see the Prime Minister and many of those opposite channelling the Deputy Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister likes going around putting ribbons on himself for projects that we started and funded, and he says, 'Look, I did it!' By virtue of the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister turns up somewhere, pulls the sash out and then cuts it, he says, 'There you go; I built it!'

It is similar to the satellites that they are about to launch, which Labor commissioned when we were in government. They came nowhere near to actually making the decision on it, but they are out there with their little toy rockets, looking forward to those satellites going up and being able to claim it was them. They will say, 'It was all us. We put those satellites up there.' The fact of the matter is it was Labor. We put everything in place. It was a huge project. The biggest infrastructure project since the Snowy Mountains Scheme itself had to be put in place. Those in the know on their side realised that fibre networks, by their very nature, take a long period of time to get up and running and in place. It was always going to take time to get that moving. What has happened is that everything has been messed up by those opposite. They have slowed everything down with review after review and political line after political line. There is no fibre, no service and no solution to the things that Australians want and need in this country.

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

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Chifley; if nothing else, he is always entertaining. I am glad he did not show us his rocket! I will bring a Western Australian perspective to this debate. That the NBN in Western Australia was in an absolute shambles at the time of the election is often forgotten. You talked about going backwards, Member for Chifley. So let me take you back to September 2013—he is leaving; he does not want to hear this!—to the situation that the incoming Minister for Communications, now the Prime Minister, was faced with in Western Australia when the coalition was elected to government. At the time of the election, there was only a handful of premises connected. The work had basically stopped, with only 34 premises connected across the whole of Western Australia. It took six years for 34 premises. Well done! What an achievement!

The lead contractor, Syntheo, had announced it would be pulling out of the state and no longer continuing with the project in WA due to the difficulties it had in delivering anything. They also left a lot of subcontractors unpaid. That was all under Labor management. There were three separate investigations in WA into claims asbestos was mishandled in the rollout during the six years of Labor management, including in East Perth, Canning Vale and Victoria Park, which is in my electorate of Swan. There was also an investigation in the seat of Canning when the issue was raised by the former member, Don Randall.

The member moving this motion talked about mismanagement of the NBN. What was happening with the NBN in WA in 2013 was perhaps the worst type of mismanagement I have ever seen in my years in business and in government. The task facing the incoming minister was a massive one. As the then Minister for Communications said on 5 June 2014:

… it is much harder to get a project that has failed or that has been mismanaged back on track than it is to get a new project, from a greenfields start, on track.

But the minister has managed to turn the NBN around since the election, particularly in my electorate. It has become the electorate with the most advanced rollout of the NBN in Western Australia. You can see, by looking at the rollout map, that each of the four local government areas in my electorate now contain at least some areas where the NBN has been completed, is under construction or is in the build preparation phase, whereas in September 2013, under Labor, I think there were about 14 premises connected in my electorate.

But the legacy of Labor's mismanagement unfortunately continues in my electorate. In the time I have left I want to focus on the part of my electorate that has not yet been listed for connection to the NBN—the Ascot exchange which serves the majority of the City of Belmont. Within this exchange there are many areas where broadband speeds are poor—and there are a number of areas where it is impossible to connect to broadband or any internet at all. These blackspots are typically in the suburbs of Cloverdale and Kewdale. One of the frustrations of my constituents in these areas is that they are often told by Telstra, when they ring up, that they will be able to connect. The official coverage maps also show that there are connections available. However the reality on the Ascot exchange, as my constituents tell me in the many letters I receive, is very different. Typically, after going through a long process the people in these areas become resigned to the fact that they cannot connect.

Labor have let the people who live in the Ascot exchange area down in many ways. Back on 17 September 2007, exactly eight years ago today, the then member for Swan—Labor—wrote to a constituent in my electorate and said the following:

Labor's National Broadband Network will solve Ascot's broadband problems.'

He also wrote, in reference to how much broadband was going to cost:

Labor will invest up to $4.7 billion to establish the National Broadband Network in partnership with the private sector.

Where the hell did he get that figure of $4.7 billion from? Talk about an understatement by the Labor member for Swan, Kim Wilkie!

We then had six years of Labor government after Mr Wilkie had promised in that letter that Labor would fix the Ascot exchange. Early on in that time, in 2008, the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council commissioned a detailed broadband blackspot survey of the Ascot exchange area, and this survey definitively documented all the problems in the area. This survey went on to become the basis of a submission to the federal Labor government for the Ascot exchange to be prioritised in the NBN. This submission was rated extremely high by the minister's own department. Yet, when the time for the rollout announcement came, Belmont and the Ascot exchange were left out by the Labor government. They let the people of Belmont down for political reasons—and with their mismanagement.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are so many policy areas that make me incredibly proud to be a Labor member of this parliament. Whether it is the fairness that we put into our health policies or the equity in our education policies, we are a party that are very clear about what our values are, and we build really good policies around them. But there are few policies that make me more proud of the work we on this side of the House have done than the National Broadband Network policy.

We have watched in the last few days and weeks as those on the other side have constantly turned back and looked to their past. We have seen them have these awful fights between themselves, cabinet leaks and so on. But, while all that has been going on, those of us on this side of the House have been looking to the future. What we are concerned about is the massive transformation taking place as a result of the digital revolution.

My friend the member for Gellibrand is sitting in front of me, and one of the fascinating facts that he likes to talk about is that these smartphones we all carry around in our pockets are more powerful computer systems than the computer systems that put two men on the moon. The implications of this revolution for the way we live and work in this country are absolutely profound. In 2013, an Oxford University study showed that about half of all the jobs that exist today will be gone in two decades—because of technological change. In the face this, what we on the Labor side of the House do is think about what this means for the country and what we can do to help the people we represent prepare for this transformation.

We know that the pieces of infrastructure we need to help us build prosperity in the future are going to be different from the ones that helped us in the past. What we need is world-class broadband to underpin future innovation and our future prosperity. So we put forward a visionary, nation-building policy. It was a policy that was so necessary, because the performance of Australia's broadband is really quite terrifying. In the two years that the current Prime Minister was the Minister for Communications, we saw Australia fall further and further back in global rankings. Now, according to the recent Akamai report, we are 44th in the world for broadband speeds. Look at the countries that are whipping us on this. They include countries like Latvia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Taiwan and Russia. We are trying to compete in a global economy and support a high-skill, high-wage, prosperous nation, but we have this problem sitting in front of us.

We had a good policy, a real policy, that was going to solve this problem: fibre to the home for 90 per cent of Australian households. But this Prime Minster who thinks he knows everything—we saw that today in question time; it is a little bit embarrassing, I have to say—brought that hubris into the communications portfolio, and what did we see? What has come out the other end after two years? What we saw was a minister who thought he knew better come in and say that he could deliver a similar product at much lower cost. He told us that the NBN was going to cost $29.5 billion. After two years, because of his mismanagement and because of his lack of understanding of what needed to happen to get the policy implemented, the cost has almost doubled. That is not all: the speed of the rollout is going to be completely different. We were told by this minister that it would be a three-year rollout. Instead it is going to be seven years before my community of Hotham sees the big difference we need to see—and the mix of technologies that is being put forward by the then communications minister, now the Prime Minister, is going to deliver broadband of a much lesser quality. This is broadband of the past, not the broadband of the future that Labor was proposing.

I really feel this in my role as the member for Hotham. Some in the chamber may not realise this, but we have incredible problems with internet connections and internet speeds in my electorate. And I do not represent an electorate that is hundreds of kilometres from a major centre; I am 20 kilometres from the inner city of Melbourne. Yet I am constantly getting complaints from people in my electorate who cannot get connected to broadband. We are sick of it. It is ridiculous that a country like Australia has not solved this problem—and we have not solved it because of the poor performance of the current Prime Minister in his former role as Minister for Communications.

This is not just a problem affecting homes in my community. Highlighting the economic importance of this subject, recently all of the mayors in my electorate—Liberal, Labor and non-aligned—wrote to me. They were desperate to know how we were going to get broadband into our local businesses. They did a study of people in industrial areas near the south-east region of Melbourne. It showed that 85 per cent of businesses in this area are relying on ADSL. This is not a policy for the future; this is a policy of the past. We can do better and the communications minister should know that.

Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to rise on this matter of public importance. I think we should begin with a framework for the discussion we are having in the House today. The first thing is the simple principles that guide the debate around broadband in Australia.

Of course members on this side and the Labor side want all Australians to have incredibly fast internet, the fastest possible internet. Members on both sides would probably like it, if all Australians had that internet yesterday and that it took no time to roll out. I think members on the Labor and the Liberal side would like it if it was incredibly affordable and, if possible, did not cost anything at all.

But of course we have to deal with the real world; we have to deal with reality. The reality is that time and money matter. In my community, we have thousands of locals who, quite frankly, live in an internet wasteland. They have some of the worst internet connections in the country. My priority is not that they wait many, many years for an expensive internet nirvana; it is that they get the highest-quality possible connection as soon as possible and at the most affordable rate so that they can unlock those gains that come from increased productivity from a very good internet connection.

It is no good sitting around waiting for seven, eight or nine years. As the NBN strategic review showed, under the former Labor government's proposal, the NBN would not have been rolled out completely until 2024. It is no good waiting that long for an internet nirvana. They would haven give them a very good internet nirvana, a very expensive internet nirvana, but why sit in an internet wasteland for so long where kids cannot do their homework and people cannot run their small business from home?

When we came to government, we said, 'Of course, we want Australians to have a good connection as soon as possible at an affordable rate,' and we went about ensuring that we could deliver that. That means people in my community are going to have a very, very good internet connection literally years sooner than otherwise would have been the case, if the Labor Party had been re-elected. That is because we have done a few things.

When we came to power, the first thing we did was change the board of the NBN Co. We actually thought it would be a good idea, if people had telecommunications experience on the NBN Co board, so we changed the board. The next thing we did was conduct the myBroadband internet review—the first time in the country's history that we have actually done a review of internet availability in the country. So we mapped out where everybody's internet connections were and we could see who had the best and the worst internet connections.

We gave that to NBN Co and we said, 'Instead of rolling this out based on politics and ensuring that people in Sydney who already have a very good internet connection have an even better internet connection, prioritise the areas of most need first.' So people in my community, who have terrible internet connections, were prioritised over those people in Sydney or Melbourne, who already have quite good internet connections.

The next thing we did was trial the rollout of the FTTN network. That means people in my community—for 37,000 homes that have been part of this trial—will get a connection to the NBN literally years sooner than otherwise would have been the case.

The construction has already been completed, and they are now trialling this network, making sure that it is functioning properly. By February, locals—and I will go through some of the communities: all of Bribie Island—so Bongaree, Woorim and all of those communities; on the other side of the bridge, Caboolture, Caboolture South, Morayfield, Elimbah, Moodlu, Wamuran and Upper Caboolture; and down the road in Dakabin and Kallangar will all have access to incredibly fast internet by February. We have already started construction on another 5,000 homes in Beachmere, Goodwin Beach—I feel like I am singing 'I've been everywhere'—Ningi and Sandstone Point. They will have access to incredibly fast internet years sooner. If they go outside now, they will see that construction taking place.

This is a way of ensuring that we recognise the real world. That time and money—they mean things. For locals in my community, who would have otherwise had to wait years and years and years for an expensive internet connection, they will instead be connected to an incredibly fast network in the very near future, meaning they can do their homework, grow their businesses and enjoy that productivity.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You heard the member for Longman speak about internet nirvana—speaking of Nirvana, perhaps the coalition ought to be all apologies, because of course to get fast broadband access you need a federal government with vision and the ability to deliver. They have shown themselves completely unable to be that federal government.

Australia's federal government should be focused on how to build the infrastructure our country needs for our digital future. Recently, Ros Page, a journalist writing for Choice, said:

Constructing a national broadband network (NBN) is a nation-building project on the scale of freeways and railway. Like most grand schemes, it requires vision and should deliver benefits to consumers into the future.

Unlike the coalition, Labor has a vision for fast broadband access. The previous Labor government's policy of

building a national broadband network was unabashedly ambitious and bold—the sort of vision needed to build a more productive future, promote growth and make sure that everyone gets a chance to share in the benefits. Our vision was for fibre cable to be connected to homes and business premises. We also planned to expand satellite and fixed wireless connections for remote areas. In government, we were delivering on this vision.

The coalition never had this sort of vision for our nation's future. In 2010, the then Leader of the Opposition was suggesting that they would not even go ahead with the National Broadband Network; however, the now Prime Minister knew that they had to have something that looked like an NBN policy, so they came up with the idea of running fibre cables to nodes, claiming that this would cost $29½ billion. According to the conversation, their NBN speeds were to be about 20 times slower than Labor's.

But, after winning the election, they broke their broadband promises, as inadequate as they were—just like they did in all the other areas like health, education and pensions. Instead of the fibre-to-the-node plan, we got a new idea: something called the MTM. It should stand for 'Malcolm Turnbull's Mess' but it stands for multitechnolgy mix. Our new Prime Minister's NBN is mixed technology, not fibre optic cable. It is a second-rate NBN.

Ms Page, who I mentioned before, reported a Q&A with Mark Gregory, an engineering academic at RMIT and a columnist. She asked him:

Do we all really need fibre?

He said:

Yes. We need increased download speeds, less traffic shaping and far better backhaul capacity in Australia to provide improved quality of service for the applications that we use now and into the future.

And she asked:

Should the FTTP NBN use existing networks to save on cost—

as seems to be the plan under the Turnbull NBN. He said:

This should only be an interim measure while FTTP is being built. It could utilise fibre networks that go to dwellings …

The point was it should be an interim measure, because we all know that this is a second-rate NBN and what people really want is fibre.

So this Malcolm Turnbull's Mess NBN is a second-rate NBN and it costs more than Labor's plan. As I said, before the election, the now Prime Minister promised the NBN would cost $29.5 billion. After the election, he said $41 billion. Now he is saying $56 billion. That is almost double the amount in his original promise.

And the now Prime Minister's original commitment was that everyone would have 25 megabits per second by the end of 2016. Now that timeframe has more than doubled to the end of 2020, and yet, as The Conversation has recorded, demand for broadband has grown at about 30 to 40 per cent per year. The Conversation has said:

… it’s likely that domestic broadband domestic customers will be seeking bandwidths of more than 100 Mbps by 2020 and about 1 Gbps by 2035.

So this second-rate NBN that this government said it was going to try to deliver is completely inadequate for the needs of Australia's future.

And it is not a surprise, because, unfortunately, this Prime Minister, who was also the communications minister under this government, is completely unable to deliver the NBN that this country needs. His incompetence in the portfolio has been remarked upon widely within the sector and within the community. In fact, in his article entitled 'Malcolm Turnbull was Australia's worst ever Communications Minister', published on Monday of this week, Renai Le May of media outlet Delimiter said—

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What's it called?

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is called 'Malcolm Turnbull was Australia's worst ever Communications Minister'—what a great title for an article! He said:

He might be charismatic, he might be popular, and pretty shortly he might be Prime Minister.

That turned out to be right. This was Monday.

But when it comes to technology policy, Malcolm Turnbull has been a disaster. The Member for Wentworth will be remembered as Australia’s worst ever Communications Minister …

And isn't that true? He was a hopeless communications minister. (Time expired)

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

It is a great opportunity to come and speak in the House today about the NBN and this MPI. I think the first thing you have got to remember is how the NBN came into being. You talk about cloud computing; well, this is really a plan right out of the clouds—literally. It started off as a plan from two government ministers—Minister Conroy and Prime Minister Rudd—on the VIP. They managed in 2010 to get a plan up to spend $4½ billion, and everyone was going to get a Rolls-Royce internet service. It was not their final cost of just under $30 billion; they sold it first in 2010 at $4½ billion, and you know what it is costing now.

Minister Conroy promised everyone a Rolls-Royce, but you were lucky to get a Hyundai. Look at the figures. Only two per cent of the Australian potential market was covered after three years and $6 billion. Many areas were serviced, but, when you scratched the surface, the service level was 'zero', which is an obscure way of saying 'nothing'. The Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia were not receiving any activity. The work in Western Australia and Tasmania had ground to a halt. The NBN then was only meeting 17 per cent of their targets. They promised one million users, and they delivered it—in another euphemism, 'passed by'—to 163,000 premises. That was not joined up.

Connections were estimated to cost between $2,200 each to maybe $2,500 each, but it was actually $3,600 before you added in the huge fee they paid to Telstra which meant each connection was costing $4,300. It was almost double what they estimated.

Rural demand was estimated at only 230,000 people. Blind Freddie would have known that that was a ridiculous estimate and it was at least 600,000, so no wonder the international satellite service was totally underwhelmed. Most people now get slower or just as good as dial-up speeds. It is pathetic. Thank goodness we have got a couple of satellites on the way. In fact, the first one is about to launch and, as of 1 October, there will be something circulating up there. Service will come on next year.

Another unique thing that has happened is it is actually making money. When the previous government was administering the system and the NBN had a different board, after all that $6 billion worth of spend they had the princely sum of $17 million income. That is a really amazing spend to get very little income. The latest figures reveal $164 million, and the trajectory as well as the service level are going up. We have got 1.2 million customers, including 283,000 fixed wireless customers.

Just a few words about NBN in the Lyne electorate: everyone knows that there are many areas in the Lyne electorate that are poorly served. That is why I have been beating a path to the now Prime Minister's door, and we have got some major wins on the board. The town of Taree, the beating heart of the Lyne electorate, on the banks of the Manning River with a bustling CBD area, in the previous plan was totally left out. They had a huge doughnut in the middle of their NBN fibre-to-the-premise plan. Thank God we were able to get that changed and now it is being rolled out as we speak. It is also going into Wingham and Cundletown, and there are over 4,000 business and homes already signed up, with another 4,800 homes and construction underway.

In fact, across the whole electorate there are 14,700 premises that can ring up now and ask to be connected to a service. In the rollout plan that has been announced for there will be another 22,000 premises. That is fantastic. I will mention a few of those areas. Just up the road from where I live in Wauchope there is Beechwood and King Creek. Then there is Black Head, Diamond Beach, Hallidays Point, Nabiac, Fernbank Creek, Riverside and Thrumster. And—hallelujah!—it is coming into Port Macquarie. We were not even on the radar of the previous plan for 10 years. This is the biggest commercial centre in the electorate, and it was not even covered. This is a great improvement. I commend the current Prime Minister's management of the NBN. It is a vast improvement.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The discussion is now concluded.