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 second rate NBN and his cuts to innovation undermining the jobs of the future.

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

In his first press conference as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull said that he wanted to take the same approach to governing Australia as he did to the NBN. That statement alone should fill the people of Australia with dread. There is a myth in this place perpetuated by Liberal MPs and National Party MPs that somehow the Prime Minister has fixed the NBN. That is a myth and we exposed some of that in question time today. This afternoon, I want to take you through a catalogue of more of the mistakes that the Prime Minister has made on the NBN, the litany of promises that he has broken. The first and the biggest of those is cost.

As we learned in question time today, the NBN is now double what the Prime Minister said it would be. He promised before the last election that he could build a second-rate version of the NBN for $29½ billion. That has now jumped to $56 billion. We got the corporate plan a couple of weeks ago and it says it is not $29½ billion, that it has jumped to $56 billion. In other words, it has almost doubled what the Prime Minister promised. Now, people usually do not get promoted for things like that. You do not get promoted for blowing your budget by 100 per cent. But that is what has happened here, that is what has happened with this Prime Minister.

The other big thing that he promised and that he has now broken is that he could build the NBN, a second-rate version of the NBN, by the end of next year. He promised that everyone in Australia would have access to 25 megabits per second by the end of 2016. That has blown out as well, and we heard the Prime Minister almost admit that in question time today. Instead of three years to give everybody access to the NBN, it will now be seven years. In other words, the time to build it has more than doubled. So the cost has doubled and the time to build the NBN has more than doubled. There are lots of other mistakes and broken promises.

The Prime Minister promised that the rate of return he would deliver on the NBN would be 5.3 per cent. That is now down to as little as 2.7 per cent. He also promised that Australians with the worst broadband across the country would get the NBN first. Last week, the government released their three-year rollout plan for the NBN and that shows the 7½ million homes and businesses they say will get the NBN in the next three years. But what it also reveals is this: there are almost half a million homes, 450,000 homes, that have been identified by this government as having the worst broadband in the country that are still not on the list, that will not get it first, that will get it last. They will not get the NBN by 2018; it will be more like 2019 or 2020. It is just broken promise after broken promise—breaking promises like plates at a Greek wedding.

The extraordinary irony in all of this is that Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister, broke all these promises, doubled the deficit and got the sack. Malcolm Turnbull, the new Prime Minister, has also broken a raft of promises, doubled the cost of the NBN, doubled the time that it will take to build it, halved the rate of return on it and more than halved the speed that people will get, and he got promoted.

In question time today ,the Prime Minister talked about what is happening in other parts of the world. But what he did not mention is this: AT&T and Verizon, the two big telcos in the United States, are rolling out more fibre. Verizon, the second biggest telco in the United States, is shutting down their whole copper network and replacing it with fibre. In our region, South Korea, Japan and Singapore all have fibre networks. Even across the ditch in New Zealand, they are not rolling out fibre to the node anymore; there are rolling out fibre to the premises.

Two years ago, we were ranked 30th in the world for broadband speed. We are now ranked 47th in the world for broadband speed. We are behind most of Asia, behind most of Europe, behind the United States and behind Canada. We are even behind Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Poland. They are all ahead of us. The world is changing and so are we, though we are changing back, from fibre to copper.

I mentioned the three-year rollout plan that was released on Friday. Watch this, Mr Speaker, because this is another broken promise in the making. To understand why I think this is a broken promise, you only have to look at what it looks like on a graph. If you look at this graph for the rollout plan I am holding, you can see that for the next 12 months it is smooth and low, right up until the next election! Then, suddenly, it ramps up at this incredible speed, a ramp that Evel Knievel could not jump!

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

What about Dale Buggins?

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

Or Dale Buggins, for that matter. To understand exactly how big this ramp is, the government are saying that they can deliver the NBN to more than half of Australia in just two years. More than half of Australia, apparently, is going to get the NBN in just two years if you vote for Malcolm Turnbull. It is not realistic. It is not achievable. It is not just me who is saying that; even the new minister, Mitch Fifield, has described it as 'ambitious'. But, more importantly, Ziggy Switkowski, the chairman of nbn co, has described it as 'heroic'. The Australian Financial Review from Monday, 19 October, says:

National Broadband Network chairman Ziggy Switkowski has warned that it will take a 'heroic' effort for the project to be made available to more than 11 million homes before 2020 …

So you have the minister who says it is 'ambitious', you have the chairman who says it is 'heroic' and leaked documents from nbn co this week show that an internal memo went round to staff last week saying they are already behind schedule. They have not even hit the ramp-up yet!

Remember that all of this depends on the state of the copper. As the corporate plan revealed on page 51only a couple of weeks ago, they still do not know what the quality of the copper is. Page 51 says:

The quality of this network is not fully known.

They have bought back the old copper network that John Howard sold last century and they still do not know how bad it is. They call this due diligence!

Worse than that, contractors I have spoken to, asking how bad the copper network is, have told me that nbn's working assumption is that 10 per cent of the copper pairs in the fibre-to-the-node areas will need to be fixed. But in places like Newcastle and the Central Coast, closer to 90 per cent of the copper pairs have needed work. In some places, the copper was so bad that they had to replace old copper with new copper. One contractor told me that in Newcastle and on the Central Coast 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the copper lines are having lengths replaced.

This is just the tip of the iceberg because, as we found out in estimates last night, nbn has ordered more copper . It has ordered 1.8 million metres of copper. To put it another way, it has ordered 1,800 kilometres of copper. That is enough copper to connect Australia to New Zealand! The Prime Minister says that John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, is his role model. But what is John Key doing? He is not rolling out fibre to the node. He is not rolling out more copper. He is rolling out fibre to the premises. What are we doing? We are going back to the node.

Hollywood could not have written a script like this. We have been told that today, 21 October 2015, is Back to the Future day—the day Michael J Fox's character, Marty McFly, landed in the future. What did Hollywood imagine he would find? It imagined flying cars and flying skateboards. What do we have instead? We have a government that is buying almost 2,000 kilometres of copper.

It is a myth that this Prime Minister has fixed the NBN. He did not become Prime Minister because of what he has done on the NBN; he became Prime Minister in spite of it. He has doubled what he said it would cost. He has doubled the time it will take and halved the internal rate of return on this project as well. Now we find out that he has bought almost 2,000 kilometres of copper. It is just appalling. The idea that he has fixed the NBN is just a myth. (Time expired)

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The relevant movie, I would suggest, is not Back to the Future but Groundhog Day, because we seem to consistently have the shadow minister having the chutzpah to stand up here on this issue despite being from the party which produced a car crash when it came to the NBN. He is like the man at the car crash who is berating the emergency services when they turn up to fix his car for not fixing it quickly enough. Let's be clear: the reason that the NBN presented a policy challenge to an incoming Abbott and now Turnbull government is that we inherited one of the most disastrous pieces of public policy execution in the history of the Commonwealth.

Let's just remind ourselves of a few key facts that demonstrate the first proposition I want to articulate this afternoon, which is that Labor's NBN under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government was hopelessly mismanaged and poorly planned. We had a sweeping but ill-conceived promise from Messrs Rudd, Conroy, Tanner and Swan in April 2009 that it was going to be a 100-megabit-per-second network and it was going to cost $43 billion. According to the then Prime Minister, it was going to be such a great investment that they were going to fund it through Aussie infrastructure bonds and he urged mums and dads to go out and invest in these bonds, one of the most woefully inappropriate, negligent pieces of financial advice that has ever been given.

We were told at the time that there was still going to be substantial private sector investment. We then had the implementation study commissioned from McKinsey and KPMG. It came back nearly a year later. The report was released the Sunday before the budget in an attempt to disguise it from public scrutiny. That report said, 'There is no prospect of the private sector touching this with a barge pole,' and it suddenly turned out that the Commonwealth was going to have to pay for the whole thing.

What did those opposite achieve by the time they left government in September 2013? They achieved a woeful performance. After 4½ years, how many Australians were in a position to connect to the NBN if they chose to do so? Barely over 300,000 premises were in that position after 4½ years. Labor flailed around in the most incompetent and disorganised fashion when it came to the NBN. There was virtually nobody on the board who had any experience in the telecommunications industry and private sector. Do not even ask the question of whether there was anybody in the Labor Party who had any experience in the private sector and the telecommunications industry. That would be a futile question.

What we have had from Labor is incompetent execution. The challenge for the incoming Minister for Communications, who is now the Prime Minister, was to turn that around and to turn it into a credible, deliverable, executable and achievable plan. It was to deliver on the rollout and start to get Australians connected to the NBN. The then Minister for Communications, the current Prime Minister, did a magnificent job in dealing with that challenge.

I mentioned before that barely over 300,000 premises could be connected after 4½ years. By the way, those opposite managed to spend over $6 billion in public money during that period. There is nobody who can better the Labor Party when it comes to vaporising public money at a very rapid speed. What have we done in two years? The number of premises that can now connect is 1.32 million. That is nearly four times as many in two years after Labor got to the, frankly, pathetic number of just over 300,000 in 4½ years. It is a mystery why they even thought it was a good idea to bring up this issue in an MPI debate today.

We are not stopping at 1.2 million, because there is an ambitious target to connect 12 million premises. We are quite frank and open with the Australian people about the scale of the challenge. On the opposite side of the chamber they seem to think it is somehow curious that we should be honest and open with the Australian people about how this is an extremely challenging infrastructure project. But it is, and we are seeking to be very open and transparent about that. Every week the rollout numbers are published on the company's website, something that we never saw from the previous government. Their principal interest in the NBN was in securing photo opportunities—and they certainly generated a lot of those—but substantial, tangible and measurable performance demonstrated by what was published on the company's website was nowhere to be seen.

By contrast, last Friday we announced a credible three-year rollout plan under which, by mid-2018, some 7.5 million premises around Australia will either be able to connect or will be in an area where construction has commenced. That is a plan which has been developed by an experienced board and experienced management. Of course, we very largely changed both board and management to make sure we had capable, competent, experienced people—something, bizarrely, Labor never thought to do when they were in government—and we are getting on with the job of delivering the national broadband network.

Let me make a critical point as I come to the third theme I want to mention this afternoon, which is the increasingly hysterical claims we are now getting from the shadow minister. For example, we have this hysterical claim that there is some kind of problem with the copper because NBN has purchased $14 million worth of copper from its supplier, Prysmian. Let me explain some basics about how a telecommunications network works. There are pillars along the streets all around suburban Australia. We are going to install what are called nodes, and they are going to be near, but not exactly next to, the pillars. Therefore, there needs to be a copper connection from the pillar to the node. That is how a fibre-to-the-node network works. That is how a fibre-to-the-node network has always worked. You need to make sure there is a copper connection between the existing pillar and the new node. When you work out the total number of the many thousands of nodes around Australia that need to be connected to the many thousands of pillars, it turns out that that is quite a bit of copper. NBN is buying that copper as part of the ordinary job of delivering this network, consistent with the plan that we have carefully developed and explained to the Australian people.

Let's turn to the even more extraordinary and frankly ludicrous claim from the shadow minister that what we need to do is return to a plan under which NBN will be fibre all the way. On 14 October he said:

… if you vote for the Labor Party at the next election you will be voting for more fibre.

What an interesting suggestion! How has that been received by industry participants? What did the chief executive of M2, one of the major telcos in Australia, have to say about that? He said:

I think any further change in deployment model would be ill-advised … I wouldn't advocate for any change.

That is what the industry said. That is not politicians. That is industry participants in the telecommunications sector. What did the Australian Financial Review have to say about this brilliant new idea from the shadow minister. The Australian Financial Review had this to say:

Labor has no credibility in this area. The NBN as conceived under Rudd Labor turned an important piece of national infrastructure, running to a sensible timetable into a Kevin Rudd vanity project, with no real idea of the costs, that ran to a political schedule. It went from $4.7 billion in 2007, to $42 billion in 2009 to cost at least $56 billion today.

A lack of considered detail bedevilled the NBN under Labor. The fact the party doesn't want to give any details about its new plan—or more accurately, a reinstatement of the old NBN—and not talk about the cost, makes this policy look like the last: an expensive joke.

So it would seem that the new idea from the shadow minister about how Labor is going to deal with the NBN has not been well received by informed stakeholders, and the reason for that is pretty obvious. It is that, while the shadow minister presumed to stand up and complain about the cost of the NBN that the coalition is now rolling out, he neglected to mention that the cause was the chaotic basis on which Labor first introduced the NBN, which we have been left to fix up. He also neglected to acknowledge the obvious point that his plan is going to cost at least $30 billion more. Your objection is the cost of the plan, yet you now stand up and say, 'We are proposing to spend at least $30 billion more.' That is clearly inconsistent. And what about the fact that his plan is going to take six to eight years more to get the NBN rolled out to Australians?

The Turnbull government is getting on with the hard work of delivering an NBN. We do not say it is easy, but we have a credible plan. What we have from the opposition is deluded fantasy.

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

That was fanciful, Minister. On the one hand he complains that they do not have any details of the plan. Yet he can say with some confidence that it is going to take longer and cost more. He has no idea what he is talking about. He has absolutely no basis to make those claims, but he puts it forward because making up stuff is all they are used to doing about the NBN.

For example, today we had the Prime Minister claiming, when it came to the NBN, 'We wanted to think about a different way. We wanted to come up with a better plan. We wanted to come up with a different technological solution.' No. After the coalition had a track record of 19 failed plans and saw the way the public embraced the notion of finally getting a broadband network that would work for them, regardless of whether they were in the city or in the regions, the coalition realised that they had to cuddle up to the NBN. They had to seem like they were supporting the NBN. They finally recognised they could not destroy it in the way that Tony Abbott wanted to. They had to make out like they were the friend of the NBN. So what did they do? The Prime Minister did what he does best. He white-anted the NBN. He made all sorts of claims that he would be able to deliver the NBN better than anyone else, that he could deliver it faster, that he could deliver it cheaper, that he could deliver it more efficiently.

He is the fibre Svengali, the Rasputin of the rollout, because, when you look at every claim and the sweet promises he made before the election, where are they?

He said, for example, 'Twenty-five megabits per second by 2016.' Did he do that? No, he did not. And it only took him a short space of time to announce that he could not do it. He said he would deliver 25 megabits per second by 2016. Did he do it? No. He said he would do it cheaper. Did he do it? No. He said he would do it faster, he would deliver it to us quicker. Did he do it? No.

Mrs Griggs interjecting—

The member for Solomon complains. Member for Solomon, you are the beneficiary of Labor's NBN. You have more premises that have fibre to the premises, courtesy of Labor, than other Liberal electorates will get. There are more Liberal electorates that will fail to get the quality of service that your constituents got, courtesy of Labor, because of your defunct plan. So do not interject on us. You should go to your colleagues and explain to them why they are getting a lesser service than you are getting. So do not pipe up here and say that.

By the way, after that terrific track record—failed to deliver the speed, failed to deliver it cheaper, failed to deliver it on time—look at the quotes are coming in. I will read this one:

So what has Turnbull yet done that should give a conservative heart?

Sure, he’s promising competent economic management, but after the hash he’s made of the National Broadband Network — now even more expensive and more delayed — I need more than a wink and nod.

I wonder who said that? Andrew Bolt. Condemned even by your own over your management of the National Broadband Network. What a disgrace that they are holding up the Prime Minister's mismanagement of the NBN as a sign of things to come—and they are right. What is his answer? Now that the project is being delivered—more expensive, slower, failing to deliver the speeds—what is his answer? When other countries are confronted with the problem of how to modernise their broadband, what do they say? 'We'll use copper'—said no country ever! Singapore—fibre; South Korea—fibre; Japan—fibre; Hong Kong—fibre; New Zealand—fibre. What are we doing? Buying 1,800 kilometres of copper. I know you have discovered start-ups now, but I did not think you were resuscitating the Copperart franchise! I mean, 1,800 kilometres of copper is your answer to modernising the network? You are a joke. People know you are a joke. You are reverting back to form, stuffing up broadband like you did the last time you were in government, with 19 failed plans, making a mess. But the problem is: people in the community pay; the nation will pay. You say you are about innovation yet you have deformed the very platform infrastructure required for people to drive innovation in this country, but you are pretending to be the friend of broadband. It is a disgrace.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to talk about the Prime Minister's first-rate NBN and the innovative jobs for the future, because it was quite evident in question time that the opposition were bowling underarm balls and he was smashing them for six every time, because never before have we actually had a Prime Minister who understands how to build a national broadband network like Malcolm Turnbull does. We are very blessed with his full knowledge of this project.

Regional Australians are innovative, and we need improving communications. Investment in communications does drive productivity—they are right on that—and productivity in country towns. If there is something I know about country people, it is that they really are innovative and they really stand to benefit from communications technology. Of course, the challenge was that there were only five towns in the whole of the electorate of Mallee that were flagged to get anything under Labor's NBN. Labor's initial rollout had towns of under 500 premises getting zip, nothing at all. You want to talk about rolling out an innovation and talk about things that are going to be of benefit, but only five towns in a third of the state of Victoria were going to get it.

Then the five that were flagged to get it had to wait for a little while. They were promised it. It was coming; it was coming. It reminded me of when I was on a date once. I was on a date when I was a young man, with a girl who was going to come to dinner. I will admit to the federal parliament that I was sitting there and waiting, all in anticipation because I had a hot date, and it did not come to fruition. I sat there and it was like the towns in my electorate—they were waiting. They were seeing the press releases but they were not seeing the build.

Then they got a song. What was the song? The song that became famous, the song that became the motto for the Labor NBN, was A Little Less Conversation'a little more action please'. I will not sing it, because I would be doing a disservice to the parliament and I would probably be asked to leave, but that was the thing that defined what Labor did under the NBN. There was a little bit too much conversation and no more action. What we are trying to do is build the NBN. That is what we are doing. If you look across the electorate of Mallee, we are building it. We are not just about ideas. We are about administration. I think that is ultimately what separates people on our side of the parliament from those on the other side of the parliament. It is a great thing to have an idea—do not miss an idea—but it is quite another thing to turn an idea into a reality. That is what we have got under Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, that is what we had under Malcolm Turnbull as Minister for Communications and that is what we have got under Paul Fletcher in his portfolio—capable people who understand what it is to turn an idea into a reality.

Let us have a look at the reality. Remember there were only going to be five towns under the Labor NBN that were going to get it. These are the ones who have got the NBN now: Pomonal, Quantong, Rainbow, Rupanyup, St Arnaud, Stawell, Warracknabeal, Watchem, Wycheproof, Cohuna, Curlwaa, Halls Gap and Koondrook. Let us have a look at some of the others where it is coming: Charlton, Buangor, Cabarita, Culgoa, Irymple, Merbein, Mildura, Nhill, Euston, Robinvale, Swan Hill, Cohuna, Red Cliffs, Horsham, Dimboola, Donald, Warracknabeal, St Arnaud, Ouyen, Kerang, Stawell, Edenhope. These are going to be switched on in the next 12 months. This is going ahead. If you want to compare what is reality to what is a dream, we are delivering the NBN. Let me name a few more: Kerang, Koondrook, Tragowel, Robinvale, Cardross, Irymple, Merbein, Merbein South, Mildura East, Nangiloc, Red Cliffs, Red Cliffs South. The list goes on.

We were only going to get five. Now we are going to have 48,000 houses across the electorate of Mallee that will have NBN. The rest are going to have satellite. We are delivering it. If you vote Labor you will wait longer. If you vote Labor you will pay more. If you vote Labor you will not get any coverage in regional Victoria and certainly not in Mallee. We are the ones delivering it.

A little less conversation, a little more action please is what the electorate asked for. That is exactly what they are getting, under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in the delivery of this program. They know it. That is why you guys are in a whole world of trouble when the next election comes your way.

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

We heard some great words of wisdom from Joe Hockey today. He acknowledged the quality of the NBN. He said this was a great plan that Labor had introduced. He did not go on and explain what happened next—that Malcolm Turnbull recognised it was a great plan as well. But, in order to get it through the Luddite, the former Prime Minister then Leader of the Opposition, he had to produce NBN-light. He had to produce a dumbed down 20th century version—totally rejected around the world—in order to get something up.

He went to that last election promising he would have it all in by 2016. He could not get a substantial amount of this dumbed down version rolled out by then, as our shadow minister has demonstrated, so clearly. He could not deliver on the cost. He also promised that he would be introducing this according to need, that those suburbs and towns and regions that had the lowest speeds and capacity would be the ones where this would be rolled out. That promise has been utterly betrayed in my electorate. We have been following this very closely because we have such diabolically low speeds, even though we are a relatively inner-city seat.

Those speeds on myBroadband, according to our surveys, overstate for many of our suburbs the real performance. We have suburbs like Bedford that get 7.45 megabits per second. That is a D on the myBroadband scale. We have Bayswater, with less, that is also a D. We have Noranda, also with a D. Right down the bottom is Embleton at 2.85 megabits; that is an E. Were any of these suburbs included in the rollout announced last week? Not one of those suburbs was included.

Let us have a look at some of the WA suburbs that were included in the rollout plan. There is Sorrento, which struggles to get by on 21.25 megabits per second with an A rating. We have Alfred Cove, which also gets an A rating. There is Watermans Bay with an A. Poor old Peppermint Grove—a struggling suburb—is getting a B, and Swanbourne is getting a B. They are getting theirs rolled out over the next two years. What is the defining characteristic of all those A and B suburbs? They happen to be in electorates occupied by the blue team. This is not the politics of envy. This is about the Prime Minister keeping his promise to get the NBN to those suburbs that need it first. It is about being fair and not using the ministerial whiteboard to carve up the pie.

I do ask myself: is there a reason other than the electoral fix? I suspect there could be, because the foundation myth of 'Turnbullistan' that we heard about today—that all Telstra's copper is shiny and bright—would be exposed if we went into any of those D and E suburbs to attempt to deliver broadband. We know they cannot even deliver voice services when it rains.

This is the copper network Telstra manager Tony Warren said, back in 2003, was at five minutes to midnight. This is the reality of our copper. Over a decade ago it was on its last legs and now we are pretending it can deliver 21st century download and upload speeds. We know it cannot. That is why you are avoiding so many of those areas that have the lowest speeds in this nation.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The NBN has had a colourful history. We all know that. One colour that comes to mind is red. I say that because we know Stephen Conroy—a former minister, in the former Labor government, who had responsibility for the NBN, at one stage—said all television executives would wear red underpants on their heads if he told them to. I do not know what a psychoanalyst, like Sigmoid Freud, would have said about that. I do not know what underpants on heads means, if you want to use that as an analogy. I do not know what the colour red means either. But it certainly explains some thinking on the way he planned to design the NBN. It caused this government some headaches when the now Prime Minister took over the department.

Everyone in this country wants NBN. Everyone in this country wants fast broadband. It is important for our technological advancement, for our advancement as a commercial nation. Everyone is in agreement with that. We remember, at the very start—God help us—Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy sitting on a plane with a beer coaster defining and designing the program. That was the problem. The problem at the start was: who should deliver this? If you could go back to scratch—and the now Prime Minister has said this—you would tender this to private enterprise. You would tender this to telecommunications companies—to companies that look at this and do this, and that would do it in a cost-efficient way.

Then what would happen is that the government—as we should—would step in and cover areas and regions that were not commercially viable. It should have been done like that, as it is in most countries around the world—most countries around the world do it in exactly that way. But, no: the man who said that television executives should put red underpants on their heads had another thought process. He thought that the whole government should run and design the whole thing.

When the now Prime Minister took it over as the minister, he said that it was complete chaos. Obviously, he has cleaned up the whole department and got nbn running on the best commercial footing that he could. What does that mean? That means that just last Friday we saw the results of that coming to fruition. Residents in my region in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales are very excited because this program is running out into 2020, and already around 10,000 premises in my region have access or can have access to it via the wireless system. Many of them have already connected, which they are very excited about. Also, in around 2017 all my major regional centres will have fibre to the node connected.

Obviously, if you had fibre to the premises you would get faster speeds. No-one denies that. But, again, as a coalition government that always looks at taxpayer money and wants to be as prudent as we can, we are basically going to give a system that is going to run at about 80 to 85 per cent of the speed for about 40 per cent of the cost. That is a good deal. And the vast majority, if not all, of businesses, retail and households are going to be happy with those speeds. But, as we know, money is never a problem for the drunken sailors over there. They just spend it, because it is not theirs. They do not take into account that commercial or financial reality.

Just back to my community: I have been speaking to people this week from locations such as Alstonville and Wollongbar, which are going to be connected in early 2017 with fibre to the node. Evans Head and Coraki are also very excited. I was down there last weekend and they are very happy. Lismore, Ballina and Grafton are all being connected around the 2017 mark. And what is very exciting for us is that fibre to the node works. It works for them. The cost is cheaper already for some major businesses and local council operatives, and for some of my state government colleagues.

We also have the Pacific Highway going through—another major piece of infrastructure—and already we are looking to attract businesses to live and work in our region once this is connected. We will go far and wide around the country to do that. We can now plan this because people now know when this is going to be connected. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta—you are just up the road—the Northern Rivers is the most delightful place to live and work in the country. So we are going to attract more businesses to our region because of this. Thank you.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The story of the nbn in the City of Newcastle could not be more different from the representations by members opposite today. I have pinched myself on a few occasions throughout this debate, just to see whether we were operating in parallel universes or not.

Under the Labor government, the City of Newcastle and my electorate of Newcastle were looking forward to every home and every business being connected to fibre to the premises. That was the promise under Labor. By the end of next year that would have been delivered—every home and every business underway. But, no! We had a change of government and Malcolm Turnbull came forward as our communications minister. And although John Key and Malcolm Turnbull think they are kind of besties now after their long weekend sleepover, their visions for the future could not be further apart. Even New Zealand, as we have heard, has long woken up to the fact that fibre to the premises is the way to go.

I can understand why members opposite are feeling somewhat confused and a little disorientated in this debate, because they have a Prime Minister who was, of course, the Minister for Communications for the couple of years that we are referring to. Now he is the Prime Minister. He has spent a couple of years trying to claw his way into that job. He finally got there and declared, 'I am a running a 21st century government here.' He just forgot to mention that he was utterly reliant on 19th century technology! So we have the 21st century government running with 19th century technology, trying to convince us all that all is well. Well, that is not going down too well in my electorate and I am pretty sure that it is not going down too well in many electorates across Australia.

Who would have thought when the Prime Minister said that he was interested in innovation and the jobs of the future that suddenly coppersmiths would be back as a main job of the future? The fact is that we have areas in a city like Newcastle—the second-oldest city in Australia—that are less than 30 minutes from the CBD and that have no access to broadband services whatsoever. They cannot even get an ADSL connection.

As the member for Perth pointed out, this government said, quite succinctly, that there was to be priority to areas that had poor quality and poor service. But those areas of my electorate had to mount massive community campaigns even to get this now Prime Minister to listen to the needs of their communities, and to get them added back onto a map that they used to be on. They were actually already part of this, getting the real nbn. They had to claw their way back onto this new map to get the second-rate nbn. And they are expected to be somewhat grateful for that nonetheless.

People do want access to high-speed broadband. There is absolutely no doubt about that. People understand very clearly that it is an enabler in our communities. It is the future for so many jobs. But also, right now, it is integral to school education and to people's workplaces. I have told this story on many occasions: I have a woman resident in the suburb of Thornton. She is an aged care nurse who has to put a dongle into her laptop and then climb onto the roof of her house to download the roster to find out what shift she is working on. She is in an area that only recently has been re-added onto the map so she has still got quite a while to wait before she has got any hope of seeing the NBN delivered into her region. Of the small businesses in my electorate, one has relocated to the Central Coast to get access to the big pipe. Another geologist in my region who does work for the mining companies actually has to load their maps onto USB and drive 2½ hours to the mine site because we do not have the technology. Anybody who thinks that is acceptable is living in an unreal world.

Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The NBN is being delivered under the current coalition government despite inheriting Labor's mismanaged and appalling track record on the NBN. We have heard those guys opposite skyping about their achievements but the fact is that, under Labor, around $6.5 billion was spent to deliver broadband to two per cent of premises. At the last election, only 260,000 premises in fixed line areas were passed by the NBN. Today, that figure is more than one million premises that can access the NBN in a fixed line service area. Under Labor, there were only 51,000 users who were on fixed line wireless networks. Today, there are more than 570,000 fixed line subscribers.

An analysis of the all-fibre model showed that under Labor the NBN would not be finished until 2026 at the earliest, with peak funding to cost between $74 billion and $84 billion. This was just reckless and a gross mismanagement of taxpayers' money. Some of my colleagues have already pointed out the fact that an editorial recently in the Australian Financial Reviewsaid 'Labor has no credibility in this area' and then further described Labor's plan for the NBN as 'an expensive joke'—a very expensive joke indeed.

We heard some of those opposite say that they have got poor NBN and have had no broadband for more than a decade. I am sure that you will agree, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Vasta, that is pretty disastrous in the middle of a technological revolution. Innovation and the ability to prosper in the digital economy would suffer under Labor. This is completely and utterly unacceptable and I am glad that, at the last election, Labor's expensive joke was destroyed.

Now in contrast, under the coalition's plan brought to the table, the NBN remains on track to be completed in 2020. This is six to eight years earlier and $30 billion less than what Labor had proposed. This is by no means second-rate as they suggest opposite. This is just how you run economically responsible government and there is no compromise on quality. Under the coalition government's plan, we make use of the existing copper and cable infrastructure running into homes and why wouldn't you? This method means that the NBN can be completed far sooner and for far less taxpayers' money. As I said previously, the coalition is on track and has estimated that the NBN will be accessible or have construction underway to 72,000 homes and businesses by September 2018.

I would like to give a couple of examples from my electorate. The NBN is well and truly underway. My constituents are very happy and they are very excited about the prospects of the completion and of being connected. As at to October 2015 we have: 37,248 premises ready-for-service; 30,354 premises that are serviceable; and 12,646 premises that have been activated across Alawa, Anula, Bayview, Brinkin, Casuarina, Darwin City, Driver, Durack, East Arm, East Point, Eaton, Fannie Bay, Jingili, Karama, Larrakeya, Leanyer, Ludmilla, Lyons, Malak, Marlow Lagoon, Marrara, Moyle, Nakara, Rosebery, Stuart Park, The Gardens, The Narrows, Tiwi, Virginia, Wagaman, Wangury, Woolner, Wulagi and Yarrawonga. There are 10,400 premises where build is underway, cutting across areas such as: Bakewel, Berrimah, Coconut Grove, Coonawarra, Hidden Valley, Holtz, Knuckey Lagoon, Millner, Nightcliff, Pinelands, Rapid Creek, Rosebery and Winnellie.

Those who are already reaping the benefits of their NBN connection have told me of their experience. For example, Vanessa from Bayview told me about the ease with which NBN was connected to her house. She said that she went into a Telstra store and, at the end of that three weeks, she had NBN connected. (Time expired)

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

It is with some envy, to be honest, that I hear these stories from the other side of the chamber about the lavish impact that the NBN is having on households in the electorates of those opposite because the story of my electorate, like the member for Newcastle has described, could not be more different. I want to tell you about a constituent of mine named David, who contacted me in a state of extreme agitation about six months ago. This person is a father of two, is an IT professional and had just moved into a house in Heatherton. He was having trouble with internet connectivity.

He was not complaining because he did not have access to superfast broadband or the NBN. He was not complaining because he did not have access to ADSL2+. He was complaining because he did not have internet access at all. This is an IT professional with two children who were at school, for whom internet is a critical part of their education, and this is a person who does not live in a remote area of the country. This is not someone located in the middle of the desert; this is someone who lives in right in the heart of the second-biggest city in this country. So what we have is a major problem on our hands.

I am glad that the member for Solomon is happy with what has happened with her electorate. I would point out that most of the work that is connecting her constituents to the National Broadband Network happened under Labor. In the two years that the coalition has been in government, not a single additional person has been connected to the NBN in the seat of Hotham. The only people who are connected to the NBN are those in a small section of Springvale South, and they were connected to the NBN under a Labor government.

It is not just individuals in my electorate that are concerned about the really poor state of internet in my area. I received in July a letter from seven municipalities in Melbourne's south-east. Collectively these councils govern $63 billion in economic impact in my city, and they wrote me the most extraordinary letter talking about a study that they have conducted in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne which shows that 85 per cent of these businesses in this region—many of which are high-end manufacturing businesses that are struggling to convert from the old economy to the new economy—are today relying on ADSL2+. This is not the sort of infrastructure and this is not the sort of technology that is going to see us capture the jobs of the future that the Prime Minister speaks about so excitedly.

There is a much broader economic impact. We talk about all of our electorates, but together they add up to Australia. What we know is that this is the Snowy Mountains Scheme of our age. This is the critical piece of infrastructure that we need to invest in to ensure that all of our children are going to be able to flourish in what will be a knowledge economy for developing countries.

Our shadow minister made some really interesting points before, and one of them is this. If there is one thing you take away from the words I say in the chamber today it is that, at the moment, Australia is 44th in the world for internet speed, and we are currently in decline. This puts us behind not just economies that are bigger and more developed than Australia's but behind places like Romania, Russia and Slovakia. So I say again that we can hear all of the exciting platitudes from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, but, when it comes to policy on the ground, we are not seeing the hard yards being done.

There are three quick points that I want to make about the performance of the Prime Minister when he was in the role of communications minister—three enormous disappointments that all Australians should understand when they are beginning to make their assessment of the new Prime Minister. The first point is the cost of the NBN. This person, who is now our Prime Minister, promised that this second-rate NBN would be built for $29.5 billion. He revised those assumptions about six months after he first made that statement, and then, in more recent times, he has revised the cost again to $56 billion. This is the person who, we are being led to believe, talks a big game about his commercial background, but here we have a project that, within a two-year period, he essentially doubled the cost of. In terms of pace, the Prime Minister told us it would be delivered by 2016. That is clearly not going to happen, because all of my electorate would have to be connected over the next year. We are now being told that it will take to 2020 to install this critical piece of infrastructure. The final point is about the quality. Members on the other side need to really understand this: copper and fibre are not the same thing. We heard the member for Solomon say: 'Isn't it great we've been able to deliver it at a lower cost and it is exactly the same product.' Wrong, wrong, wrong. And what I find so frustrating about this is that we will only get one chance to do this, and we are messing up that chance because of this Prime Minister. (Time expired)

Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I represent the electorate of O'Connor which covers roughly one-third of regional Western Australia. I am very proud of my state. We produce about 10 per cent of the nation's GDP. But we do produce 55 per cent of the country's mercantile exports. And all those mercantile exports are produced in the very remote regions of my electorate. If we can review where we were with regard to the NBN in September 2013, in my electorate of O'Connor not one premises had been passed or was planned to be passed by the National Broadband Network. So it is with great delight that I can report to the House today that we now have 6,238 premises that have access to the National Broadband Network. That is a remarkable turnaround in two years, and I congratulate the previous minister for communications, now Prime Minister Turnbull. It has been an extraordinary turnaround and one that I have been very proud to be a part of.

Not only have we got 6,900 premises which are currently able to be connected to the NBN, over the next three years we will have a further 49,640 premises across O'Connor that will be able to connect to the National Broadband Network. That includes the major regional city of Kalgoorlie, where the build will commence in 2016, and the major city of Albany, where the build will begin in 2017.

This is critical infrastructure for a region that produces a lot of the nation's wealth. But the NBN, if I can digress for a moment, is just one part of the communications jigsaw puzzle in my electorate. Of course mobile telephone reception is another big part of that communications jigsaw puzzle. I just want to mention the government's mobile phone black spot program. Under the previous government, while they were prepared to invest $43 billion in the National Broadband Network—which was fine, and I echo the former Treasurer's comments this morning that it is a good concept and a nation-building project that we needed—within that time period, not one single dollar was spent on a mobile phone network. So the communications minister, who was parliamentary secretary at the time, Paul Fletcher, had a program to cover mobile phone black spots worth $100 million. That is not a great deal of money in the scheme of things compared to the National Broadband Network, but, with some very good work by Parliamentary Secretary Fletcher at the time, he has managed to leverage in Western Australia $22 million of federal money into $58 million worth of investment in the mobile phone network, which has resulted in 60 new mobile phone towers in my electorate of O'Connor. So it is a fantastic result once again for the people of O'Connor.

As I became the new member for O'Connor and set up my office and started to have constituents' inquiries come in, it became obvious very early that the people who were being serviced by the interim satellite service were very, very unhappy. This was the interim satellite service set up under the previous NBN administration. They had bought what they thought was capacity for 250,000 customers. By the time we got to 48,000 customers, the capacity was all but used up and the speed had slowed down to, in some cases, worse than dial-up. I have had a consistent and ongoing problem with this satellite service, and I am very pleased to say that the launch of the new satellite, Sky Muster 1, two weeks ago is great news for my electorate. I have 2,300 people on the interim satellite service. O'Connor has the largest number of people on the interim satellite service. It is great news that the satellite is up and is being commissioned. As of February next year, people will be able to transition to that new satellite service. That is great news that I can now pass back to the constituents in my electorate. Not only will the 2,300 who are on the interim satellite service benefit but it is estimated that 5,000 to 7,000 other people will access the satellite service when it is available.

The last thing I want to say is that we have heard a lot of criticism about the fibre-to-the-node technology mix that the government is promoting. I have heard of speeds of up to 90 megabits per second being achieved under the satellite-to-the node system. As a farmer myself and someone who often has capital projects where you are constrained by capital and time, you build a project that you can add on to. Surely, if we build a fibre-to-the-node system, at some later stage in the future we can expand and improve that program as technology moves on.

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

The discussion has concluded.