Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to update the House on a series of NBN listening posts that I have been holding across my electorate in the recent months. We have an outstanding story to tell about the rollout of superfast broadband in my electorate of Robertson, because we have more than 67,000 premises either ready for service, under construction or in the rollout plan up to December next year. The latest three-year plan shows that the NBN is powering ahead, with 9½ million premises to either be connected or have work under construction in Australia. Certainly, the electorate of Robertson is testament to that. We have shaved years off construction time while still delivering superfast broadband of at least 50 megabits per second to 90 per cent of the fixed-line footprint.

To tell this story we have been holding a series of listening posts, 22 in total, starting at Umina Beach in August earlier this year. We are going right through until we reach Niagara Park in January. More recently, we have been at Spencer, Kincumber, Terrigal, Bensville and Mangrove Mountain. It has been fantastic to spend time, in particular, with our Mangrove Mountain and district communities west of the M1 in recent weeks, and to hear from local residents about what really matters to them.

I met with residents from Spencer and surrounding suburbs such as Gunderman and Wendoree Park on Saturday at the Spencer wharf. It was a beautiful day. We worked closely with the Spencer and Districts Progress Association to organise the posts. I really want to give special thanks in particular to the president, Brad Maisey; secretary, Monique Lisa; treasurer, Janet Ray; and association member Robyn Downham. Lack of communications infrastructure was a key issue that residents raised. Residents told me that there is either little or no mobile coverage in Spencer, and they also said that there is limited access to what is pretty slow internet. I heard stories like Antonio's, a Gunderman resident who recently moved from Sydney after living in Lane Cove for the last 10 years. While his family loves the country change and he gets to work in the Sydney CBD—his job is quite flexible and allows him the freedom to work from home whenever he needs to, Antonio said his family is limited to mobile 3G broadband, which he said actually does not work very well without an external antenna mounted on the roof of the house and, even with that antenna attached, reception is quite poor. There is also a lack of emergency support. This was highlighted during the storms that hit our region in April when the town of Spencer was isolated with no power, sewerage or running water.

At our listening post on Saturday, I committed to join with residents of Spencer and surrounding suburbs for a fight for better communications infrastructure for the people of this region. The nbn co advises that much of the region is expected to be covered by the satellite which was recently launched. I am pleased to see that NBN is working on having new commercial satellite services during the first half of next year, after testing and trials of the satellite have been completed. It gives me great pleasure to continue to fight for residents of Spencer and districts, and also to invite people to our listening posts in Kulnura and Peats Ridge next week.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded.