Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion from the member for Robertson in relation to the NBN rollout. It asks the House to place on record that:

(a) under the previous Government, at the time of the last election just 2 per cent of premises across Australia could access the National Broadband Network (NBN); and

(b) since the election the NBN rollout has ramped up significantly and today around one in ten premises can access the NBN and under the NBN's new Corporate Plan, by June 2018, three in four premises will have access to the NBN;

(2) notes that:

(a) the NBN's 2016-2018 Corporate Plan reveals that a full fibre to the premises (FTTP) NBN could not be completed until 2026 at the earliest and could be as late as 2028—six to eight years later than the current Government's plan; and

(b) the NBN 2016-2018 Corporate Plan reveals that a full FTTP NBN would cost between $20 and $30 billion dollars more than the current Government's plan; and

(3) recognises that it is essential to deliver fast broadband to Australians sooner—not force Australians with no or poor broadband to wait more than a decade for the NBN.

The NBN was one of Labor's biggest and most expensive failures. The rollout under Labor was slow and costly. As the member for Robertson has said, at the time of the last election just two per cent of premises across Australia could access the NBN. Since the coalition came to government, the NBN rollout has ramped up. Today, one in 10 premises around Australia can access the NBN, including 15,000 homes in my electorate of Petrie, in areas like Aspley, Carseldine, Bridgeman Downs and Fitzgibbon, and a lot of new homes up in Mango Hill, North Lake and other premises surrounding. Our plan has always been to ensure people are able to access better broadband sooner and much more affordably.

I turn to the NBN's 2016-18 corporate plan. In October last year, I was pleased to see that most of the suburbs in my electorate had been prioritised for an NBN rollout. In fact, for every single household in my electorate, an NBN rollout will happen a year sooner than Labor's 2024 completion date. I think it is particularly important, given the federal coalition government's national innovation and science agenda, that it is rolled out as soon as possible. On the Brisbane City Council side of my electorate the internet connection does seem to be better than parts of the Moreton Bay area, regardless of whether you have NBN. That is why I have been fighting hard to make sure areas such as North Lakes, Mango Hill, Griffin and Rothwell are constructed as soon as possible. I am very pleased to re-announce today that construction will begin in those areas in July 2016 for some 5,020 priority premises. I want to thank the Prime Minister and the current minister for their help in ensuring North Lakes and Mango Hill have been prioritised, because as a new, high-growth area it has been lacking.

In the Redcliffe peninsula, many locals are already being contacted by nbn asking if they want to take in the HFC trial, which is the cable TV network. This was due to be scrapped by the previous government. But we have ensured that this can be utilised, still getting a superfast 100 megabits per second when most people are on 10. This is a great win for taxpayers. This will not just benefit people in the Redcliffe peninsula; it will also benefit people in Bald Hills, Bracken Ridge and Fitzgibbon, where construction will start in the second half of 2017. In Rothwell, NBN construction will start on priority homes by July this year. In Aspley, Bridgeman Downs and Carseldine more homes will begin in July 2017, and NBN construction will also begin in Deception Bay. In Burpengary East, construction will start on some 1,960 priority premises in July 2016. This means it will be delivered throughout Petrie some six to eight years earlier than it would have been under Labor. That is good news for people living locally.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I visited Tiny Legends childcare centre in the suburb of Brighton with Labor's communications spokesman, Jason Clare. Tiny Legends is one of the very many businesses across Lilley, and right across our country, that are attempting to adapt to and take advantage of opportunities in the digital economy. They are having great difficulty doing that. They have been frustrated by a poor internet service and the failure of the Turnbull government to deliver the NBN by the end of 2016 as they promised before the election.

This is an area that is changing dramatically. Many new families are moving into the area and many new home-based businesses are in the area. But the communications infrastructure is completely inadequate. That is why this area was a prime target for Labor's NBN and most particularly for fibre. The area has a dramatically increasing demand because of young families with their kids, home based businesses and other businesses like Tiny Legends.

Tiny Legends has seen their broadband quality deteriorate over the past several years to the point where their internet ceases to work from 9 am onwards. So they have great difficulty putting in place innovative ideas for their business such as a digital child check-in or updates to the parents during the day so parents can see what is happening with their children at play and in sleep. What they are forced to do at Tiny Legends is to use a hot spot. That is a less reliable mobile hotspot for their internet. That is how bad it is because the infrastructure has not been upgraded as it would have been through Labor's NBN by the end of this year. Of course by using their mobile phones, which are also difficult to use, it is four times as expensive for them. Under Labor, 80 per cent of homes in Lilley would have been connected to the NBN by July last year. Now, under the Liberals, less than half of Lilley has the NBN installed and many suburbs, such as Brighton, will not receive the Liberals' second-rate NBN until at least late 2017.

The rollout of the NBN, under its former minister, Mr Turnbull, has been a shambles. What we are now seeing is a second-rate NBN. We are now seeing the government going back to copper and purchasing copper. We are now seeing in many areas of the country the use of that copper by the NBN, and in many homes it is simply not working. And that fate may well await many in my electorate of Lilley. So we have a second-rate NBN at double the cost and four years behind schedule.

What we are seeing under the Liberals is what we are seeing across so many other areas of public policy. What is going to emerge now—again—is a digital divide, where large parts of the country will not have access to the quality universal service which fibre to the premise would have delivered. All Australians would have had an equal opportunity to access this innovative technology which empowers people in their lives and in their businesses. When it comes to the digital divide or this government's attack on penalty rates, or what it is doing on Medicare or how it is not adopting Gonski, this government does not defend battlers, it creates them. This government sets out to divide in its policies. It does not believe in universal access.

This Prime Minister, like former Prime Minister Abbott, believes in his heart that inequality is good for a country. The government sees it as an economic good that somehow drives competition and productivity. Of course, if you believe that, the logic that flows from that in terms of economics is that the well-to-do and the wealthy do far better and a lot of other people get left behind. And that is what is happening in terms of this digital divide. People across the suburbs with their home based businesses—people in small businesses across my electorate and so many others, including the electorate of Petrie—are being left behind by the decision of this government to give to most people a second-rate service. This will open up the digital divide across the community.

In opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, just like former Prime Minister Abbott, knew that he could not really tell us what the coalition were going to do in government because if the people knew what they were going to do they would not have voted for them. So they covered up their plans for the NBN, they covered up their plans for Medicare, they covered up their plans for Gonski and they covered up their plans for industrial relations because they believe in their hearts that we have a society which should be divided. (Time expired)

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the NBN rollout. Under the previous government, at the time of the last election, just two per cent of premises across Australia could access the National Broadband Network. Since the election, the NBN rollout has ramped up significantly, and today around one in 10 premises can access the NBN and, under nbn's new corporate plan, by June 2018, three in four premises will have access to the NBN.

Under the coalition government, the electorate of Macquarie will have access to the NBN more than six to seven years earlier than under Labor's plan. As of this month, premises with NBN services available in the electorate of Macquarie number around 12,500. Around 8,860 premises in the electorate have an active NBN service. NBN build, I am pleased to say, is underway for an additional 15,800 premises in Macquarie, and I am advocating very strongly for those who are yet to be listed on the build to be included as soon as possible.

It was pleasing to announce this month that some 3,400 premises in Katoomba are a step closer to getting access to the NBN with construction of the fixed line network now underway. This section of the rollout, and the entire rollout as a whole, is an important milestone for telecommunications for the people of my electorate, providing greater certainty for homes and businesses who now have, or will soon have, access to superfast broadband.

For Katoomba, final designs are now complete, meaning that in coming weeks, nbn co subcontractors will be seen in the streets, laying out fibre and building cabinets to house the electronics needed to supply superfast broadband.

The nbn plan in the Macquarie electorate is being consistently rolled out: in December last year, construction commenced for some 3,700 premises in Wentworth Falls and Leura. The rollout is all part of the coalition government's ongoing reform of the NBN to ensure that superfast broadband can be rolled out quickly, more cost effectively and with minimal inconvenience to households. Speeds on the new network will easily support high-definition streaming on multiple devices at one time.

The coalition government recognises that consumers want fast broadband as soon as possible. All services over the NBN will allow families to stream movies, surf the web and complete schoolwork online—all at one time—as well as assist people who have home businesses. Businesses will also benefit from the vastly high bandwidth available.

The coalition has cleaned up the NBN mess left by those opposite—Labor—which would have left many Australians waiting a decade for better broadband services. Rollout of the NBN under Labor was slow and costly, plagued with chaos and misinformation—one of the most poorly managed projects in the history of the Commonwealth.

Two years ago, under Labor, only 49,000 users were on the fixed network. The nbn's 2016-18 corporate plan reveals that full fibre to the premises could not be completed until 2026 at the earliest and could be as late as 2028—six to eight years later than the government's plan.

The plan also revealed that a full FTTP NBN would cost between $20 to $30 billion dollars more than the current government's plan, and that it is essential to deliver fast broadband to Australians sooner, not force Australians with no or poor broadband to wait more than a decade for the NBN. At the last election, there were only 260,000 premises in fixed line areas that were passed by the NBN. Today that figure is more than 1.3 million.

Many residents in the Blue Mountains, in particular, have had concerns that they would not have access to the NBN. I have strongly advocated for the electorate, written to the CEO of nbn and made representations to the minister directly to ensure they were included in the rollout as soon as possible. I have been working on and advocating for all communication needs for residents in the Macquarie electorate.

The three-year accelerated nbn plan announced in October last year is exciting news for around 39,570 homes and businesses in the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains. In total more than 9.5 million homes across Australia will be able to access a service while construction is underway.

Under a coalition government, by using the existing copper and cable infrastructure running into homes, nbn can complete the network far sooner and at a dramatically lower cost to taxpayers. nbn is working to provide fast internet to every home and business in Australia by 2020.

I also look forward to the satellite Sky Muster servicing the more rural and regional parts of the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains, which is expected to be launched at the end of April this year, with services connecting from May.

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

This morning we got another piece of correspondence.

Please help—

said Steve Burford.

We live in Morley and our internet is so poor. Very slow speeds and about 10 to 20 drop-outs per day. After a support call with iinet for 9 months, nothing can be done. Morley exchange is not even on the non plan yet. My girlfriend is on track to fail her online uni course and it's putting unnecessary stress in an already stressful life. We are literally looking to move house to fix this. In this day and age it's on par with living in a house without electricity. We are 9 km from the cbd how can we still have such poor internet.

The reason very clearly is that we have the Turnbull government in place and we have 'fraudband' being not delivered around our community. We know that the Morley exchange—the area where Steve's house is—was on the rollout; it was on the Labor Party rollout plan that was put in place in 2013. The Telstra exchange was upgraded and it should have had a proper broadband link by now. Instead of us getting our second-rate system by the end of 2016, which was the electoral promise, what we actually had from the Turnbull government was a lengthy delay of 18 months where nothing happened. The only thing going on was those projects initiated under Labor—fibre to the premises was rolled out, and yet we had a hiatus of some 18 months while we looked at putting in a second-rate system. So people like Steve and his girlfriend are living, effectively, in a non-broadband environment where their access to the internet is not sufficient for them to do the most basic tasks, in particular using it to study online courses.

I want to pick up a point that was made by our shadow minister the other day, and it is the decision by AT&T, the giant American telecommunications company, to go back and redo those areas where it had fibre to the node and deliver fibre to the premises. They have announced that it is going to actually retrofit 21 cities across America in this way. They see that they need to offer speeds of one gigabyte. What we are talking about here with 'fraudband' is 25 megabytes. How do we think that what we are putting in place now is going to be anywhere near adequate when those countries that we will be competing with, countries that we are entering into free trade agreements with, are going to be operating on a gigabyte? If we are lucky, if the government ever get 'fraudband' underway, all we are going to be getting is 25 megabytes. It is completely pathetic.

I was interested to see what vice-president Lori Lee said when AT&T made the announcement of the fibre-to-the-premises plan. She said, 'We're delivering advanced services that offer consumers and small businesses the ability to do more faster, will help communities create the new wave of innovation and will encourage economic development.' This is the fundamental farce of what we are seeing with the Prime Minister. We have a Prime Minister who talks about the centrality of innovation to our economic future, yet at the core of his government's program is a scheme to introduce, one day, some time over the next five to six years, a plan that is going to lock us into the 20th century, when all of our rivals in the United States, in Japan, in Korea, in Singapore and in China are going to be having speeds 10 times that which we are being offered in Australia.

This is a really central problem to the Prime Minister's supposed innovation agenda. You cannot innovate, you cannot have small business innovate, you cannot have decentralisation and you cannot have people in small communities coming up with great competitive plans when they are hamstrung by 20th century technology. (Time expired)

Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I never actually noticed before that the previous speaker had a speech impediment, but 'fraudband' is probably the accurate descriptor for what the former Labor government tried to put in place. Gilmore is one of the electorates where the NBN has for some time been an integral part of the infrastructure build. Our community was excited and thrilled that our region was one of the initial sites under the last government, but planning for such a project really needs to be very thorough and very meticulous. Is it any wonder that the Labor government's delivery schedule was overshadowed by extensive delays and cost blow-outs when it chose a place such as Kiama for an underground connection without doing a geological study first? The cost was horrendous because Kiama is built on basalt. In the early days, bluestone quarrying was the major local industry, so it is no wonder their drills broke, their times went out and the cost blew out.

Is it any wonder that by 2013, only two per cent of the premises across Australia could access the NBN? There was not even technology in place to connect multidwelling properties. The coalition quickly resolved this issue and then developed a more affordable and efficient connection plan. In the first three years of NBN connection under Labor, only 51,000 premises were connected. By the end of 2015, just two years later, the coalition government had over 700,000 premises able to connect. The most recent update with NBN multimixed technology is that 1.7 million homes and businesses are now able to connect. This accelerated rollout will ensure that regional and remote regions get NBN connectivity faster and much more affordably. By late 2018, it is predicted that we will have 75 per cent coverage across Australia for homes and business premises. The construction is, in fact, underway.

Based on our rollout schedules for our current boundaries, Gilmore will be well above the national rollout figure, with 89 per cent of our homes and business premises able to connect to the NBN—significantly higher than the national average. As with all new types of technologies, there can be glitches and hiccups, and our community members are encouraged to contact my office with any such incidences. We endeavour to resolve these as quickly as possible, working closely with the provider services and the NBN regional managers. We recognise that consumers, particularly in the regions, need fast NBN for education, for research and, more recently, for health training and conferencing and even, at times, for diagnosing and treatment strategies. While negotiating some of the aspects of the NBN rollout, it was identified that a skilled workforce was going to be required. The NBN co-developed a Career Start campaign to begin the recruitment and training process. This is part of a $40 million industry development program that is aimed at stimulating employment.

In my electorate office, we receive a number of emails requiring assistance, some erroneously quoting earlier rollout schedules, completion dates and a smaller budget expenditure. We carefully explain that while on paper this may have been the case, it actually is not worth the paper it was printed on. Labor's schedule was late on delivery, with only 51,000 premises completed by September 2013, after three years of media hype and social media fakery. The costs were extraordinary. The NBN's 2016-18 corporate plan reveals that a full fibre-to-the premise strategy would not have been completed until 2026 or possibly 2028, a good six to eight years later than our current strategy. In addition, the cost estimates are between $20 million and $30 million more than our current plan.

Australians are amongst the most tech savvy consumers in the world. As I understand it, we have the highest per capita ownership across the world of mobile phones, computers, laptops, iPads and other portable devices. Each one of those puts a drag demand on available services. We absolutely need to get this connectivity out there as soon as possible. And, keep in mind, we are also one of the most innovative technology nations in the world. The current technology is not the panacea for NBN. Fibre is not the end point of technology connectivity; it is merely an evolutionary stage. So why on earth would we, as a nation, waste the $20 million to $30 million on a technology that, within a decade, is most likely to be outdated? It is far better to use a mix to get more Australians connected more quickly, more efficiently and with more of a cost-benefit application that will enable us to save the taxpayer dollars so we can put in the new technology at a later date.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to update the parliament regarding the rollout of the National Broadband Network in our community of Kingsford Smith, because it has become a bit of a joke and a disaster. Under Labor's original plan, the National Broadband Network was to be rolled out in Kingsford Smith from 1 July 2015. The rollout was to start in the suburbs of Kensington and Kingsford and gradually over the course of a couple of years work its way east and south to deliver all residents in our community access to a world-class fibre optic to the premises National Broadband Network. Under our plan, Labor was to begin that process on 1 July 2015—a process which would have delivered speeds of up to 100 megabits per second for residents and businesses across our community.

When the Abbott-Turnbull government came to office, what did they do to our community? They stopped the rollout of the NBN in our community and completely took Kingsford Smith off the rollout map. There are 75,210 premises in our community that are eligible to be connected to the National Broadband Network. Do you know how many premises have been connected to the Turnbull government's fibre-to-the-node system? Not one; zero premises in Kingsford Smith have been connected to the fibre-to-the-node network. All this government has managed so far is some fibre to the basement to a handful of apartments. According to the government's rollout plan, not a single existing stand-alone house in Kingsford Smith will get this government's second-rate NBN by 2016, as promised by this government.

What a joke this has become for our community when it comes to rolling out the NBN! And it is a second-rate system. Labor was planning fibre to the premises because that is world class; that is the leading technology. Instead, this government is rolling out second-rate technology, fibre to the node, and then asking consumers to access that via the outdated copper network in their streets. The copper network was installed before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. That is how old this system is. But this government expects Australians to connect their businesses and their homes through this second-rate telecommunications network.

I will read some of the testimonials from people who have been connected under the Turnbull government's fibre-to-the-node system, because I think they perfectly highlight what this government is doing in terms of delivering a second-rate system. Mr Taylor, from Gorokan on the Central Coast of New South Wales, says:

At night, the new FTTN National Broadband Network service is now considerably slower than my previous ADSL service … the significant reduction in speed is unacceptable …

Mr Gratton, from Newcastle, says:

It almost makes me pine for the ADSL2+ connection that I had … I sincerely hope that the farce that the NBN roll-out has become will end soon.

That is what people are saying about the government's NBN system of fibre to the node. That is a preview for people in Kingsford Smith. This is the sort of system that the government is trying to saddle our community with. This is what the government has in store for the people of Kingsford Smith. The government plans to saddle our community with a second-rate telecommunications system that will cost consumers more and, in some cases, will be slower than their current ADSL2 service.

Overall, this system that the current government has put in place has become somewhat of a disaster. There is a clear difference between what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he would deliver and what is actually being delivered in the Australian community. The Prime Minister said that the overall cost of his system would be $29.5 billion. It is actually costing $56 billion. The government has doubled the cost of the rollout. The Prime Minister said that the cost of fibre to the node per home would be $600. The actual cost is $1,600. The Prime Minister said that it would cost $55 million to fix up the copper network. It is actually costing Australian taxpayers $641 million to fix the copper network. John Howard sold the copper network to Telstra, and what does this Prime Minister do? He buys it back to install outdated technology—and it is costing double what he said it would cost. When it comes to the NBN, this government has completely ballsed it up and it is costing our community and consumers much more than they ever thought it would.

Debate adjourned.