Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Two years ago this week, on 3 March 2014 I rose in this place and said that Mr Abbott and the Liberals were pulling the plug on the National Broadband Network fibre rollout in my electorate. Well, the result of this decision has been enormous. We have become an electorate of the haves and have-nots. We have already seen people being forced to move away from the electorate purely because they cannot get access to high-speed broadband. Children in my communities do not have access to educational resources and businesses do not have the same connectivity to customers and wholesalers alike.

Two years later, we have a new Prime Minister and a new Minister for Communications. Two years later we are told there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian. I can tell you, two years later there has never been a worse time to be a resident of McEwen, whose hopes were pinned on receiving fast and affordable broadband under the failure that is the Abbott Turnbull government. In suburbs like Mernda and Doreen, there has never been a worse time for a kid studying for a VCE. In places like Sunbury, there has never been a worse time for local businesses trying to compete on the global stage. Why? Because Mr 'There has never been a more exciting time' was the communications minister for two years and is now the Prime Minister. Basically, his only job for two years was to get the NBN right, but it was two years of mismanagement and neglect, two years of spending more time scheming to wrestle the job from the member for Warringah than doing his own job. As we know, with Malcolm it is all about Malcolm.

What does the Prime Minister have to show for his two years of effort? The NBN that Mr Turnbull has left behind is an absolute mess and this bill will go nowhere to actually fixing it. The Prime Minister promised that his second-rate version of the NBN would be rolled out faster and cheaper. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cost of his NBN has just doubled from $29.5 billion to $56 billion. He promised that it would be rolled out to all Australians by the end of 2016. Now that has more than doubled to seven years.

We are told that this bill will enhance the regulatory framework for telecommunications, implementing in part the government's response to the Vertigan panel. Let us have a look at the Vertigan panel and what has been said about its work. The Senate Selection Committee on the NBN put the Vertigan panel's independent cost-benefit analysis under the microscope in 2015 and what they found was concerning, including fatal shortcomings in the analysis. These included the absurdly pessimistic quantification of technical household demand: 15 megabytes per second by 2023. That relied on a study conducted by firm known for its uniquely pessimistic view of broadband demand rather than demand forecasts from reputable firms like CISCO.

The select committee also said, 'Incredibly, the panel inflated nbn co's fibre-operating expenditure assumptions by 180 per cent compared to only 12 per cent for the Malcolm Turnbull mess, despite the low operating costs of fibre compared to legacy technologies.' But the select committee was not alone when it examined the credibility of the report. Telecommunications analyst Chris Coughlan observed that:

It is clear that in commissioning the National Broadband Network reviews the government has carefully selected consultants, analysts and economists that have previously expressed views that support their position.

IBRS analyst Guy Cranswick did not hold back when he described the cost-benefit analysis as 'politically stacked' and the panel of experts as 'full of acolytes and sympathisers' with the coalition government. Professor Graeme Samuel, former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, observed:

Multiple reviews, at vast cost, have been completed, primarily focused on demonstrating that the Labor government’s NBN concept was flawed or at least was less economically viable than that of the Coalition. Unfortunately, much of the review analysis has had a political tarnish which diminishes its value in forward planning for this important infrastructure project.

The select committee concluded:

The Cost-Benefit Analysis is a deeply flawed and overtly political document. It is not credible and is not a reliable basis upon which to make decisions about the NBN.

Since the select committee conducted its analysis of the Vertigan panel's cost-benefit analysis, developments have borne out its conclusion.

The Vertigan panel based its cost assumptions for the government's NBN on the cost models developed by nbn co for the 2013 strategic review. These cost models have proven to be hopelessly wrong, as the cost of the government's second-rate NBN has blown out from the $41 billion assumed in the December 2013 strategic review to the up to $56 billion assumed in nbn co's August 2015 Corporate Plan 2016. Malcolm Turnbull's assumptions in the strategic review are not even close. When he released the strategic review, he said it was 'the most thorough and objective analysis of the NBN ever provided to Australians.' He also said:

Importantly, all forecasts in the Strategic Review have been arrived at independently by NBN Co and, in the view of the company and its expert advisors, are both conservative and achievable.

We know this Prime Minister likes to talk—he will not give you a three-word slogan, but he will punish you with a 5,000 word essay—but, when it comes to action, he has a problem: he cannot walk the talk.

We know that this bill is on some very, very rocky foundations—foundations built when this Prime Minister was in charge of the NBN. Let us look at the foundations he put down in the electorate of McEwen. Labor had a plan for McEwen—a firm plan for our local communities to receive fast and affordable broadband. Under Labor, places like Mernda and Doreen would have had the NBN by now. Under Malcolm Turnbull, it is supposedly being started in 2017. So people in my communities—the fastest growing communities in Australia—do not have access to broadband, and it is because of the failure of this government. Under Labor, Sunbury would have finished construction of the NBN by 2016. Under Malcolm Turnbull they are supposedly starting construction in 2016. And let's remember that, at the last election, their candidate went out and said, 'The NBN is fine. We do not need faster-speed broadband; it is acceptable.'

They are just a couple of communities. These delays are not just shifting dates on paper; they affect real people and their lives. They affect schoolkids and businesses. They make us a community of have-nots. Take for instance Barbara Marshall, an international design consultant who, with her husband Alan, provides multimedia, digital and animation design services. She said that they made a 'conscious decision' to work from their Doreen home to avoid the long travel into the city, but that:

As the industry technology norms have changed to delivery of large files via Internet, we are struggling to service our clients' expectations. With a maximum of wireless 15 gig a month from Telstra our only option, it makes our business uncompetitive. The limit on the availability of high speed broadband is directly affecting our productivity and our ability to employ more young designers.

Or take, for example, ecoMaster, a family-owned business that was in Gisborne which designs, produces and distributes customised thermal solutions for houses and businesses across the country. ecoMaster owners Lyn and Maurice heavily rely on the internet to run their business. But, with constant interruptions and slow speeds of their then internet service, it became almost impossible to conduct business in the local area. Lyn said:

We would love to continue running our business here in Gisborne, but with the NBN rollout not continuing through to this region, it may just be that we have to move our business to Melbourne.

Unfortunately for the people of Gisborne, they did move to Melbourne, which means a loss of jobs for the employees.

We have waited so long for the NBN to be delivered to our communities, that one council, the City of Whittlesea, was so sick and tired of this government and their inferior NBN and slow rollout that they have gone it alone. For Mernda and Laurimar, suburbs with around 20,000 young residents, work will not start on the NBN until at least 2017 and, if you can believe the Wentworth waffler, he says that it will be there by 2018. That is not the case. They are already three years behind, and the delay will just keep growing and growing. Most residents cannot even access ADSL. A few pockets of new builds have NBN, but most of the area just struggle.

In 2010 the City of Whittlesea spent hundreds of thousands in infrastructure, making sure the suburbs were NBN ready so they could be close to first in the rollout—and, under Labor, they were; South Morang was one of the first places to get fibre optic cable direct to the home—but, since the election, they have been put to the bottom of the list. Whittlesea invited companies to make use of council's underground service conduits, allowing companies to run their high-speed internet cabling to reach homes not connected to the NBN. Even the former Liberal Mayor of Whittlesea could not support the Abbott-Turnbull government's dud rollout plan, and he said, 'Council is committed to ensuring our community gains access to high-speed internet, which is so essential for our residents and businesses to make the most of the digital age.'

Redtrain Networks were the successful carrier from an EOI process to be provided the opportunity to access council's conduit and bring an additional broadband option local residents not currently served with high-speed broadband. This network offers fibre to the premises and services up to one gigabit per second. They started building their network in about March 2015 and have been identifying customers who did not want to wait the three-plus years for the NBN technology to be deployed. The Whittlesea council rollout for fibre to the premise will be underway in the next few months. Whittlesea council have been forced to deliver a proper NBN service for its residents and will roll it out quicker than Malcolm Turnbull ever could.

Mr Turnbull promised us a faster and cheaper NBN which would be rolled out to all homes and businesses by the end of 2016. Even with the unrealistic revised proposals, we will not see work begin until two years later. When it will reach its completion is anyone's guess.

Talking about local issues, this bill attempts to reflect the government's policy of axing universal national wholesale pricing and replacing it with wholesale price caps. Universal national wholesale pricing is a reform introduced by the former Labor government. What it means is that people living in rural and regional areas will not be penalised and will pay the same wholesale price that people in the cities pay for equivalent services. You would have thought that would be something the National Party would have supported. But, as usual, when it comes to Canberra the National Party are silent. They do not support rural and regional broadband and users getting the same pricing as those in the city. It says a lot about the National Party and why they lost party status in Victoria.

Axing this reform means that all Australians will be paying more for essential communication services. Labor does not support the government's move to axe universal wholesale pricing and is at a loss as to why the National Party would support this change. As I said, two years ago I stood in this place and pleaded with the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the then Communications Minister Turnbull not to wreck the NBN in our community. They did not listen. For those who have been lucky enough to be connected—and they are few and far between—we have a second-class broadband network that has been delivered for twice the price. So much for the great economic managers that the conservatives like to pat themselves on the back and claim they are. For those who have not been able to connect due to the neglect and the failures of this Prime Minister, I will recommit to you that we will make sure you receive the fast and inexpensive broadband you deserve.

Earlier today the lead speaker of the government spent 15 minutes talking, and he spent less than two minutes talking about the NBN. He talked about black spot towers. I want to remind him of the way the so-called black spot towers were rolled out. In New South Wales there were 144 towers rolled out. Labor electorates received 12. In Victoria there were 110 towers rolled out. Labor electorates received only 12. This shows that this program is not working. It is not working because the government did not even follow the three criteria it lauded itself on—that is, rural and regional, close to major transport routes and prone to natural disasters. This was a pork-barrelling exercise to ensure that they looked after their own mates in their own regions.

We also had the member for Grey come in here and say, 'There is not a cigarette paper between Labor and Liberal when it comes to broadband.' We have heard that before in education, and look how that went! If we go by the member for Grey's words, you can be assured that a re-elected Liberal government will not give you high-speed broadband now or into the future.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015—and I have often been on my feet in this place to talk about the absolute mess that this government has made of the great National Broadband Network. The government has today gutted its own bill and removed the contentious elements that Labor opposed—cynically perhaps, because talking about telecommunications and the second-rate NBN is not what this government wants to do today. Of course, it is not surprising when they woke this morning to the front-page headline 'Turnbull's NBN plan in crisis.' We saw in question time today that the Prime Minister would like to hide behind the new minister. But Australia knows who is responsible. Australia knows who stood at the dispatch box in opposition and slated Labor's plan for an NBN. Australia knows who was responsible for the NBN in the first two years of this government and who the communications minister was.

Today the government has been forced into a humiliating backdown on its own bill that it was bringing into this chamber. The amendments introduced today by the government follow to the letter Labor's recommendations in its dissenting report. Some might see this as common sense; others might see it as a government that would like to close down the debate and get a piece legislation through before we all get up to talk about our experiences with the NBN.

The bill was a misguided. It was an ideological attempt by the government to roll back a number of competition and consumer friendly reforms underpinning the NBN. In the electorate of Lalor, the people I represent are living the digital divide that has been created by this government in the last 2½ years. They are acutely aware of the mess that is this government's NBN. They are acutely aware that, at the last election, this government promised that the NBN would be faster and cheaper and they would have it sooner. They are acutely aware that the NBN is slower, more expensive and the time line for delivery has stretched under this government.

It is worth looking at the history of the NBN and, in particular, the utterances of our now Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth, who was of course responsible for it in his previous portfolio. While in opposition, the then shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull said: 'We are going to do a rigorous analysis. We will get Infrastructure Australia to do an independent cost-benefit analysis.' Of course, that was before the election. After the election, instead of appointing Infrastructure Australia as promised, the now Prime Minister appointed the Vertigan panel, a panel made up of former Liberal Party staffers and strident critics of the NBN. Who better to do an analysis of the NBN than people who think it should not exist! The Vertigan panel, responsible for the initial provisions in the bill, based its cost-benefit analysis on certain assumptions that were hopelessly, outrageously and embarrassingly wrong. What was the industry response to the Vertigan report? The industry response was scathing. The Competitive Carriers' Coalition released a statement calling on the recommendations to be 'binned'. I am sure they are pleased to see that some of those recommendations in the amendments before us today have been binned. They said:

After deliberating all year, the Vertigan panel has recommended that Australia look to emulate 1970s US telephone industry policy to promote investment in 21st century broadband networks.

…   …   …

Most of the Vertigan recommendations represent nothing more than rehashed, discredited theoretical arguments promoted by opponents of regulatory reform and the NBN.

Labor is pleased that the government is finally heeding the recommendations of industry and is binning the recommendations of the Vertigan review in this chamber today.

But I have to spend some time this evening talking about the NBN in the electorate of Lalor, because I have done it so many times in this place since coming here in the 2013 election, because there are so many people in my community who are having difficulty accessing any kind of internet service, let alone the NBN. Last year I sent out a broadband survey to connect with residents about the problems they are facing. The survey showed that suburbs like Tarneit, Truganina, Wyndham Vale and Point Cook are riddled with internet black holes. In those suburbs ADSL1 is not available to residents, there is a waiting list to get onto a port so that you can get ADSL, and many residents are paying high prices to access 4G and other options because they cannot connect to broadband. Many of the new areas being built are fibre ready, but there are no nbn co plans to provide that fibre. These estates have to rely on wireless access, because no new copper has been rolled out. If you live in Point Cook, Wyndham Vale or Seabrook, you will be waiting until 2018 to get off your ADSL, if you have it, or to get from wireless onto something that has a reliable speed. And of course each of those suburbs, such as areas of Wyndham Vale, have the originally planned Labor Party NBN: fibre to the home. Those people are singing its praises, while across the road their neighbours cannot get ADSL1.

In Lalor no new areas have been added to the NBN rollout since the 2013 election. So, sooner? I do not think so, Prime Minister. In our growing community the NBN is a necessity. It is critical for small and medium businesses to be on the NBN. We are talking about a community where people can be in the snarl of a traffic jam for an hour and a half in the morning and an hour and a half in the evening. Many opt to run a microbusiness or a small business from home or locally, and many are struggling to make a profit in those businesses because of limited access to what is now a requirement for business. And most residents have no idea when they will be receiving the NBN.

I recently received an email, one of many, from a gentleman in Wyndham Vale. He said:

When I made an inquiry to the NBN about laying their network in my current area they are either not sure or they don't know how much time it will take more to start laying cables in our area.

His email is representative of the dozens of emails I receive a week on the NBN. From another Wyndham Vale man:

I am writing you this e-mail to raise the unavailability of phone connections and internet services in our area. I have recently purchased my own house in Wyndham Vale. But I am unable to get this very basic facility of internet at my place because of lack of ports in the area, as per told by every provider including Telstra.

And I am wondering what is the reason of lack of ports as the latest internet provision NBN has been started in the area just across Ballan road which is more far to city than my area.

So, the man asks reasonably: when? The man asks reasonably why his neighbour can access this and he is left not just with last century's technology but the technology pre any of our collective memories.

Last year I received a complaint from a concerned mother, and as a former teacher I understand the pressure on students coming home; their schools are digitally ready, and they come home and have all the equipment in the house—the hardware—but they cannot access the internet at a speed that will allow them to do the downloads or the uploads that they need. This is a matter of equity. This mother wrote:

Our internet connection is very slow, impacting on our daily lives and on our children currently doing VCE. It is really unacceptable considering our world and society is now heavily based on technology.

We sit here now listening to a Prime Minister talk about innovation—a Prime Minister who has cut funding to education and who has made a mess of the NBN, who has created a digital divide. He said everyone in Australia would have the NBN this year, and that promise is just not going to be met. There are areas in my electorate where the rollout will not start at least until 2018. There are other areas that will not get the NBN. It is clear; these areas are in the documentation released by nbn co. This government promised high-speed internet by 2016. Malcolm Turnbull said he would get it to all homes in Australia by this year, and that has now blown out more than double—to 2020. The federal government's handling of the project has been nothing short of a disaster. It is a farce—but it is a farce that is hurting people all over this country. It is hurting people in my electorate. Our now Prime Minister had one job as minister for communications—one job—and over the last 2½ years he had one job: to build the NBN. But he has failed. It is an absolute disaster.

We know the NBN is facing mounting delays and rising costs, and the reason we know this is from yet another leaked document. The transparency around the NBN is such that we do not know what is going on until we get a leak from the department. A shroud of secrecy has descended over this project since the Prime Minister took over as the former minister and Prime Minister, with basic information, which was made public under Labor, now being hidden. So, today we saw another leaked document form nbn co that revealed that the Prime Minister's second-rate copper NBN is hopelessly delayed and over budget, so it is going to cost twice as much as Labor's fibre to the home, and what we are going to get is copper to the street corner that relies on mains power. We are rolling out reams and reams of copper when we should have optic fibre. When I was a principal in a school years ago we put optic fibre in our schools, ready for the NBN, and now those schools could be faced with copper at the gate. It is a disaster.

The Prime Minister said today, in question time, that we should let the facts speak for themselves. Well, here we have something we can agree on: let the facts speak for themselves. He said his second-rate NBN would cost $29.5 billion. We now know it will cost almost double—up to $56 billion and growing. He said that his second-rate copper NBN would cost $600 per home for connection; this cost has nearly tripled to $1,600 a home. He said it would cost $55 million to patch up the old copper network; this cost has blown out, by more than 1,000 per cent, to more than $640 million. This is for copper. This is for last century's technology. He said that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the pay TV cables by 2016, but nbn co is now forecasting they will connect only 10,000 homes by June 2016.

I agree, Prime Minister: let the facts speak for themselves. He said his second-rate network would bring in $2.5 billion in revenue in 2016 and 2017, but this has crashed to $1.1 billion. He has blown a $1.4 billion hole in nbn co's revenue line. Time is running out. The excuses are getting longer. Australians know who is responsible. The people in my community deserve better than the ever-increasing waits. They deserve better than what is being delivered. The Prime Minister saw the creation of a digital divide that is embedding itself in my community, not shrinking, under this government.

We have heard a lot about the price of housing in the last few days. We have heard the Prime Minister wax lyrical—sorry, waffle lyrical—at the dispatch box about his knowledge of how much houses cost all over this country. Does he know that in my electorate the key decider on what a house is worth is now whether or not it gets access to the NBN? That is now creating a bubble in the housing market in the electorate of Lalor. This digital divide is playing out in our community. It is having an impact everywhere. The community I represent needs a Prime Minister who will do more than invest in telecommunications—they need a Prime Minister who will invest in this country's future. There is no innovation without education. There is no innovation without a decent NBN for people all over this country.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015, as introduced by this government, just shows what a mess the government is in with its NBN. We see it day in, day out. We saw it today on the front page of TheSydney Morning Herald, through a leaked nbn co internal document. But we do not need to read about it in the paper to know what a mess it is. All you have to do is go out and talk to your constituents or read your emails to know what a mess the NBN is, in Australia, under this government and to know what a mess was made of the NBN rollout under the Prime Minister, when he was communications minister.

In my home state of Tasmania, before the last federal election, we were promised that the NBN would be a faster speed, be delivered sooner and be cheaper. We now know that that is not true—not just for Tasmania but for the whole country. In their pre-election document, the Liberal Party promised, in black and white, that the full NBN rollout in Tasmania would be completed by 2015. Since that time, not one home or premises has been connected to the Liberal Party's second-rate copper fibre to the node. Not one home in Tasmania has been connected to their NBN.

Since their election, in 2013, we have had a whole range of excuses from Liberal members in Tasmania. I was astounded to see, earlier in this debate today, the member for Lyons stand up and talk about the NBN in Tasmania and about good news for his electorate. I am sure his constituents do not agree that it is good news that their NBN is going to be a couple of years later than they were promised. I am sure that his constituents are not pleased with the good news that the NBN may be costing more, in regional Australia, thanks to the part in this bill where the government is seeking to change the wholesale price.

What they are suggesting in the original bill is that the wholesale price will be different in regional Australia from what it is in the cities. People in regional Australia should be outraged by this suggestion. The member for Lyons, the member for Bass and the member for Braddon from Tasmania should be outraged by this suggestion. I am not sure where the Nationals in the coalition are on this matter. I would be astounded to hear the Nationals members come into this parliament and support a wholesale price differential in rural and regional Australia compared to the cities. It is an outrageous suggestion that people in the city should get the NBN cheaper. The NBN was designed to overcome the tyranny of distance, so why would you make it more expensive for the people who will need it the most, the people in rural and regional Australia? It does not make sense.

I understand the government has decided that it will cut that part out of the bill in the amendments it intends to move. I am pleased to hear that is the case, although I am not sure what motivated it and whether or not it might come back. The Vertigan report, which has led to this bill, suggested wholesale pricing and a differential in wholesale pricing. I am not sure whether the government is now saying it does not agree with the Vertigan report—which it commissioned, full of its own Liberal Party experts and Liberal Party advisers, rather than the Infrastructure Australia full-cost analysis, which the Prime Minister promised before the election and, of course, did not do. They were out trumpeting it at the time and the assumptions in that report used figures that were completely wrong, as we found out today. What we heard was Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, said that his second-rate NBN would cost $29.5 billion, but we now know it will cost almost double that at $56 billion.

We of course heard from him that we would get his second-rate NBN to all Australian homes by this year—2016—but we now know that the time frame has pushed out to 2020. We of course heard that the second-rate copper NBN would cost around $600 per home and that this cost is now $1,600 a home. And then, of course, there was the state of the old copper network, which would need to be upgraded. Of course, the assumptions here were just quite extraordinary.

We were told it would cost around $55 million to patch up the old copper network. Obviously, they had not been out and seen any of it. I have certainly seen some in my electorate and it needs more than a patch up. It has now come out that it is about $640 million to fix the existing copper network, because it is so degraded. But they should have known that already. We heard today from one of the ministers that he used to work in the industry. He should have known what condition that copper was in. The government should have known what condition that copper was in. It is just remarkable that they would have said that it would only cost $55 million to patch up, and it is now $640 million.

Then, of course, was the assumption that 2.6 million homes would be connected via pay TV cables by 2016. We now know that nbn co is forecasting that they will only connect around 10,000 homes by June 2016. And we heard that the second-rate network would bring in about $2.5 billion in revenue; this has now crashed to around $1.1 billion in revenue. We also heard before the election that the satellites that were going up were not required. Indeed, the then Minister for Communications, the current Prime Minister, said prior to the election:

There is enough capacity on private satellites already in orbit or scheduled for launch for the NBN to deliver broadband to the 200,000 or so premises in remote Australia without building its own.

How wrong was he?

Indeed, I believe he actually went to the launch of the satellite and stood there, trying to claim credit for it. And we have now had members from the other side stand up and talk about the wireless satellite access that people will be getting and have been getting because of the satellite that Labor suggested needed to go up. We heard from those on the other side when they were in opposition that these satellites were not required and that private capacity was already there. And now we know that that is not true. There are so many errors, and what a debacle it has been!

And yet today, when getting questions here in question time, we heard nothing really from the Prime Minister to explain what went wrong. Why are we now hearing about the cost blow-outs? Why are we now hearing about the time frame blow-outs? Why is it not faster, sooner and cheaper as we were promised prior to the last election? Those opposite have been in government for 2½ years; it will be interesting to see the next lot of documents that suddenly appear in the newspaper about what the forecasts are going to be in coming months as we go into the election campaign, because my constituents in my electorate have really had enough of it. There are still parts of my electorate where people cannot even get ADSL. People cannot even get ADSL!

They cannot wait for Malcolm Turnbull's slower-to-turn-up, slower speeds, second-rate copper NBN. They cannot wait! They need internet services now. They are moving out of suburbs, their kids cannot do their homework and they cannot log online to their work emails. It is absolutely disgraceful that in this day and age, when we come into this place and talk about jobs and innovation and the jobs of the future, that Australia is in this position. We are in a position where we are not getting the world's best technology and where we have a complete mess of the National Broadband Network rollout.

Other countries in the world are moving to fibre to the premises, which of course was what we committed to when we were in government and which this government has backtracked on. Countries around the world realise that fibre to the premises is the way of the future. Instead, we have a messed-up, second-rate NBN going out. I will have constituents in my electorate who will be the haves and the have-nots. We have people, as I said, without internet access at all, but we will soon have—I understand in about six or seven months' time—people who will be the first people in my electorate to be connected to fibre to the node.

I have fibre to the premises at my home, as do a lot of other people in my electorate—fibre to the premises: Labor's real NBN. Indeed it is the NBN that everybody in my electorate wants and that everybody in my electorate thought they were going to get. One of the reasons that everybody in my electorate thought they were going to get it was because of a letter to the editor. When I raised the NBN prior to the last federal election I was accused of a scare campaign by Liberal senator for Tasmania, David Bushby. Indeed, in a letter to the editor he actually said, 'Julie Collins is running a scare campaign. There will be no difference in who gets fibre to their home in Tasmania under Labor or Liberal.' That was from Senator David Bushby in the newspaper, prior to the federal last election.

My constituents firmly believed that they were getting fibre to the premises. That is the fibre to the premises that some of my constituents actually have, as I said. Other constituents do not have the internet at all, and some are going to get fibre to the node—second-rate—who want fibre to the premises. There are whole suburbs and small towns in my electorate which still do not know when they are going to get the NBN. If you look up their address on the nbn co map they still actually have no idea when they are going to get it, after being promised the full rollout would be completed by 2015. So we have the situation in my home state where we have Liberal members coming in here, saying how wonderful their NBN is, how grateful their electorates should be and what great news it is when the truth is actually starkly different. Out and about in Tasmania, no matter where you go, people are complaining about the internet access—except, of course, for those who have Labor's fibre to the premises—Labor's real NBN. They know the value of Labor's real NBN; everybody else has seen it and everybody else wants it, because they know of the value and they know of the innovation and the jobs that will come with that.

Under the Labor Party, Tasmania was going to be the first state to be fully connected to the NBN—the first state. Of course, we do not think that is going to be the case now and we still do not know when the NBN rollout will be fully complete in Tasmania. As I said, I have small towns and suburbs that still do not know when they are going to be connected and which do not have the time frame for that. We have people on the west coast of Tasmania who were going to get fibre to the home who are now, of course, not getting that. There is great unrest in the Tasmanian community no matter where you look, so it is quite astonishing to have the Prime Minister in here today not fully and adequately answering questions in relation to the NBN and, even more bizarrely, to have the member for Lyons come in and say it was great news.

I was really surprised to listen to his speech today. I am sure that his constituents will be very surprised, because I certainly intend to tell them. He can rest assured that I will be out and about, campaigning in his seat and ensuring that Labor senators do the same about his comments on the NBN today, because, quite frankly, his electorate will not appreciate his comments in here on the NBN. They will not appreciate that what he said to them is good news. They will not appreciate the mistruths and the lies they were told before the last election by members of the Liberal Party in black and white on not one but several occasions: in their economic plan for Tasmania, in letters to the editor and in media statements. Every single time, the Tasmanians were told, 'Don't worry; you'll get the same under us as you're getting under Labor.' Of course, they now know that is not true and they are not very happy about it at all.

It is interesting that the members for Bass and Braddon have not come in to speak on this bill like the member for Lyons has. Perhaps they have been out talking to their constituents a little bit more. Perhaps they know from their constituents just what a terrible debacle it has been. Perhaps they also know that Tasmania is missing out on jobs of the future and the innovation jobs that Tasmania was expecting to receive thanks to being the first state to be fully connected to the real NBN.

To sum up: clearly, this government is in a mess with their NBN. Clearly, what was promised before the last election is not being delivered. Clearly, what the current Prime Minister when he was Minister for Communications said even when they came to government is not correct. Indeed, we have had very little explanation of what is going on with the NBN from either the Minister for Communications or the Prime Minister in this place or from the Minister representing the Minister for Communications. Obviously, they have a very good reason to hide it: they know that, when the truth comes out, when people know just how far behind they are going to be and just what the blown out costs are going to be, it will show just how badly the current Prime Minister mismanaged this.

He had just one job as Minister for Communications, and that was to roll out the National Broadband Network and do it within his promises. That has not been delivered, and, frankly, he should be ashamed of his record.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Shortland: the member for Shortland has suggested that she will not be going on after the next election. Is that correct?

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is correct.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just like to say to the member for Shortland that she is probably one of the hardest working, most diligent members of parliament that I have seen in this place, not only in the parliament and the Federation Chamber but also in her committee work. Her commitment to her electorate and those who are—how can I say—least able to care for themselves across her electorate and across this nation has always been noticed. You will be sadly missed in this place.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right. Now I've got to do a speech where I'm going to give the government a serve! Is this a way to calm me down a little bit?

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And you also have been a great political warrior for your party. I should have said that too.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. I really appreciate your kind words. They mean a lot, and I think they will mean a lot to the people of Shortland as well, so thank you. I know that they are very genuine and I really appreciate you saying what you just said.

Now, on to business. Unfortunately, being a very strong advocate for my electorate, I have to stand in this House today and say the government has failed when it has come to the NBN. It has not delivered what they promised and it has caused a lot of angst within Shortland electorate. The NBN has been very unreliable. People have been exceptionally disappointed.

The legislation we have today before us looks at the Burdekin panels. Those panels were assembled by the current Prime Minister in December 2013 and are made up of former Liberal Party staffers and advisers. There has been strident criticism that has noted the fact that it has not really delivered what it was put there for. Industry and consumer advocates have raised significant concerns with measures in this bill, and I can only judge this legislation against what has been delivered as far as the NBN is concerned.

People have been contacting my office in droves. I was quite excited; Shortland electorate was one of the electorates in Australia that was really going to benefit from the rollout of the NBN. We were anticipating that we would get fast-speed broadband. We were disappointed that it was fibre to the node and copper to the house but we actually thought that it would be better than what existed previously. But the really disappointing aspect of the NBN and the rollout is the fact that it has not delivered the speeds that were promised. In actual fact it has led to lots of heartache, with people being without telephones or internet and with people feeling quite isolated as a result.

I will start with an example from just before Christmas, when it first started rolling out. A man on the disability pension agreed to have his phone and internet switched over to the NBN. When the switch-over took place, he was out a telephone, he was out any internet and he had very poor mobility.

So this man had to struggle—and I say struggle—down the street to a pay telephone. He rang, and appointments were made. And of course, as happens with this change-over, the appointment was broken—it was not kept. This person had absolutely no communication with the outside world. He did not have a mobile phone. We talked to the provider and we talked to NBN, and it soon became very apparent to us that they were not talking to each other.

So I went up the back and bought a mobile phone. I was loading it up. We told the provider that I was going to post on my Facebook that they would not even give him a mobile phone. Believe it or not, they then actually delivered a mobile phone to him the day before Christmas. But it should not come to that.

I am going to use the remainder of my time here to highlight some of the problems with the NBN. I did an interview on ABC Central Coast this morning, and one of the issues that was raised was around the NBN. The person that was interviewing raised the point that, not only on the Central Coast but also in Lake Macquarie, there have been enormous problems. He told me he had heard of a doctor who received information, and it was lifesaving information, via the internet. Previously he had ADSL and he received it, but now he has the NBN installed he cannot receive the data. This is really important information. He has to make a split-second decision as to the treatment of a person, and that decision can influence that person's life into the future or influence whether that person will survive the incident.

The most common problem is the fact that the NBN is not delivering the speeds that people were promised. That is one of the common problems. One of the constituents who has been in contact with my office quite frequently said that his NBN fluctuates between '95mps to 3mps'. He took 'the top plan of 100mps'. Despite paying the extra $30 to get the extra-fast internet, he is not getting it. He is very upset. He is a person that works from home and a person that has been having problems.

Another problem is that the NBN connection keeps dropping out. New modems have been supplied yet the problem continues. The internet is not working after the NBN has been connected. Once again, this is another person that has medical issues. I cannot emphasise enough how many times we have contacted the service provider—and it does not matter which service provider it is—and we contact the NBN, and yet the problem cannot be solved. There is appointment after appointment organised with technicians—and they are broken. The technicians are going to come around to connect the NBN, and then the next minute the appointment is cancelled and another one is set for the next day. For one customer, it took 10 weeks between the phone call requesting and ordering the NBN—and this is a person that was very computer literate—and she, as of the beginning of February, still did not have it installed.

Another person had the NBN connected but there was no switch-over and no service whatsoever. There are people, particularly older people, who are totally isolated—no telephone and no NBN. I have had numerous people contact my office and ask to be switched back to the previous system, to the old system. And of course they cannot be switched back.

I would not be raising this issue and emphasising the absolute importance of it if the problems were not as bad as they are. I have heard members on the other side talk about looking forward to the NBN coming to their area. Please, believe me: there are serious problems. You need to take it up with the Prime Minister, because it is his NBN. Do not for a moment think it is anyone else's. This rests with the Prime Minister. It is his plan and it is his scheme for the NBN. It needs to be taken up with him and it needs to be taken up with the communications minister. You do not want this to be rolled out like this in your electorates. You do not want it.

My staff have said to me that they think they should put a sign out the front saying, 'NBN complaints office'. That is how bad it is. I have in my hand here—and this is just a small number of what I have—over 80 complaints that we are working on in the office now. It is not one; it is not two. It is unbelievable how many people are experiencing problems.

The fact that people can end up with just a phone connection and no NBN connection—and then the provider and the NBN blaming each other—shows that it is a flawed system.

So does the fact that there have been so many problems in Shortland, which is an area that is, generally, fairly low-lying. I believe a lot of the problem has been associated with the condition of the copper wires—the fact that they are in such poor condition. So does the fact that we all know the government has been ordering more copper wire in from overseas. We are getting such a poor deal with this NBN. I say to all Australians: look at it very carefully. At least, when it comes to your area, wait and see what happens before you connect, because it is fraught with problems.

This second-rate NBN would have cost $41 billion, but it has gone up to $56 billion. That is an increase of $15 billion. The fibre to the node is costing a lot of money. It is costing $55 million to fix the copper wires, and this is a system that is going to be obsolete, nearly, by the time it is rolled out across Australia. At its best it cannot deliver the speed that is needed. In those countries where they have gone down the line of fibre to the node and copper to the home they are already moving to change to a different system. It is extremely worrying at this particular time in our history when we should be embracing new technologies and making ourselves as globally competitive as we can. The Prime Minister tells this House that it is an exciting time to be an Australian, that we must be agile and that we must be innovative, but we must have the tools. We must have the tools to be innovative and competitive. Until this government gets in there and fixes the problem that is not going to happen.

On Saturday, last week, I was outside the Belmont Medicare office. Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, I know you have a Belmont Medicare office, but I am quite sure the government is not about to close your Belmont Medicare office. Mine opened at the same time as yours. I was getting signatures for a petition. People were lining up to sign the petitions that I had with me. I had about half a dozen people with me and there were lines, all through the shopping centre, with people falling over each other to sign the petitions. But the thing that really struck me was the number of people who came up to me and said, 'I have the NBN. I wish I'd never signed up for it. I have so many problems with it.' We had a list; we were taking names of people as they were signing the petition.

I really need the government to listen and to understand that there is an enormous problem. It is vitally important that people can communicate with each other. We rely on the internet and we rely on the telephone. Without being able to communicate effectively, people are isolated. Without being able to communicate effectively, we as a nation will go down the drain. When I am down at the shopping centre raising an issue that is very important to people—and they are signing petitions about that—at the same time those people are complaining about the NBN and raising that as a major issue. The government needs to listen and act.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015. It is hard to know how to limit my remarks to 15 minutes in this particular debate because I could talk all day about the problems we have had in my electorate regarding the rollout of the NBN. Like the member for Shortland, I would like to take this opportunity to place, again, on the record the frustrations that Bendigo and Central Victoria have had as a result of decisions that this government has made on the NBN.

Let's just, for a moment, stop and remember what this government, when in opposition, promised the people of Central Victoria. They did pop up to Central Victoria quite a bit, including the then shadow minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, later the Minister for Communications and now the Prime Minister. He promised in the lead-up to the last election at a Bendigo Business Council event: 'The Coalition's plans would be cheaper and faster to install by using fibre-to-the-node technology rather than fibre to the premises to the homes and businesses in Bendigo.' That is what the Prime Minister said to a Bendigo Business Council forum held on 26 March 2013. Here we are. Tomorrow is 1 March 2016 and no-one in Bendigo has fibre to the node.

This Prime Minister, when he was the shadow communications minister, stood up at a Bendigo Business Council event and effectively lied. He conned them. He said, at the time, that homes in Bendigo would get fibre to the node by 2016. We are there. We are however many years on from that particular event, and we still do not have fast-speed broadband delivered in Bendigo. We do not have it in the way that was promised by this government. What this government did when they got elected was to rip up the plan, which would have seen Bendigo homes connected to fibre to the premises—the Labor plan. We would have got it under the Labor plan. It would be rolling out, as we speak, to the brown sites that we talk about. We would be getting it, but this government ripped up the plan and threw Bendigo off the map. We are still waiting.

Some in our area are okay with it. They say, 'If Labor wins the next election, can we get fibre to the driveway?'—this hidden concept—'Can we get fibre-to-the-premises?' What the people in Bendigo know is that they cannot trust this government even with their own plan. Not only has it not been built but also it is costing this country a fortune. Replacing copper—what kind of a joke of a government is it that replaces copper with copper? Why not admit it and say, 'All right. Where we have to replace the copper we'll go one step further—we'll replace it with fibre. We'll replace it with a cable that will deliver the internet speeds we need tomorrow and every day after tomorrow'? What kind of ideologically arrogant government do we have that it replaces copper with copper? Maybe it is because they have friends in the copper industry and they want to throw them a bone and try to help their copper prices. No other country in the world is doing what this government is doing and replacing copper with copper at the rate and cost this government is.

It was not just the shadow minister, who has since become Prime Minister, who came to Bendigo and made these promises. We also had the then Leader of the Opposition and now former Prime Minister make the same promises—that, under a coalition, by 2016 there would be minimum download speeds of 25 megabits:

So we will deliver a minimum of 25 megabits … by the end of our first term.

Well, the election is coming round the corner—the clock is ticking; people on the government benches think that we could go to a double dissolution election any day—but the people in Bendigo still do not have their NBN. Do you know what we do have in Bendigo? We have the advertising. The government did not cancel the advertising contracts. We have the 'Connect to the NBN' advertising trucks. We have NBN advertising at our cinemas. We have NBN advertising in our newspapers. Jeez, with the advertising budget of this government, you would think that every house in Bendigo could connect. But they cannot.

The only houses that can connect to the NBN in Bendigo are the houses that could connect because of Labor government decisions, because, under Labor, our greenfield sites, our new estates, got NBN fibre to the premises. We are not a growth area like Melbourne, so we do not have the big estates coming online like Melbourne does, but some of our homes can connect to the NBN. We do have some towers, built under Labor, switched on and connecting to the NBN, but not as a result of any decision that the government have made. Yet they stand in here and claim the credit for these homes being connected, because they were connected under their watch, but it was not their decisions that meant these houses were connected.

What we also have in Bendigo is the government's failure to turn on towers. We have four NBN towers built in the northern part of the electorate that would have serviced homes, businesses and farms in the northern part of the electorate. They were built in 2013 but not switched on. How incompetent are you as a government to not switch on towers that were built? You claim to be people who care about business and are smart at business. Well, you have got to ask the question: how can you build an asset but not switch it on to generate the revenue with which to make the asset sustainable going forward? The reason why they have not been switched on is that the fifth tower, the relay tower at Mount Camel, was knocked back for a planning reason. That was 12 months ago. Over 12 months ago, that tower was knocked back and yet, to this day, there is still not an engineering solution. We still cannot get a switch-on date for the people in that area affected.

There are lots of people in the Bendigo electorate whose delivery for the internet, for the NBN, will be fixed wireless, yet we have no confidence in the government being able to deliver that plan, because of what has happened in the north of the electorate: their failure to consult with the community, their failure to find an engineering solution, their failure to ensure that communities like Huntly, like Ladys Pass, like Goornong, can actually connect to the NBN. What frustration they have, to look out their windows and to drive past NBN towers that have not been switched on. Yet the government are congratulating themselves for doing such a great job. How great has their job been? Their so-called fabulous fibre to the node has been so successful that, since they introduced fibre to the node, under 30,000 homes have been connected to it. That means that every other home that has been connected has been connected because of decisions that the Labor Party made in government. You cannot claim somebody else's achievements or homework. It just does not work.

On this issue, the people in the regions will not be conned. They want access to the internet. They want access to the NBN so that they can do their business. There is currently a massive digital divide between the country and the city, between the regions and the metro areas, and people are being left behind in the regions. We do not even talk about being able to watch Netflix in central Victoria. We just want to be able to log onto the internet to read emails, to do homework, to do online coursework for university—because our universities are shutting down and moving to the metro areas. We just want to be able to have the internet to be able to upload our business activity statements on time and in real time. The people in the areas of central Victoria and regional Victoria are not talking about internet speeds to be able to watch movies; they are talking about internet speeds to be able to do the basic, fundamental aspects of our lives, because so much of our lives is online these days, yet we cannot get decent fast-speed broadband.

In the few moments I have left, I would like to put on the record some of the issues that have been raised with me personally. Like the previous speaker, the member for Shortland, I can say that this issue tops all other issues in my electorate: people's inability to connect to fast-speed broadband. Because under the Labor plan we should be having fibre to the premises being rolled out right now, Telstra stopped adding new ADSL ports into parts of the Bendigo electorate—areas like Castlemaine and Golden Square, where we have had a lot of growth and infilling and building going on within housing estates. Yet, when people ring up to connect to the internet, they are told, 'Sorry; there are no ports available.' When you talk to Telstra, they say, 'That's because we're working to the NBN rollout plan, and they should have access to the NBN right now.' You cannot blame Telstra for the fact that nbn co have failed to build on time.

What it means is that the people in Golden Square, Castlemaine and other parts of the electorate that cannot get access to an ADSL port are told to rely on their mobile phones. People are waiting two to three years to get access to ADSL because there are no available ports for them. They literally call up every day hoping that somebody has dropped off the list so they can go onto the list. If the government had kept their promise then this would not be an issue. But they did not. They ripped up the plan. They threw Bendigo off the map. Two years later, we are back on and we are going to get inferior technology.

So you can understand why the people of central Victoria feel betrayed by this Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister, who went to Bendigo and made these promises, who stood up and said that we would get the NBN sooner, quicker and cheaper. Well, that is wrong. Under the Labor plan, people would have had it rolling out down their streets right now. Under the Liberal plan, they have promises to be able to connect some time by 2018. There is a problem too in that parts of the area are still not on the rollout map. Maiden Gully, a growth area in Bendigo, is still not on this government's map. People living there cannot get ADSL and all I can say to them is, 'Sorry, you're not on the map yet.' It is a growth area with new schools and they cannot get access to the internet. It is a disgrace and this government needs to fix it.

In Redesdale they have a tower. But those who have access to the tower say, 'It's great. Thank you very much, Labor, for building the tower, but we have a problem with the satellite service'—because under this government the satellite service has been oversubscribed. In regional and farming communities, one or two households are supposed to rely on the satellite service. We also have entire townships, such as Queenstown in Tasmania, a township of 3,000, being offered the satellite service. So people in Redesdale say, 'How's it fair that Queenstown is accessing the same service as me?' They are asking for a new tower to be built in their area so everybody in their area has access to towers.

Then we have the famous Spencer Street—famous for all the wrong reasons. In this street there are four different technologies—or five if you include 'none at all'. The four different technologies that one street in one part of the electorate has been offered to connect to the internet are ADSL1, ADSL2, mobile broadband and interim satellite. All who live in that street say their speeds are appalling and low. All of them say they cannot connect to the internet to do the basics.

We also have Newham. We have actually had some fairly constructive meetings with nbn co and they have indicated that they want to build two towers. Learning from the mistakes of Mount Camel, we have been able to convince nbn co to come and meet with us to talk about where to put the two towers in Newham. They are referred to as the south and the north tower, and we are hopeful that they will be built and connected. We have problems with other parts of the electorate that are not able to connect to fast-speed, reliable broadband. Large parts of the electorate—the great township of Moulden and places like Maiden Gully—are still not on the map. And we still have issues with towers that have not been switched on.

And we hear from people about their experiences. Darren Williams, from Kangaroo Flat, has access to no ADSL. In an email about internet services in central Victoria he said: 'We purchased a block of land in Kangaroo Flat. It was not an old subdivision and we built our home.' The email ends up being a very long email that describes their experiences about trying to connect to the ADSL. Bronwyn Gibbs, from Strathfieldsaye, speaks about the digital divide. She used to live in an area where the NBN was being delivered and then she moved into Strathfieldsaye. She said it was like going back a decade, like a time warp, like going from the NBN to ADSL.

A lot of students contact us to talk about how they cannot log on to do their homework because of the lack of access to fast speed broadband. This government does not really care about the regions. They do not really care about ensuring that there is no digital divide in this country. This government does not really commit to ensuring that everybody has access to fast speed broadband. They are not in the interest of building a nation. They are not in the interest of nation-building projects. This bill, and what is trying to do, at the end of the day does not address the real issues when it comes to the— (Time expired)

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of all the things that the Abbott-Turnbull government has done over the last 2½ years, it is the trashing of the NBN that completely boggles my mind. Every time I think about it I am just stunned by the stupidity and the incompetence that we have seen by the current Prime Minister in his previous role as the Minister of Communications and since he became Prime Minister. In making that statement I include walking away from action on climate change, so it is a big statement to make. The trashing of the NBN is one of the most stupid things I have seen any government do. I sit here on this side of the House and I go home to my electorate. I see businesses that cannot work from home, kids that cannot download work for homework and schools where only one kid can be online at a time. I am just astonished at the stupidity.

I hear this Prime Minister talking day after day about our houses being our biggest asset. If you are a bit older and you have paid for your house and you are heading towards retirement, if you are same generation as the Prime Minister and me, then maybe that is true. But if you are younger, if you are starting life or you are in your 20s or your 30s, your biggest economic asset is your capacity to earn. That allows you to maybe get a house one day, and it allows you to pay it off, but your earning capacity is actually your biggest asset when you are young.

We have a government that slashes education spending. We have a government that destroys the TAFE system. We have a government that makes degrees unaffordable. We have a government that rips up the very infrastructure that we as a nation need in order to earn an income. We are being seriously left behind by our neighbours and by the rest of the world, and we have been for over a decade. We have been getting further and further behind and our internet speeds have been getting worse and worse relative to those around us who had the foresight to do something about it before we did.

When Labor came to government in 2007 we decided to change that. We started embarking on an infrastructure project that would put this nation where it needed to be 50 to 70 years into the future. We started building the infrastructure that we needed for the future—not the infrastructure that we needed for a decade ago, not the infrastructure that we need to download videos and film, but the technology we need to work in remote locations, to work through the internet rather than the same office, to conduct e-health in regional centres and for people to phone in their results. We do not even know what the NBN will be used for in the future, just as we did not know what telephone lines would be used for when we connected them right across the country nearly a century ago.

This decision by this government is as illogical as the one that was made when we built the rail lines. For those of you here who remember what they learnt in primary school, there were several gauges. There was the Queensland gauge. If I remember correctly, it was three foot six—the member for Chifley might know—

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

I do not know—pass!

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No? You were at primary school more recently than I was, Member for Chifley!

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

Thank you.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was three foot six in Queensland, I think four foot 8½ in New South Wales and five foot two in Victoria. So every time a train crossed a state border, they had to—

Mr Husic interjecting—

That is right—it was crazy, but they had an excuse at the time because they were different states, so different people made decisions. But this government for the last 2½ years has had total control of this and, again, the decision to go back to copper when the rest of the world is going fibre to the home, the decision to start rolling out copper, to start repairing copper, is extraordinary and yet they did it. It totally and absolutely beggars belief.

We know that when Prime Minister Abbott handed the NBN over to the then Minister for Communications, he was instructed to demolish the NBN. We know that that was the instruction that was given. On command, the now Prime Minister did just that, but there is no excuse that, when he became Prime Minister and was in total control, he allowed this particular piece of infrastructure to go down the path that it is going.

Let's look at what he did at the time: he appointed Liberal staffers, Liberal Party advisers and strident critics of the NBN to a committee to investigate what to do the about the NBN. He basically put saboteurs in charge of policy development. In an absurdly pessimistic quantification by that committee, it based its analysis on the ridiculous idea that, by 2023, the average household would only want 15 megabits per second. It is not enough now. It is also by the way what we average now but it is not even enough to do the things we know that people want to do. It is not fast enough for decent Netflix. It is actually not fast enough even now, and they put forward this ridiculous quantification that households would only be wanting 15 megabits per second by 2023. That is an extraordinary assertion by what was known as the Vertigan panel.

Then the government, of course, proceeded to put together this shonky, low-tech version of an NBN—dared continue to call it a national broadband network even though it is nowhere near it. We still have copper being rolled out down the street in Carlingford and we have now seen it blow out. This minister who said it would be delivered faster, be cheaper and sooner got it all completely wrong. He estimated the second-rate NBN would cost $41 billion; it is now costing $56 billion—that is a 47 per cent blow-out. The fibre to the node was estimated to cost $600 per home; it has now blown out to $1600 per home—that is a 167 per cent blow-out or $1,000 per home.

They budgeted $55 million to fix up the copper; it is now $641 million to fix up the copper and growing. It is that fixing up of the copper that is delaying things so incredibly badly—$641 million to fix up copper? It is cheaper to roll out fibre. It is cheaper to do it the right way. It would have cost less now and it will certainly cost less than the maintenance that will go into upgrading last century's system. They are rolling out last century's system, and all this century we are going to pay to repair it. This is absurd.

They estimated that they would have 2.61 million homes connected to the NBN by 2016 and they will only have between 10,000 and 875,000 by the end of December this year. They said, by the way, that every home would have 25 megabits per second minimum by the end of 2016. Well Parramatta is not even on the map for 2016. We were under the old plan under the previous government. Parramatta, as you would expect—a CBD, the centre of one of the largest economies in Australia, 80,000 small businesses surrounding Western Sydney—would actually be on the list quite early. It was on the list for 2016. It got ripped off the list pretty quickly when the government changed—I think North Sydney got added instead: Parramatta went off; North Sydney went on. And now, in 2016, even though every household is supposed to have 25 megabits per second by the end of this year, we are not even on the map. Parramatta, the second CBD in Sydney, is not even on the map.

Deputy Speaker Goodenough, go around and talk to small business in Parramatta—and big business for that matter—and it is the first thing they talk about: this essential infrastructure. This is not some glamorous opt-in opt-out technology we are talking about; this is the basic communications system for the world. When the Prime Minister gets up here and talks about services being exported to Asia and how wonderful all of that is, when he gets up and talks about this wonderful world of the future and the sharing economy and start-ups, this is the basis of all that. You cannot have a sharing economy, if people cannot actually get online and get decent speeds. If you do not have decent speeds and a critical mass of fibre, then you will not have entrepreneurs working as hard as they can to develop new ways to use it. If you do not have the population on fibre, then you will not have the kind of innovation that we need if we want to own the products of the future. You will not have people in country towns providing services to Asia, if speeds are still—let's face it—pretty close to dial-up.

I was in a country town, Bemboka, just a couple of years ago. It is not in the middle of nowhere; it is between Canberra and the snow. It is a few hours away. I went into an art gallery, which someone had just opened. I found these beautiful pottery cups and I thought I would buy them—nice gallery. He took half an hour to complete my credit card transaction. He ended up walking out into the middle of the field and holding it up, trying to get a signal. If I did not actually want the cups and feel sorry for this guy, who had just started a business in a place where he could not do credit card transactions, I would have walked out. If it had been Sydney, I would not have waited half an hour. But I waited half an hour for this small business in a reasonably located country town to wander around, holding his credit card device in the air trying get a signal—in the paddock. This is what this government is leaving people with.

You can hear the member for Indi talk about her NBN, because they got the real one. She came in here today and talked about how fabulous it was, because she got the real one. Listen to the member for Shortland, Bendigo or any member who has had this shonky second-rate, last-century—I am not even going to call it the NBN, because it is not—infrastructure rolled out in their electorate and they will tell you what a mess it is. They will tell you that as soon as the kids get home from school and logon to do their homework, forget it; the speed is out the window. Unless you get on between 11 and two when no-one is home, forget it. What about if you happen to be a small business or if you happen to be working from home? And we want people to do that, by the way. We actually want these hubs where people work closer to home. We do not want everyone getting in their car and unnecessarily driving to an office in the city because they do not have broadband or their internet connection is not fast enough so they have to continue to drive in, and we keep upgrading the roads and public transport system to cope with the tens of thousands of people unnecessarily travelling. We want people to work from home. But how on earth does a small business that relies on upload and download do it if they are getting speeds of five megabytes per second and less? In Parramatta, that is what we get.

I surveyed my community last year and I asked them to test their NBN connections. The worst was the suburb of Merrylands, where they are getting download speeds as low as 0.14 megabytes per second.

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

How much?

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

0.14 megabytes per second It is so slow that it is not worth talking about. In fact, the Parramatta Advertiser quite correctly said that it is faster to phone a friend in the Congo, where the average speed is 1.75 megabytes per second, and have them read the article to you. That is actually true. If you live in Merrylands, it is faster to phone the Congo because the Congo has faster download speeds.

In fact, it is interesting to see who does have faster download speeds than us. I actually printed out the list today because it is so extraordinary. We are currently ranked between 44th and 46th, depending on who you talk to. In fact, we have gone backwards while we have been building the NBN. Our NBN is rubbish and the rest of the world is building good stuff. They are building faster fibre; we are building rubbish. We are going backwards. We are spending $46 billion and we are going backwards. This is absurd.

It is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get this right and we are spending money to go backwards relative to many countries. The 10 on the list that are all better than us, higher on the list, are Qatar, Madagascar, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Vietnam, Thailand, Poland, Slovenia and Ukraine. They are the ones that are just above us on the list.

By the way, business has to upload and health and e-services have to upload. So it is not just download speeds. If you want to find a country that is slower than Australia's average upload speed of 3.89 megabytes per second, there is Senegal, Jamaica, Argentina, Colombia, Fiji, Montenegro, Italy, Croatia, Faroe Islands, Turkey, Serbia and Oman. They are the countries that have slower upload speeds than us. Yet we have a Prime Minister that comes in here and dares to talk about innovation but does not provide the basic infrastructure, and spends $46 billion building something that will not even support basic level innovation. In fact, it will not even support what we already know we are going to do with this technology: work from home, basic movie downloads, e-health. This is a shambles. If there was ever an example of a government that cannot run a raffle, this is it. This is a government that took a great project and turned it into the most massive waste of money and opportunity this country will probably ever see.

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

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015 is before the chamber and I want to very quickly talk about the National Broadband Network. I will not use all my allotted time. I want to reflect on the role of public investment and the role of private investment. Ultimately, I am a strong believer that technology is overtaking us and wireless will be the way that everyone wants to go.

Mr Husic interjecting—

They might laugh at me, but if you look at national broadband networks that have been built around the world, people are accessing their technology through wireless. They simply are not accessing their technology through fibre as the long-term program. What I can access on this iPad and this iPhone here is really critical. I cannot help but think that when we compare NBNs in different parts of the world to Australia's, most of the countries that have superior national broadband networks have not been built by their governments; they have been built by private investment. There is nothing like private investment to get things done.

What we saw when the NBN was first announced was that all private investment stopped. In fact, Horsham, the township I represent, had been promised the NBN but it was not delivered in the time frame—and still has not been delivered. Services have been lacking there because Telstra stopped putting in exchange ports for ADSL and stopped putting in fibre. The area that was never flagged was Mildura and that is where private investment came in and built a fibre network. They actually have reasonably good fibre in the main investment hub.

The irony of it is that the way of the future, whether we like it or not, should be some fibre to businesses in our main business centres, but otherwise it should be wireless. People are choosing to use wireless. I put the alternate view that no-one has ever talked about: what would Australia look like if a commitment of $37 billion had been made to subsidise mobile and wireless technology right across Australia? You would find people in my electorate being able to use their phones to take scans of different things in their vineyards, for example. Wireless is the way that people are heading.

I think that in the future the technology we are building will not be seen as First World; it will be seen as yesterday's technology. By the time it is built—and, admittedly, it is taking time and I hear lots of banter and candid contributions from both sides of the chamber—we will reflect on it and say that if we had spent the same money on wireless, we would have something that would take us into the future rather than what we eventually might have in the years to come.

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

That contribution shows the kind of thinking on telecommunications in this country that has condemned or, I should say, consigned those opposite to mistakes for years on broadband. In fact, I would say that, from the top down, they all suffer from reverse broadband Midas touch. Every time they touch broadband they stuff it up. The argument made by the member for Mallee is a clear example. To be fair to you, Member for Mallee, you are not the first time to put this argument. The first one to try to argue this line was your Prime Minister way back when he was first appointed as the then opposition shadow communications minister. The Padding Manning book, the biography of Malcolm Turnbull, says:

For all his industry experience, some of Turnbull's early steps were amateurish. At first he appeared to line up with his leader believing the whole world was going wireless and this would make FTTP redundant.

That was the argument back then, Member for Mallee. In an op ed that he wrote, he said:

Wireless broadband has been growing at nearly ten times the rate of fixed-line broadband, whose penetration has remained fairly static. The convenience and flexibility of wireless is compelling and likely to become more so. It will be a fierce competitor with the new network.

This was the canard, this was the dummy argument, being put out so you would not rollout fibre; you would just rely on wireless. So what is the truth?

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

What are you reading from?

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

I just said it. Listen to me and you will learn. The biography went on:

The truth, however, was that the explosive growth in wireless as dependent on fixed-line technology, and price sensitive consumers were going to be careful to avoid heavy use of data over 4G mobile networks that would be far more expensive per megabyte.

That is the point. When you lose wireless it costs you more. So what you arguing for on behalf of your constituents is for them to pay more rather than get a better service delivered through fixed-line and optic fibre to their home. There would be a mix of wireless and there would be a mix of satellite. So that was argument No. 1.

Then we have the Nationals in this debate. This bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015, will break down the notion that you would have uniform pricing. And you as a National Party member can come into this place and not bat an eyelid that it will break it down and make it more expensive in the regions than it is in the cities. When I think of the fact that you are sitting on the sideline and not saying a single word about that, I am reminded of that saying: 'Thank God for the starch in your shirts, because your spines are not holding you up.' You are not defending your constituency whatsoever.

When you speak in this debate and fail to point out that fact to your own constituents, you are letting them down, you are being a sell-out and you are being the best doormat that the Liberal Party could have in letting them get away with this. It is astounding. Then you come in here with an argument saying, 'Oh, we should just go wireless. Wireless would be way better.' What you need in your regions is better broadband. Wireless will fix some of it for those areas that are hard to fibre up, but, like what we were saying when we were in government, your main aim should be 93 per cent fibre to the premises. Everything else is a sad joke, and you are going to have to play catch-up at some point.

That was not the first mistake that Malcolm Turnbull made. The other mistake that he made—and again I say this for the benefit of our great friends in the National Party, because they use this argument as well—was that he tried to criticise the need for the two satellites that we had commissioned when we were in government. It was planned to launch them in 2015, delivering fast broadband to about 200,000 homes in the most remote communities, Member for Mallee. Mr Turnbull tried to bag us out for that and then realised that, because of the huge demand out in the regions, this was actually a good idea. He then tried to argue that we had not planned properly for this satellite service because it was oversubscribed. There was a reason that it was oversubscribed. When people in the regions heard—and I know this from talking with people in the regions—about the speeds that they could get for download and upload compared to what they were getting, they were flocking to use it. They were flocking to use a satellite service that had been bagged out by the coalition.

How in their minds they could bag out a satellite service that would deliver better broadband for their constituents is astounding—but it does not surprise me, when the Nationals fail to come in here and stand up for the regions on broadband. Their big fixation in this debate is mobile phone towers. That is the extent of telecommunications reform and improvement in infrastructure from the Nationals' perspective. No wonder the Liberals walk all over you, when you do not have the intellectual grunt to be able to step up and put the argument forward for your regions. It is Labor that is arguing for the regions not only to get access to the infrastructure but also to make sure that the wholesale price is uniform and that you are not penalised by virtue of the fact that you live in the regions.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Chifley, when you use the word 'you' you are referring to me, and I do not like to be walked over.

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

I take on board your point, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would not even imagine trying to do that to your good self. I have huge respect for the Deputy Speaker, but I have even greater respect for the people that he and some of the regional members represent in this place, and I frankly think that more needs to be done for the regions to improve telecommunications availability and, in particular, broadband.

As I said, there were some fundamental errors right at the get-go in the way in which the now Prime Minister—then shadow communications minister—approached this. He also tried to talk it down, saying that it was just going to be a video delivery service—mimicking the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah—not realising that most projections for data growth across the planet were showing that data would grow at a phenomenal rate and you needed a network to be able to manage that data growth. And the best the coalition could do was dumb down the network and dumb down the argument about supporting a better network—trying to weave it into all their usual attack and all their usual spin. As a result, public policy has suffered, and it has been not only Labor constituents who have suffered but also, importantly, coalition constituents, particularly in the regions, who have suffered.

There was a point at which the coalition said, 'We will make sure that we look after the worst affected and we will prioritise them in the rollout.' Well, like every other promise the coalition has been made in this debate, that went by the wayside as well. So did the promise that, by the end of this year, 2016, everyone will have access to at least 25 megabits per second download—and, off the top of my head, that would be 50 megabits by 2019. That promise went by the wayside as well.

The other noteworthy thing is that the former CEO, Mike Quigley—who was hounded by the Prime Minister, whose reputation was completely trashed by the Prime Minister when he was the shadow communications minister, an outrageous bullying of the then CEO—has taken the time to analyse where we are at with the NBN. What appears to have occurred is that there has been a $15 billion blow-out in the total cost of the NBN project since the coalition came to government, and there has been a review of how that could possibly be the case. The paper put forward by Mike Quigley analyses the difference in the cost of the various parts of the NBN between the 2013 strategic review and the 2016 corporate plan. In round figures, it found that the cost of rolling fibre to existing premises fell from $14 billion to $11 billion, the cost of rolling fibre to new premises fell from $3 billion to $2 billion and the combined cost of the fixed wireless and satellite components of the rollout fell from $6 billion to $4 billion. On those bases, on the existing configuration of the network that Labor had commenced and which was carried over by the coalition, those costs fell. The cost of the transit network, the backbone of the NBN, is virtually unchanged at $1.5 billion, up only by $100 million. It leaves the HFC and fibre-to-the-node networks as the only possible cause of the blow-out. Mike Quigley writes: 'HFC and fibre to the node are the real culprits of the $15 billion increase, not previous management, not inadequate financial systems and not hidden costs in the FTTP rollout.' The Prime Minister consistently talked up the cost and time taken to roll out fibre to the premises and talked down the cost of rolling out fibre to the node and HFC. But, as Mike Quigley said, the chickens are coming to roost.

There was the delay and extra expense involved in the renegotiation of the definitive agreements with Telstra. We were told it was only going to take six months. Wrong! It took way longer. The cost to rollout HFC and fibre to the node in the timescale that the coalition promised was grossly underestimated, and that is largely why we are seeing a $15 billion increase. On every measure, on all of the key measures, the coalition has got it wrong. As I said, they have a reverse Midas touch when it comes to broadband: every time they touch it, they stuff it up!

The strategic review said the second-rate NBN will cost $41 billion. After two years, the reality is that the second-rate NBN has cost $56 billion, up by $15 billion. The strategic review said fibre to the node would $600 cost per home. Two years later, fibre to the node costs $1,600 per home—up $1,000 per home or nearly 200 per cent. The strategic review reckoned it would take $55 million to fix up copper. The reality is $641 million—up nearly $600 million or over 1,000 per cent. The strategic review claimed that 2.6 million homes would be connected to NBN pay TV by December 2016. Wrong again. Only between 10,000 and 875,000 homes will be connected by December this year. That is down by between 1.7 million and 2.6 million homes, or roughly 66 per cent to 100 per cent lower revenue. The government reckoned they were going to rake in $2.5 billion in revenue in 2016-17. Two years on, it has been estimated that revenue in 2016-17 will be $1.1 billion, down by $1.4 billion. IT capex was estimated at a shade under $2 billion. But it is over $2½ billion, so that has increased as well.

All the measures of what they are doing are continuously wrong. As the shadow communications minister said, in any other circumstance where you had performed so poorly you would expect a demotion. But the communications minister, after stuffing up the NBN and after exhibiting his reverse Midas touch on broadband, did not get demoted; he got promoted to the top job in the land! You can see all the ways he has affected the NBN rollout and he is cheered on by the National Party. who swallow the line that they are doing well when, on every single measure, they are not.

This bill makes it even worse. It waters down the consumer safeguards, it waters down the ability to get uniform pricing and it has been criticised by industry. It is yet another example of all of these things. From the moment the Prime Minister took on the job of shadow communications minister, he made errors and kept compounding them. He made promises that he could not conceivably keep. When he went from being shadow communications minister to communications minister, he made the promise of download speeds of 25 megabits per second by December 2016. He made the promise that everyone would get faster download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second by 2016. Within 12 weeks of getting the job, he came into this chamber and admitted he would not be able to keep his promise. Some people would say it was a lie. But they continually made promises they had no capability of being able to extend to the Australian public. I reckon it demonstrated that they had not had the full rigour and testing of whether they could feasibly extend that commitment to the Australian people. They led people on that they could deliver faster, cheaper and better than what was on offer at the time. They have failed on all those counts.

This is an absolutely outrageous way to treat the Australian people. To condemn them to poor service when we are in an age where service needs to improve and not to be more of the same or worse. Countries are overtaking us in the quality of our broadband network. Countries are using good broadband to support the innovative activity required to diversify economies, create new jobs and generate new wealth. These are the type of thing that happen when you allow the broadband network to degrade. To be fair to the Prime Minister, it is not just him; it is the entire coalition. They tried to fix broadband 19 times in the Howard government and failed. They then came up with a dodgy policy leading into the 2010 election. Ever since the once shadow communications minister and now Prime Minister has been in place, everything he has done has been terrible and we have suffered as a result. (Time expired)

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015. But before I talk about this misguided and ideological attempt by the Turnbull-Joyce government to roll back a number of competition- and consumer-friendly reforms that underpin Labor's National Broadband Network, I wish to put it into a little bit of context, and I do so from the context of Australia being obviously an island nation that is reasonably far removed from most of the population centres in the world. This is important, because it illustrates how important it is that we get our communications with the rest of the world correct. We also need to focus on that because we are a country that values higher wages. We have a welfare net and, going back to the harvester cases when it comes to industrial law, we say that our workers are not slaves but need a decent return. That is the context of Australia.

That is why Labor governments for the past 40 or 50 years have always focused on getting the productivity gains right when in government. We do so in the context of protecting wages but making sure that Australia can compete with the rest of the world whilst maintaining those high wages. And how do you do that? In 2016, in the middle of the digital revolution, in the age of technology, you make sure you invest in communications. And we know how important this is. In fact, I was a member of the 43rd parliament, a minority government under Prime Minister Gillard, which came to power only when the Independents who represented the bush saw the benefits of the National Broadband Network. And I know when Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott came to looking, in a dry, empirical way, at what the parties had to offer, what tipped it for those two Independents was the National Broadband Network. Why? Because the NBN, as planned by Labor, delivers for the bush.

Unfortunately, the bloke who missed out was the member for Warringah. He did not understand the NBN. He was proud of the fact that he was a Luddite when it came to technology. He was proud to say that yes, he still writes longhand—not necessarily with a nib or a paintbrush, but he was proud of the fact that he was not savvy. However, I think when he missed out on government because of the National Broadband Network it crystallised in his mind his concerns about the NBN. So, effectively, in the lead-up to the 2013 election, when the polls were looking very good for him, he said, 'Well, I have to do something to keep the bloke I deposed as leader happy and keep him inside the tent.' He had indicated that he wanted to leave parliament, which might have made the member for Warringah happy. Instead, he said, 'All right; you can be in charge of the communications portfolio.' And the member for Wentworth understood communications. He had invested in it, he saw the benefits that flowed from it, he understood the way of the world and where the world is heading when it comes to the digital revolution. He had been involved in communications back when he was at university.

So, the member for Warringah basically appointed the member for Wentworth to the role of sabotaging the NBN. We had all sorts of promises before the election and then, once Prime Minister Abbott was elected by the people of Australia, in that democratic process, we suddenly had a change in approach to the National Broadband Network. We ended up with something that is twice the price, has twice the rollout time and has half the speed, instead of taking Labor's approach of investing in fibre and getting it right with what would be the largest infrastructure rollout in the history of Australia that would particularly benefit the bush, would particularly benefit the Nationals heartland. Instead, we ended up with this sabotaged outfit.

When the communications minister as he then was, the member for Wentworth, said 'We are going to do a rigorous analysis; we'll get Infrastructure Australia to do an independent cost-benefit analysis', that was the promise he made to the Australian people. Instead, when he came to be in office, with some chance to actually have a say in the National Broadband Network, what did he do? He appointed a panel that was full of former Liberal Party staffers, Liberal Party advisers and other noted public critics of Labor's National Broadband Network. And we see that the cost models that the Vertigan panel relied on had been proven to be hopelessly wrong. As the government's second-rate NBN has blown out from the $41 billion assumed in December 2013—not that long ago—now nbn co's latest, August, corporate plan is assuming a cost of $56 billion. So, as I said, it is nearly twice the price.

The possibilities that are there in terms of improving productivity are incredible. I mention the bush particularly, not only in education, because the bush schools would get the benefits first and foremost, but also when it comes to agriculture. Some people like to say that Australia will become the food bowl of Asia as the Asian century rolls out and those populations that we are closest to become our future markets. I am a little more sceptical and think that we might become the delicatessen of Asia rather than the food bowl! But if you are a delicatessen it is all about having niche markets. Our farmers are the best in the world; there are maybe one or two countries that can compete with them when it comes to dry land agriculture and the like. But we still have to transport our food products to Asia, and we can only be that delicatessen if we have good communication opportunities. Rather than just growing stuff broadly, we have to be able to have some niche markets where people will pay top dollar for it. That is the reality of being so far from some markets. We are not a part of the European Union, where they can roll stuff out on trains. We are a long way from some of our Asian markets.

The NBN should bring great productivity gains for this nation. Instead, what have we seen? This second-rate NBN. Not only have the costs gone up from $29.5 billion to $56 billion but also they said they would have it rolled out to all homes in Australia by this year, 2016. What is the new time frame? They are now doubling that, up to 2020. They said that their cut-price, second-rate copper NBN would cost $600 per home. This cost has nearly tripled to $1,600 a home. They said it would only cost about $55 million to patch up the old copper network. This cost has blown out by more than 1,000 per cent. It is not a 10 per cent blow out or a 100 per cent blow out but a 1,000 per cent blow out, to more than $640 million dollars.

Prime Minister Turnbull said that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the pay TV cables by 2016. Now nbn co are forecasting they will connect only 10,000 homes by June 2016. Yet this was an infrastructure plan, a commitment and a promise that many people in my electorate relied on. I remember the candidates' debate in the 2013 election where the No. 1 issue for businesses in Moreton was access to the NBN. It was the No. 1 issue. It did not matter what the business was, they saw the opportunities—just like the communications minister did. I can understand the member for Warringah; I know he does not get technology. We saw that horrific interview with the hologram of Sonny Bill Williams. We still remember that.

But the member for Wentworth, the Prime Minister, the former communications minister, does get the NBN. He does understand it. I can understand the member for Warringah being upset about how the NBN cost him the prime ministership. It was so close, but it just exceeded his grasp. And then, after that significant defeat, he did not even sit in office for two years and he never entered the gates of the Lodge as Prime Minister before he was knifed in the back in the middle of the night. Sadly, the NBN that this Prime Minister—the former communications spokesperson for the Liberal and National parties—is overseeing is a sham.

They said that this second-rate network that they promised to the Australian people would bring in $2.5 billion in revenue in 2016 and 2017. Now they are forecasting only $1.1 billion, so he has blown a $1.4 billion hole in nbn co's revenue line. Unbelievable. Yet today in question time he dared to mention the global financial crisis response that was rolled out by the Labor Party. With these sorts of projections and targets and the way that they hit them, it is unbelievable.

I lay a lot of blame on this panel that was appointed by the minister. The assumptions they made are unbelievable. They assumed, people watching this on the web, that the median household in Australia would require only 15 megabits per second by 2023. Already, 67 per cent of Australians on the NBN are ordering speeds higher than this. The Labor plan was to use fibre, to do it once and to do it right. The sabotage that has taken place, when it comes to Australia's biggest infrastructure program, is almost criminal.

Instead of rolling out a project that was in the nation's interest we had an ideological obsession by the member for Warringah. This was a program that was going to boost productivity and education. This was a program that was going to boost things for farmers, for manufacturers and for so many people in Australia. For the member for Warringah to co-opt the member for Wentworth, who understood the benefits that would flow and who was happy to invest in French fibre while, simultaneously, sabotaging Australian—

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

French fibre?

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, he invested in French telecommunications companies that were relying on fibre. He was happy to do that. He saw the benefits that would flow, there: 'Work, save, invest in the Caymans.' But when it came to Australia's national interest he was not prepared to let Australia get the right thing. For him to be co-opted into this ideological sleight that was visited on the former Prime Minister is reprehensible. That takes a special type of flexibility to be able to sign up for such a sabotage job.

The bill is too heavily reliant on the recommendations coming out of the Vertigan panel. As I said, this group of former Liberal Party staffers, Liberal Party advisers and people who were always critical of the NBN was appointed by the member for Wentworth so that they would tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. I note that the industry response to this piece of legislation before the parliament has been scathing. They have pointed to the risk of consumer detriment from the proposed measures, which are, basically, about rolling back a number of competition reforms and consumer-friendly reforms.

Why shouldn't the Australian people know what is happening to their NBN? It is the biggest infrastructure investment ever made by Australia, leaving aside some of the things invested in during World War II, in terms of the military response. The Australian people deserve for the government to make this information available. We need to know simple information like the total capex, the total opex, the total revenue and the amount of interest that nbn co will pay. What has this government got to hide? Is it their shame? Is it their embarrassment?

The National Party, particularly, should be speaking up on this topic, because the NBN will have incredible benefits for the bush. That is where the productivity gains will come—not only in education establishments in the bush but also on our farms. The government needs to reconsider this attempt to hide their horrible NBN infrastructure from the Australian people. I believe that we can do better.