Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you were to drive down the road 15 to 20 kilometres from where we are standing today, you would find some of the worst broadband coverage in the country in terms of availability and quality. We are talking 15 or 20 kilometres down the road from the nation's Parliament House in the nation's capital. As communications minister, the Prime Minister had 2½ years to do one job. What does he have to show for it? We have missed targets, we have cost blow-outs and we have broken promises. As of last week, nbn co had completed 29,000 of his second-rate fibre-to-the-node projects, less than a third of its target of 94,000 premises.

This is a government that is failing to deliver its own second-rate copper NBN. This week's leaked report revealed the true cost of that failure being $56 billion—that is, $56 billion worth of failure. That is nearly double what the Prime Minister said it would cost at the last election. We always knew the Prime Minister's second-rate NBN would be cheap and nasty but now it is not even cheap, and people are sick of it. They are sick of the delays, they are sick of the mismanagement and they are sick of being promised one thing and getting another. People in the southern part of my electorate are particularly sick of it; they are not even on the NBN rollout map. We are talking 15 to 20 kilometres from this building, from the nation's Parliament House in the nation's capital. It has the worst broadband coverage in the country in terms of availability and quality. It is absolutely outrageous—this is the nation's capital!

When the latest rollout map was released the residents of Tuggeranong, like so many millions of other Australians, eagerly typed their addresses into the website and were appalled to see that they were not even there. There was just one big, blank space—one big, blank space on the future of NBN for the southern part of my electorate, particularly in Tuggeranong. They are not even on the rollout map, and there is no indication of when the NBN is going to be coming to them; no indication at all. There is nothing—just one big, blank space. There were lots of nice dots everywhere else in Australia, and good luck to everyone else in Australia, but there was just one big, blank space for the southern part of my electorate. As I said, only 15 to 20 kilometres from Parliament House in the nation's capital there is one big, blank space on the NBN rollout map, with no idea of when we are going to get NBN.

Naturally, my constituents are feeling pretty frustrated. I feel those frustrations too. So last December I presented a petition signed by hundreds of Canberrans calling for the new communications minister to take action. When presenting the petition I asked the minister: 'Minister, please prioritise Canberra's NBN rollout map. Our situation is bleak, as you have heard. It is dire, and we are being left behind. We are victims of a digital divide here in Canberra.' It took more than two months to get a response from the minister, and it is hard to imagine a less constructive response. The minister wrote back that, yes, many in my electorate are considered underserved in terms of broadband quality and availability—as if the people of Canberra did not know that already. You would think that, having recognised how urgent and pressing the NBN rollout is to so many in the Tuggeranong region and its surrounding areas, the government might make delivering the NBN a particular priority, particularly when they have acknowledged that many areas in my electorate here in Canberra are underserved in terms of broadband quality and availability.

However, the minister went on to say, 'The coalition government is prioritising underserved homes and businesses in the NBN rollout, and by 2017-18 more than 65 per cent of those underserved homes and businesses will be able to order a service on the NBN.' Brilliant—with 65 per cent, surely we are going to be included in that. But guess what? That 65 per cent does not include the electorate of Canberra and those parts of Tuggeranong that are only 15 to 20 kilometres away from the nation's Parliament House; 15 to 20 kilometres away from the seat of democracy here in the nation's capital. And even though it has been acknowledged by the minister that they are underserved, they are not being prioritised for the NBN. They are not part of that 65 per cent that is going to be rolled out in future.

There is a human cost to the cost blow-outs of project delays and cut-rate service delivery. These are some of the letters that I have received in recent months. I repeatedly read these out in parliament, and I will continue to read these out in parliament until my electorate gets prioritised on the NBN rollout. This is the nation's capital, and 15 to 20 kilometres from Parliament House we have the worst coverage in the country in terms of availability. It is absolutely outrageous, so I will continue to read these letters out in parliament, I will continue to petition the minister and I will continue to write to the minister until the electorate of Canberra gets prioritised. Geoff says:

We cannot even get ADSL2 service, although we are paying for a higher-end service. If we are serious about becoming a clever and innovative country, it starts with having top-end infrastructure. Don't cut us short.

Alex wrote to me when he managed to find an upside to the latest report of delays and reviews:

I'd prefer that the Liberals make absolutely no progress at all on the NBN. The less they do, the less they can stuff up. When NBN comes to Isabella Plains, I want it to be fibre to the premises, done right the first time.

Alex might have been able to see the silver lining to the government's chronic mishandling of the NBN, but others just cannot. They have seen it very differently. Rebecca says:

I am so tired of living in a fantastic area that has broadband far, far worse than I got while living in Brisbane 10 years ago. Some nights my broadband is so slow I can't download text emails.

Here we are in the nation's capital, and here is Rebecca not being able to download text emails.

How is this acceptable in 2015?

which is when she wrote me the letter.

I am about to commence university studies online, and I will need to be able to view or listen to lectures and download-upload large files. Please make this possible!

All I can say, Rebecca, is, 'Good luck with the university studies, given the fact that you cannot even download text emails as a result of the outrageously bad service that is being provided to the people in the southern part of my electorate.' They are not even on the rollout map and they are not even being considered for prioritisation, despite the fact that the minister has acknowledged that we are underserved. This came from Roger:

The NBN has the potential to transform our economy—

Yes, Roger, it does—

to create new jobs and businesses and cut urban congestion and pollution. But it's still off in cloud-cuckoo-land for many. Along with thousands of other people in the ACT, I'm starting to wonder if I will ever see higher-speed internet. Contacts in Melbourne are already on the NBN and they think my speed is a joke. Canberra should be a high priority because of our government and tertiary education sectors.

And there was this from Daniel:

Please help. Our internet is terrible—three or four times a week it won't work at all.

We are talking about 2016, and three or four times a week our internet will not work at all.

Certainly limits productivity!

It does indeed, Daniel. It does certainly limit productivity.

Work provides flexible work options, but without a reliable internet this is limited, and can also be dreadfully inefficient even when connected! And we're not even on the rollout map!

Yes, Daniel, I know. I have been trying to get this message through to the communications minister for some time and, despite the fact that he has acknowledged that we are underserved, despite the fact that he has acknowledged that we are not on the rollout map, unfortunately we ain't a priority. That really does typify this government's and former coalition governments' views on Canberra: the complete contempt and disdain they have for this city, the complete contempt and disdain they have for the public service and the complete contempt and disdain they have for our servants of democracy.

We saw what the Howard government did to this city in 1996. As I said, today 20 years ago was a dark day for Canberra in terms of the decimation wreaked by the Howard government. And we are seeing the same contempt and disdain from this Abbott-Turnbull government, not just in the NBN but also in the cuts to funding for our cultural and scientific institutions and cuts to science jobs and Public Service jobs. It was 8½ thousand at the last count, but that is nothing compared to 1996 when it was 15,000 and sent Canberra into an economic slump. Yes, Daniel, we know what coalition governments' views on Canberra are. They have got form. All I can say is that Sir Robert Menzies would be turning in his grave.

The day before yesterday I was out with a colleague trying to defend those jobs at the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority that the Deputy Prime Minister wants to move to his electorate. These are highly specialised, highly skilled jobs and he wants to move them up to Armidale. The approach is: 'No, these people do not have families; they do not have children in schools. Let's just move them up to Armidale as part of some exercise, some political stunt. Let's just move people around as if they do not have lives, aspirations and dreams, as if they do not have careers here in Canberra.' It just underscores this government's and former coalition governments' complete contempt and disdain for Canberra.

Mary wrote:

It is very sad for a country like Australia to not be more advanced in our technologies. To think that parts of our capital city do not have access to the NBN is so backward.

Glen said:

Under the original NBN rollout plan, my suburb was to get NBN in May 2013. Still waiting for an acceptable alternative, with nothing on the horizon to give hope. Is it time to move to the Northside?

And there is Adrian, who wrote:

… in global standards we are a third world country when it comes to Internet download speeds and pricing! Latvia has faster average internet speeds than we do!

And then there was this letter from Renny, who works in one of the many local small businesses that are struggling with second-rate internet speeds:

I read, with utter disbelief and disgust, that Theodore, Calwell and the like are—yet again—missing out. If this wasn't bad enough I see that places like Wanniassa are getting included. These suburbs already have access to some form of high speed internet (TransACT) and now they are getting a second bite of the cherry while we in the south struggle with technology that peaked 15 years ago. Before the change of Government we were told that the NBN would be in our area in 2015. Now that has been pushed back to 2018 … or never maybe?

As I said, a lot of these areas are not even on the rollout map, so we do not know when they are going to be appearing. Renny continued:

Has anyone thought about the businesses, such as mine, that are trying to operate using an internet service that is one of the worst in any developed nation?

As Adrian said, Latvia has faster average internet speeds than we do.

This is not fair! What have we done to attract such scorn and cynicism?

Unfortunately, Renny, this is what you get when coalition governments are elected. As I said, they have complete contempt and disdain for our nation's capital and for Canberrans.

Renny's frustrations are echoed all across the electorate of Canberra and all across the country. As a former small business owner myself, I know how it feels. You have a deadline with a client. You have spent weeks, often months, working on a particular project. You have laid it out, you have carefully edited it, you have carefully researched it, you have put a lot of work into it and you are really proud of the piece of work that you have produced. You put it in a PDF and send it to the client by deadline on a Friday afternoon. Your next pay packet is dependent on that product being delivered to the client by deadline. Can you imagine what would happen if that were Renny? With poor old Renny the file would be somewhere in his clogged up outbox and the client would be getting it in six months time. By that stage Renny would probably have lost the client and the business, and God knows how he would be paying his mortgage. Small businesses depend for success on their reputation and the ability to deliver a quality product to their clients on time and to deadline.

This is outrageous. I again call on the Minister for Communications: Minister, please, I have written to you and I have petitioned you. Will you please prioritise Canberra on the NBN rollout map. You have acknowledged that we are underserved, so will you please put us on the priority rollout map. Canberrans deserve it. We do not deserve to have worse connections than those in Latvia. (Time expired)

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

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015. Like the previous speaker I want to acknowledge that on this day 20 years ago the Howard federal coalition government was elected. I remember that day well. I was watching on election night and it was a great relief that the coalition had been elected after years of Labor government incompetence. I remember clearly that we were left with $96 billion in debt and it was the federal coalition government that paid it off. What did we have to do at that stage? We had to actually sell Australia's communication network Telstra. This time, coming into government in 2013, we were left with something like $250 billion in debt, but there was not a lot left to sell. Those opposite voted for those increases in debt.

This bill will implement the government's response to the independent cost-benefit analysis and review into NBN arrangements that was undertaken by a panel in 2014. Basically, the measures in this bill will finetune NBN's business obligations and administration. Unlike Labor, the coalition government care about providing taxpayers with value for money. That is why at the last federal election we said we would do an independent cost-benefit analysis on major infrastructure projects, as we did for this in 2014. The federal government care about having a world-class telecommunications network.

There are four measures in this bill. The first is changes to clarify regulation surrounding access to facilities. At the moment, access to telecommunications facilities—pits, pipes, ducts, mobile towers—is regulated under several schedules of the Telecommunications Act and is also regulated by the ACCC under part of the Competition and Consumer Act. This causes confusion, so amendments clarify that access and determine what part will have precedence over access determined under the Telecommunications Act. This clarifies the relationship between the two acts.

The second change is to ensure a service provider who controls or owns in-building cabling must provide access to that cabling as part of providing access to a declared service. This is especially relevant in my electorate of Petrie, particularly in the Redcliffe Peninsula, where there are quite a few high-rise buildings and apartment blocks. This change will remove the potential of restricting access to competitors and ensures end users can get faster access to broadband and telephone services. If someone owns the in-building cabling, they cannot prevent a telecommunications company providing a service to the consumer in that building.

Third, we are also making changes to the wording around fixed principle provisions to improve the consistency and effectiveness. This is basically a procedural change that the Senate committee and the industry have supported.

Fourth and finally, the bill will change nbn's line-of-business restrictions to ensure the National Broadband Network can dispose of surplus assets to any person. Currently, it can only sell those assets to another carrier or service provider. For example, the current law prevents nbn from selling surplus office equipment or vehicles unless it supplies an eligible service to the potential buyer unless the sales is connected with the supply of that eligible service. This is very impractical, and it makes sense that a government owned organisation like nbn can sell surplus vehicles or office equipment to anyone that they choose and get the best value for taxpayers where they can.

As you can see, what the government is doing here is making the National Broadband Network processes more efficient and effective. Every day since this federal coalition government was elected, this government has put priority on rolling out a world-class telecommunications network as fast and as cost-effectively as possible. That is very relevant after the $43 billion blow-out under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years—$43 billion which only racked up the debt even more.

Unlike the Labor Party, we know we are working with taxpayers' money. The Australian government money comes from taxpayers, those hardworking Australians who pay income tax and company tax, the people the Labor opposition want to hit with their changes to negative gearing and superannuation. Through the great work of the Prime Minister, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, and the Minister for Communications, the Hon. Mitch Fifield, and their staff, almost two million premises around the country can right now access the NBN. That is an 80 per cent increase on what it was when we were elected. That is a big improvement. It is actually a very stark contrast to Labor's NBN mess, which saw fewer than two per cent of the population hooked up to the NBN, at a cost of some $6 billion. Labor does not understand that every dollar wasted comes out of taxpayers' pockets and that every dollar wasted is a dollar that has to be repaid with interest by the next generation of Australians, which is irresponsible.

What a legacy we were left with! Luckily, the people in my electorate of Petrie and around this nation are in the safe and effective hands of the coalition government. I have been strongly advocating in my electorate of Petrie for a faster NBN rollout. I was very proud to announce that last year 53,390 local households had been prioritised for the rollout. This is happening years sooner than Labor's 2024 completion date. In suburbs in my electorate like North Lakes, Mango Hill and Griffin—fast-growing areas in my electorate with loads of new people coming in—construction is due to begin in July 2016, just three or four months away. There will be 5,020 priority premises around the North Lakes, Mango Hill and Griffin areas. This is very important because that area in my electorate has a very fast growing business sector. It is a little city in its own right just north of Brisbane. These people certainly do need better internet and telecommunications connections than other parts of my electorate.

Thirty per cent of my electorate is in the Brisbane City Council, which has probably better services at the moment. I grew up in Bracken Ridge. It has better services than what the Moreton Bay regional sections of the electorate have, so I am very pleased about this priority rollout beginning in July for North Lakes, Mango Hill and Griffin. The design in this area has been completed, and they are ready to kick it off. So that is that area.

There will also be a second round of construction in Mango Hill, and it will begin in the second half of 2017. The Prime Minister knows this part of my electorate very well. He came up prior to the 2013 federal election, when the Park Vista Estate, a new estate in my electorate, basically had no telephone or internet services. After his visit, very quickly those services were connected when he was the shadow minister. I want to thank him again publicly for that.

In the Redcliffe Peninsula and Rothwell areas, as part of the multitechnology mix in the National Broadband Network, the NBN will connect homes to already-present pay TV or HFC networks, which are some of the most competitive in offering superfast broadband. Under the previous government this infrastructure was going to be junked. It was bought back from Optus. They paid millions of dollars for it, and it was going to be scrapped, but we are using this technology. I am very pleased to say to the people in Redcliffe and the people in my electorate that the Redcliffe Peninsula in our electorate was the first trial site in Australia to have this technology tested. The rollout to some 22,000 across Redcliffe has started, and you should hear more from the nbn over the coming months.

Construction of thousands of new lead-ins has now been completed to houses in Redcliffe that did not already have one—there were already houses that had pay TV services previously and had a lead-in. People very soon will be able to get a connection.

In Rothwell, NBN construction will start on 600 priority homes by July this year—so that is great news for Rothwell. A second round of construction in Rothwell will begin in July 2017. Aspley, Bridgeman Downs or Carseldine in the Brisbane City Council area most homes are already connected to the NBN, and the rollout is continuing—I am very pleased about that.

A second round of construction in Bridgeman Downs will also begin in July 2017. In Bridgeman Downs there are a lot of homes with acreage, so it is important that that area is connected. In Bald Hills, Bracken Ridge and Fitzgibbon construction will start in the second half of 2017. In places like Bracken Ridge and the neighbouring suburbs like Brighton, they will also be able to use the HFC connections which have already been rolled in Redcliffe.

In Deception Bay construction will start on 1,960 priority premises around Burpengary and Burpengary East—part of my electorate—in July 2016, so very soon, and the rest of Deception Bay NBN construction will begin in July 2017.

I believe that pretty well every home in my electorate should be connected by the end of 2018; everyone should be connected. That is probably two years earlier than the rest of the country for every home to be connected and some six years earlier than what it would have been under Labor's plan.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They have got a good local member!

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

Thank you—I will take that interjection; thank you very much. Yes, we work hard but of course we would not have been able to do this without the Prime Minister, the current minister and the nbn staff. The people who work for the nbn are hard at work, rolling out the NBN through my electorate in Redcliffe, the Brisbane City Council area and North Lakes—I spoke about North Lakes earlier. It is a priority area and, if you missed it before, it will start being rolled out there in July 2016—some 5,020 premises, along with the Moreton Bay Rail Link—that is exactly right: we are fighting hard.

I want to thank everyone again—thank the nbn staff for what they are doing. I thank the minister and I look forward to better internet connections for the entire federal seat of Petrie some six years earlier than promised under Labor and some two years earlier than the rest of the country. Thank you.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Telecommunications Legislation Commencement (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015, although it is understood that the government will gut its own legislation through a series of amendments that it has flagged to remove parts 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 of the bill. That is of course, I think, symbolic of what the government has done when it comes to the National Broadband Network: it has gutted its own policies when it comes to the NBN.

I had the great honour of being the communications minister at the end of the period in which we were in office. What I saw were professional public servants, a professional board led by its chair Siobhan McKenna and an organisation that is so important for transforming Australia's infrastructure.

The current Prime Minister, who was appointed the communications minister after the election by his dear friend Tony Abbott as the shadow Minister for Communications, was given the task of 'destroying the NBN'—that was the task, direct quote from Tony Abbott, when he appointed Malcolm Turnbull as the shadow minister for communications.

I think that he was very much the shadow minister for 'fraudband' rather than broadband and the copper economy rather than the digital economy. We saw Malcolm Turnbull as the communications minister set about destroying the NBN.

There is a fundamental difference in views: we on this side of the House supported fibre to the premise, fibre to the home and fibre to the business. We saw that as essential as enabling people to connect to water, electricity or other utilities. Fibre and fast-speed broadband are not something that should be kept from people on the basis of their income; it should be accessible for all.

Those opposite, with the approach of the current Prime Minister, have a very different philosophical view. You have fibre to the node or a fibre to the fridge-type box on the corner of streets and then the old copper wire into people's homes or businesses. If people are wealthy enough, they can connect up to high-speed broadband through fibre So we change it from a universal system to one that reflects people's wealth.

One of the things that is extraordinary is that in 2016 access to high-speed broadband is essential for any student at school and any business, and it is particularly important in regional Australia. One of the issues of the NBN is that access to high-speed broadband can, in a country such as Australia, break down some of those spatial inequalities that are there. If you can establish a business in a regional centre—like Coffs Harbour, where I turned on the NBN as the minister and as Deputy Prime Minister in 2013—then that makes living in those regional cities and towns much more attractive. The overheads of living in a regional city are often far less, in terms of rent or ownership of business premises compared to if you are in the CBD of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth.

We saw the NBN as very much an equity issue. The National Broadband Network should be rolled out right around the country. We know that that is world's best practice. We know that in government we achieved the structural separation of Telstra and other significant reforms which essentially had laid dormant under 12 years of the Howard government.

In terms of the principles that were being rolled out, the government has this absurd proposition that somehow they have a mandate for what they are doing. Of course, when people such as journalists at the ABC have been critical of the NBN, they quite clearly have been intimidated into not being able to express their views. Indeed, it is quite extraordinary that an article written by Emma Alberici after she hosted a debate between myself and the now Prime Minister on Lateline was published after the federal election and not before, because of so-called checks that needed to take place.

While in opposition Malcolm Turnbull had this to say:

We are going to do a rigorous analysis, we will get Infrastructure Australia to do an independent cost-benefit analysis.

Instead of appointing Infrastructure Australia, which is what Malcolm Turnbull said repeatedly in terms of those issues, Mr Turnbull appointed a collection of former Liberal Party staffers and advisors and critics of the National Broadband Network to conduct his cost-benefit analysis. The Senate select committee into the NBN had a look at the Vertigan panel's independent cost-benefit analysis to broadband. What that Senate select committee highlighted was a number of absolute shortcuts and failures when it came to a proper cost-benefit analysis. The extraordinary circumstance now whereby the government purchased in 2016 through the National Broadband Network some 1,800,000 metres of copper—that was the last amount purchased—is almost beyond belief in 2016. But what that shows is just how hopeless the government's approach was. That is why what we have seen from the government is a doubling of costs and a halving of speed under the government's own analysis.

The costs appear to be going up and up and up. We saw the extraordinary payment to Telstra for the existing network. It takes a special kind of profligacy to engage with Telstra the way that they did. They are now finding out, funnily enough. In the strategic review that took place in December 2013 they said it would cost $55 million to fix up the copper. Two years later they are saying that figure is $641 million. That is much more than a tenfold increase. In the strategic review they said that there would be $2½ billion of revenue this year and next. Now they say that figure is $1.1 billion—much less than half. They said that the fibre-to-the-node cost for the home would be $600. The actual cost, two years later, they find to be $1,600. That is an increase of 167 per cent.

All of those issues show what a failure it has been. Indeed, this government, when it comes to the NBN, shows its lack of vision for this nation. There can be no more visionary a project than the NBN, because the NBN will have an impact not just on our economy, but on the way education services are delivered, the way health services are delivered, the way that our entire national economy functions and, importantly, the way that regional economies function. That is why it is so disappointing that the National Party tail has just wagged itself at the end of the Liberal Party dog. They have failed to stand up for the interests of regional Australia when it comes to the NBN. There are people over there, including the now Leader of the National Party, who used to say quite strong things about universal service obligations and the need to have the same service available in the bush as in the city, but they are pretty quiet about that now.

Fundamentally this government stands condemned for the fact that Malcolm Turnbull said that the rollout of the NBN would be completed in 2016—this year—at 25 megabits per second minimum speed. This Prime Minister also went down to Tasmania and said very clearly that the Tasmanian rollout, which was contracted, would be continued and should have been completed by now. Everyone in Tasmania, by right now, was going to have access to the NBN, and yet you can stand on a street in Launceston and look across the road and one side does not get it and the other side does get it—with an extraordinary impact, of course, on house prices, which the government likes to consider that it is interested in, due to an accident of where the lines were drawn on the map. The people who missed out are going to miss out forever under this government's plan, because they will not get fibre to the premises.

I think this goes to the heart of the competence of the person that we now have as the Prime Minister. He made big promises. He was very critical of the former government. He had one job and one job only. He did not do anything else. He did not do media reform. He did not do anything else, except maybe plot against Prime Minister Abbott. He certainly was very conscious of that, and of spending time taking selfies on public transport—which he now, of course, does not fund. But the fact is that a doubling of the cost, a halving of the speed and inequitable distribution so that we will have haves and have-nots, suburbs divided on the basis of access to NBN—

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

And the delay.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and the delay in times, the blow-out in terms of delivery, show that this Prime Minister could not deliver as communications minister, so it is no wonder that he is all at sea when it comes to providing national leadership for Australia.

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

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Grayndler, who is such a strong advocate for his own electorate but also for infrastructure across the country. He has done a great job today, on the 20th anniversary of his election to this parliament, of really exploring and exposing some of the shocking mismanagement and incompetence in respect of the NBN. As the member for Grayndler said, when it came to the NBN, the now Prime Minister, then communications minister, had one job. He had one job, and what are we seeing? We are seeing headlines that talk about just what a hash of that one job he has—unfortunately and very sadly—made. I guess he has got a lot of difficulties because he has completely failed to deliver on the NBN, the great nation-building reform that our country needs. By 'our country', of course, I am speaking about not just schoolkids, not just small businesses and not just university students who are trying to study but about people across this country, whether you are in the city, whether you are in the bush. Malcolm Turnbull has failed you when it comes to the NBN.

Malcolm Turnbull has failed to provide the 25 megabits per second that we were all promised we were going to get in 2016. Everyone is not getting the NBN by 2016, despite the election commitment that Malcolm Turnbull made. In fact, this NBN rollout plan of his is blowing out to 2020. Given the election was in September 2013, that is more than a doubling of the time period for the delivery of the NBN. But that is far from the only example of incompetence on this issue. Before becoming the communications minister, when the current government were in opposition, Malcolm Turnbull said that the second-rate NBN that the Liberals would deliver would cost $29½ billion. But it has blown out, Mr Deputy Speaker. You would not even believe it. It has almost doubled, to $56 billion in cost. So you have got a doubling in the time frame and a doubling in the cost.

The really sad thing is that, while it is Malcolm Turnbull who has made such a hash of this, it is households and businesses that suffer. Even more disappointing for people is the amount of old technology that is being added into this second-rate version of the NBN. Malcolm Turnbull said that it would cost $55 million to patch up the old copper network, but this cost has blown out by more than 1,000 per cent—it is hard to believe, but it is true—to more than $640 million. He said that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the pay TV cables—for the second-rate version of the NBN that he is using—by 2016. Even on those new figures, only 10,000 homes, not 2.61 million, will be connected by June 2016. He said that this second-rate network of his would bring in $2½ billion in revenue in 2016-17. This has crashed to only $1.1 billion. He has blown a $1.4 billion hole in the nbn co's revenue line.

Given the complete hash that the now Prime Minister made of the NBN, you might think that someone who had so comprehensively failed to meet every one of the KPIs on the one job that he had would suffer some of the ramifications of that. But no. He was promoted. He had one job and he hashed it up, made a complete mess of it, and what did the Liberal and National parties do? They promoted him. And why? Members of the Liberal and National parties must be asking themselves: what was the point of changing? What was the point of axing the member for Warringah from the prime ministership and installing the member for Wentworth? What has it actually delivered? We have seen what can only be described as a repeat of his incompetence on the NBN writ large in tax policy. This running up the flagpole idea after idea—a failure to put anything comprehensive out for the Australian people to consider—is so emblematic of the problem with this government. There is so much hot air and no real concrete solutions being provided to anything. It is something that we are constantly seeing, unfortunately, from the new Prime Minister.

The NBN is a really important issue in my electorate. I have some inner suburbs along the south side of Brisbane's river—that is my electorate. In some of those suburbs in South Brisbane there is fibre. There is fibre because an exchange was demolished during the building of the new children's hospital. The provider decided to lay fibre because that is the new technology. Why would you go to copper? You would not. So fibre was laid and the consequence of that is that I have some haves and have-nots in my electorate. I have the people in South Brisbane who have fibre, and I have everyone else who have 40-year-old crumbling copper wires. Even worse, there are some people in my electorate who cannot get ADSL, they cannot get cable, so they are having to rely on dongles. It is ridiculous that in the inner suburbs in Brisbane, a major metropolitan city in Australia—one of the powerhouses of economic activity in this country—people are having to rely on dongles to get internet access. It is not just households it is also businesses. In fact, I had a business move into Morningside and then contact me to tell me they cannot believe the lack of internet access there.

I have some really high-end new media, new technology, businesses in my electorate that require not only good download speeds but also great upload speeds, because some of them use very high resolution images. There are people in digital design, there are people in online video production and they need a decent NBN. It is such a shock to them when they come into what is an inner suburb, and inner metropolitan area, only to find that the internet speeds are ridiculous.

I undertook a survey of my electorate last year and I was unsurprised, but saddened, to learn of some of the problems people were having. I wrote a letter to the now Prime Minister who, at the time, was the communications minister. I delivered the letter to him by hand, in a meeting I had with him, on 12 August 2015. I told him that 80 per cent of the respondents to my survey—at the time, there were 437 of them—said that their current internet connection did not meet the needs of their business or household. I told him in my letter that the main complaints were related to internet speeds as well as the reliability of the network. I also told him that the complaints were consistent between people who had ADSL and people who had HFC connections.

Here are some of the things residents said to me. Paul of Camp Hill said:

We constantly have delays and wait long periods for downloads, our speeds vary dramatically from day to day and the time of day.

I bet they do. The internet access is terrible around Camp Hill.

Rae of Murarrie, last year, said:

I have two children in grade 9. The past term they had eleven assignments each to complete. At no set time during the day we have no internet or very slow internet. They often have to remain at school to use the computers to complete tasks.

It is just not good enough. These are kids working towards their junior certificate who will, no doubt, want to go on to senior school and possibly on to university—and I certainly hope they do. We cannot have our children being hamstrung by ridiculously slow internet speeds. Firstly, it is terrible for them individually. Secondly, it is terrible for our economy that the people we are relying upon to develop the skills and knowledge that will be needed in the future, for the jobs of the future, do not have internet access. It is ridiculous.

As I said, not everyone can even get an ADSL connection. I have people in Mount Gravatt East and in Carina who were being told, at the time, that the local exchange was at capacity. They could not get a new ADSL connection. It was not possible, so they either had to rely on HFC or, if that was not possible either, they had to rely on dongles.

I had Liam of Camp Hill talk to me about his HFC connection. He said:

It's too slow and drops out all the time. Our household is 2 adults and 4 children (incl 2 high school students). I do some work from home. There are frequent times when the speed is slow it is unworkable - this inhibits both my work and my children's school requirements. There is certainly not enough bandwidth for entertainment e.g. Netflix, YouTube, Spotify on top of school and work. I have the opportunity to do video calls to attend work meetings. The internet connect though is too unreliable for me to do so and as such do not take advantage of the opportunity to work from home - particularly annoying with family commitments.

Of course it is.

The demographics of my electorate are that it is a younger electorate than the Australian average, it is an electorate with more two-income households where both parents are working more than 40 hours a week and it is an electorate where people have a lot of family responsibilities. There are young people and young families. They are very hard working and work very long hours. Of course, they should be able to take the opportunity of flexibility that a lot of firms are providing now, but that requires being able to work from home. What do you need to work from home? You need a decent internet connection.

I wrote to the now Prime Minister. I gave him those stories and many others. I told him that some places have neither ADSL nor HFC. I told him that businesses were being held back. I raised with him my concerns about the deliverability of his government's pre-election commitments. I said:

With respect, the feedback I've received appears to indicate that promises made by you and the now Prime Minister—

at the time the member for Warringah, so he is now the former Prime Minister—

before the election that, "under the coalition's NBN all premises will have access to download speeds 25mbps to 100 mbps by the end of 2016", are unlikely to be met.

And surprise, surprise: they are still unlikely to be met.

This was a ridiculous situation where massive commitments had been made and the government is not honouring them. There is a complete blow- out on every KPI. It is certainly not the case that people are getting 25 to 100 megabits per second by 2016—that is just ridiculous. It is not happening, and no-one, frankly, can have any trust in the credibility of this government led by the person who was the communications minister at the time of this document.

I said to the now Prime Minister that I understood that the coalition's NBN was now not expected to reach all Australians until December 2020. I also drew his attention to the fact that, under Labor's 2013 rollout plan, construction of fibre was due to start for 54,000 homes and businesses in November 2013 but, regrettably, the Abbott government—now Turnbull government—had cancelled that rollout. I raised those concerns in my letter to him and I also raised them in our meeting. He was able to talk to me about some HFC that was there but, when I pressed him on it, he could not even tell me how many houses were passed by HFC. More to the point, just being passed by HFC does not mean there are going to be enough opportunities for people to connect to the HFC—because being passed by the HFC and actually connecting to it are two different propositions.

After we had that meeting on 12 August last year, I wrote to him again on 17 August, referring to my letter of 12 August, and raising further concerns that had arisen from that meeting in respect of HFC, and I asked him some specific questions about the HFC. I asked him how many of the 76,000 residences located within the distribution areas on a particular map were actually passed, how many had connections and, of the ones that did not have connections, how many could get a HFC connection currently. Unfortunately, I have not received a response to either of those two letters that I wrote to the then communications minister, now Prime Minister, in August 2015.

What would the response say? What could they possibly say? As I said, in 2013 our rollout plan was to get out to 54,000 homes and businesses. Our rollout plan was for the Camp Hill and Woolloongabba areas, which covered Bulimba, Camp Hill, Cannon Hill, Carina, Carina Heights, Carindale, Hawthorne, Morningside, Norman Park, Seven Hills, Balmoral, Dutton Park, East Brisbane, Fairfield, Highgate Hill, Kangaroo Point, South Brisbane, West End, Woolloongabba and Annerley. Some of those have fibre now—through no action of the now Prime Minister. As I said earlier, that is because an exchange was bulldozed and the provider laid the fibre. But all of those that did not have the benefit of that change are still waiting for this Prime Minister to deliver decent broadband. And what did we see last year? I have a document that says that the Woolloongabba area, which would cover East Brisbane, Kangaroo Point, Woolloongabba and Annerley, are not getting fibre; they are not getting the fibre-to-the-node that this government wants to roll out. They are getting HFC. And they are not getting it until the second half of 2017. So much for the 25 megabits per second to 100 megabits per second that everyone was going to get this year. That is not happening.

What else have we got? Let's have a look. Camp Hill-Carindale, which is in my electorate, and the Camp Hill exchange—Camp Hill, Carina, Carina Heights, Carindale and Seven Hills—are not getting fibre either. I am shocked! They are not getting their rollout, unfortunately, until the first half of 2018. It is not good enough. (Time expired)

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

It is appropriate, as we are marking the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Howard government, that we do note one of its most critical failures. I think it is important that we note it, because precisely what this failure was and how profoundly it has affected us as a country does not seem to be understood by members of the current government. Of course, I am talking about the absolute failure to prepare the ground or, indeed, to take any action on the establishment of a broadband network in this country. It is quite extraordinary that, after 11 years in government, Prime Minister Howard was still saying—when asked what he was going to do about the provision of a broadband network of the fundamental digital infrastructure that we needed for the modern economy—'We'll wait and see'. Eleven years into the job he was still waiting and seeing what the government of the day would do to establish a broadband network.

When the members opposite get up in this chamber—as they do day after day—and say, 'Look what we've achieved during our 2½ years in government and what you achieved in six years', I say to them, 'Think about the fact that when we took government, towards the end of 2007, it was ground zero.' Absolutely nothing had been done to prepare the way for the development of the broadband network. The government had been completely and utterly unaware of how absolutely critical this was. They had poisonous relationships with Telstra—and I do not entirely blame them for that. I think the three amigos who were in charge of Telstra at the time were very poor choices by that company and they were taking the company in the wrong direction; but the Howard government rejected—and probably quite properly—time and time again the proposals that were coming from Telstra to rebuild the network. In 2005 when Telstra was telling the government that it was 11 minutes to midnight for the copper network, that it was on its last legs, what did they do? They did nothing. They just waited: 'We'll wait and see' and 'We'll wait until the next offer'. And the next offer came back and it was not much better. I think it was offering about eight megabytes, but only in the five major cities—virtually no penetration outside those five major cities.

These offers, of course, were entirely unacceptable. But, then, they needed to do something else. It is not acceptable for a responsible government to just say: 'We don't like that stuff coming from Telstra. That is nonsense. That is not good enough. We don't want to give Telstra the monopoly. We will continue to wait and see if some other private sector proposal comes up. We're not going to take any agency here. We're not going to take responsibility. We're not going to recognise that this nation is behind all of our competitors. We're not going to have the imagination to understand that business in the future will be fundamentally reliant on sound and fast digital infrastructure. We're just going to wait and see. We're going to be some sort of inert blob and wait and see if someone other than Telstra is going to bowl up a successful proposal to us.'

I say to those members opposite: do not come into this House and say that we had six years. When we came into this place not a thing done had been done to establish a broadband network. There was not a piece of infrastructure in place that we could build on. We had to start it. Of course it was very complex. It was going to be a joint private-public sector venture. We were starting from ground zero. There were a few false starts. The first process did not work. But that is not a reflection on poor planning. It was that we were trying to get this thing underway. We tried a particular proposal and that did not work. Then we went back to the drawing board, very promptly, the following year and made the determination that we were going to establish nbn co.

Also at the time, we took the proper decision that we were going to build infrastructure for the 21st century not infrastructure for the 20th century because were nudging up to the turn of the new century. We totally needed to have modern technology. So we made the decision that we would go with fibre to the premises as the fundamental proposition. That is still very much the right proposal.

When the member for Warringah was Leader of the Opposition he was very much of the mode of John Howard—he wanted to wait and see if some private sector company would come along. The current Prime Minister had to persuade him to at least let them go with 'fraudband' or 'broadband lite', which is based on fibre to the node—an increasingly discredited response.

Can I take the members to the report that came out in September last year on the global broadband rankings. We should not be comparing our performance to what we had 10 years ago.

Ms Butler interjecting—

What we have to do, as the member for Griffith says, is look at how we are ranked against the rest of the world. This is not like going to gym, where your gym instructor tells you: 'Don't worry about what anyone else is doing. Just focus on what you're doing and whether or not you've done better than you were doing before.' We do not want that. That is not an appropriate response here. But that seems to have been the response from the government—'We're doing better than we were before.' This is not in the gym. We are in the world economy. We are entering into free trade agreement after free trade agreement and we are telling our community that we have to be globally competitive. We have to go out there and be agile and flexible and compete. But we are being asked to compete with one if not two hands tied behind our back.

Ms Butler interjecting—

The member for Griffith is a very distracting person. If we look at the people we are competing with, if we look at the people we are entering into trade agreements with, we can see that we are not going to be on a level playing field. I am not now talking about the asymmetry that is fundamental to virtually every trade agreement that this current government has entered into. The fundamental infrastructure that we have is increasingly falling behind the other nations. The gap is getting bigger.

We might be doing better than we did last year, but we are not catching up to the rest of the world; indeed, the reverse is the case. We have to worry about how our competitors are doing. It is not like being in the gym. It is a very, very different proposition. Our architects, our engineers, our boilermakers—everyone is competing globally for work. If we do not have the infrastructure, we are just not going to be in the game.

Sometimes I think that we forget that this is not just about manufacturing, though that is very critical for manufacturing. Look at work in the services and all the spruiking we have heard about that from the free trade agreements: 'We might be losing manufacturing—

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We haven't heard any questions in question time.

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

We have so many other things to go you on, mate. The problem is you are too big a target and we cannot actually get enough guns out to hit every one of them, so we are just going for the bullseye. And, my god, has it worked. Had we not pared back—

Mr McCormack interjecting—

I have personal considerations. It does not mean that for one minute that I lack the commitment to this cause or that I lack the view that your side can be beaten. Each day that I am in here, the clearer I am that the great promise of the Prime Minister just simply has not materialised and, indeed, if anything, it is worse because we are absolutely rudderless. We have got this sort of A-lister steering the ship, but he does not want to get his hands dirty by putting his hands on the steering wheel, or maybe it is because he has people holding his hands and keeping them off the steering wheel.

Mr McCormack interjecting—

I have 3½ minutes to go. I will tell you about the—

Mr McCormack interjecting—

It is actually very germane to this big problem. We were waiting and seeing and then they got envious that Labor had actually got this right. Labor understood the 21st century and understood the future that was coming at us. But Malcolm Turnbull had to compromise and had to get this silly fibre to the node, based on the most inferior copper infrastructure. We talk about 'Turnbullistan'—the land of the great, bright, shiny high-velocity copper.

Mr McCormack interjecting—

No; Turnbullistan is the land of bright, shiny copper. I can tell you that in my electorate, in the member for Griffith's electorate and in the member for Cunningham's electorate the copper is anything but bright and shiny. It is falling apart and, when it rains, in certain streets near my office you cannot even get a voice call. And we are apparently going to be running 25 megs down that copper network that cannot even take a voice call when it rains.

I will conclude by going back to my first point. Do not come into this House and say, 'You had six years and this is what you did.' We started from ground zero. We had an idea, we prosecuted that idea, we got nbn co entrenched and we started that process. You came in and proceeded with the contracts that we had already let, but what you are doing now is putting in place a second-class piece of infrastructure that, within 10 years, will have to be replaced. It is a great tragedy.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that it is an extraordinary outcome for us to be standing here talking to this bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015, in the full knowledge that it is within a hair's breadth, a short time, of being ripped apart by the very government who put the bill before the House. My colleague, the member for Perth, has just spoken very animatedly about the impacts of this government's decision making.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Eloquently!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Eloquently, as the member opposite says. I will take that interjection. What we have before us now is a bill that was introduced into the House in this sitting period and now we know that the government is going to gut the bill. It is probably consistent with the story of the NBN rollout under this government. It is probably legislation to the node. They have got it to the despatch box, nice and fast and running well and fibre happening, and it hits the despatch box—there is no doubt a bit of copper on the despatch box here—and it is now petering out, failing and being gutted. So that is what we have before us with this particular piece of legislation. It should be no surprise, because that has been the story of the current Prime Minister's period as the minister managing the National Broadband Network rollout since he was given the task as the shadow minister to destroy it.

So we now see before us a bill that was introduced in, I can only say, if I am kind, a misguided effort—if I am realistic, I would probably say a very ideological effort—by the government to roll back a number of very important competition- and consumer-friendly reforms that underpin the National Broadband Network. My colleague across the table, the member for Riverina, and I did our inaugural regional and rural Australia session with Radio National.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first of many, hopefully.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was an excellent segment. I can absolutely endorse it, and I look forward to us being invited back together again to have a discussion about these matters. The reality is that the bill before us has started to unpick and unwind the very important principle that underlined our initial National Broadband Network rollout proposition, and that was that the way you structured the National Broadband Network as infrastructure was to ensure that the wholesale cost was consistent across the country. Why do you do that? You do that because in rural and regional Australia, as we know full well, the cost would be so much more significant than it would be for city based areas and, as a result, the flow-on retail price for people would be significantly higher. So we had that underlying, underpinning equalisation of the costs at the wholesale level—and that is really, really important to regional and rural Australia.

The bill before us was based on the recommendations of what was called the Vertigan panel, a group of Liberal Party staffers and some Liberal Party advisors. I do not think there were any National Party people in there. That might have been where they went wrong. That might have been the problem: there should have been more of my learned colleague opposite's ilk, because, as it is said, it is the National Party people who understand what the implications for rural and regional Australia are. They were all very strident critics of the National Broadband Network. Clearly they were there to do a job, and they did it: they put forward an advisory report, a market and regulatory report, to the current Prime Minister. Sadly for the government, the response to that has been absolutely scathing. The Competitive Carriers Coalition released a statement calling on the recommendations to be 'binned'. They might have been able to call on it to be actually delivered over the new NBN, because it would have taken so long to come through the system it would have been irrelevant. But, no, they just said, 'Don't even bother with that; just bin it.' 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.

The industry response to the bill was scathing. In particular, they pointed out the risks to consumers—to the detriment of the consumer—that would come from those proposed measures.

I have some fantastic broadband advocacy groups in my local area. I work a lot with the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network—ACCAN, as it is commonly known. They have also raised some serious concerns about consumer detriment in the report, which is the basis for legislation that is now before the House, but the government ignored those concerns in the majority report of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. It recommended, in that majority report of the review of the legislation, that the bill be passed without amendment. This week, however, the government has been forced into what could only be described as a very humiliating backdown on the bill. The amendments to be introduced by the government follow, to the letter, Labor's recommendations in its dissenting report to the committee. We are glad that they have, finally, heeded the recommendations of industry and are bedding down those recommendations that were put forward.

We now have a national broadband network rolling out, under this government, that is creating as much anger and disappointment that the current Prime Minister promised to stop when he was the shadow minister and the minister. We heard all the big promises about how they were going to be so much more effective in managing this infrastructure rollout. It was going to be faster. It was going to be cheaper. We see very little of that on the ground.

In the time remaining, I just want to take members to the direct local implications for my area of what is going on. The member for Perth, quite rightly, indicated that I am, certainly, as with most of my community, no fan of copper. We live in a coastal area. We get quite heavy rainfall. We have known for a long time that, when you get water in the pits, you get disruption to both your phone and broadband service delivery. That copper has been squeezed for everything that it can give. It is in a very parlous state and it needs to be replaced.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand the decision by this government to say, 'We'll actually fund ripping that old decrepit copper out of the ground and replace it with new copper.' Where the thinking behind that lies is an absolute mystery to me, and to many of my constituents who I regularly have to deal with after heavy rainfalls. Indeed, we have an ongoing mass disruption in place, at the moment, from rainfalls in January. We need that copper gone. We need 21st century technology put in place. We need the fibre to go in the ground, because it is not impacted by wet weather in the same way that copper is.

As a result of much of the frustration that is going on locally, there have been a few, very active, voices developing in my community. Initially, of course, there was a lot of complaint, and I had to deal with a lot of contact with constituents about the fact that, under Labor's National Broadband Network website, their suburbs were on the map. Now, to be fair, before the change of government most people were ringing me saying, 'I'm on the map but it says it won't start for three years, and I'm frustrated by that.' It was a point of frustration, as people increasingly understood, in a very short period and represented a shift in how they were using broadband in their homes. Five or six years ago, you would talk to people about a national broadband project and, generally, you would have very technology-active constituents saying, 'This is great. We want this.' The broader community were generally more, 'That might be okay' but they were not really engaged. In that five or six years, that has completely changed.

There would not be a household in my community now that is not insisting that they need not only fast broadband but also reliable broadband. The big issue has become reliability. Speed is frustrating, not just download but upload speed, particularly if you have a university student at home doing very content-heavy submissions and assignments, if you are running a small business from home where you are exchanging information in both directions or if you are trying to work from home. I have a very large commuter base in my electorate who work in Sydney. A lot of them are professional people who do very content-heavy work at home. So the upload/download speeds is a very significant issue for them. But the big issue is reliability.

If you are trying to run a small business and your broadband is down for days or, indeed, weeks—and, on a few occasions, I have had to deal with 'months'—you are almost killing off that small business. That is the outcome of unreliable technology. In my area, and I am sure it is the case in many other areas, most of that breakdown and problem is driven by the issue of the copper. Even in areas where the broadband may roll out to the node, I have an ongoing fear that my life as a member for that region will continue to be consumed by issues to do with heavy rainfall and the effect on that last piece of technology from the node—the copper—still being in the ground.

People were devastated to disappear off the map. So they all started contacting me again saying, 'I know I was writing to you about why we're on a three-year build and not an immediate one, but we've disappeared off the map. What on earth does that mean?' For those people, not only did they no longer have some sense, at least, of when the build would commence but also it was a pretty clear indication they were going to get fibre to the node as well and not fibre to the premise. That generated quite a lot of campaigning. There is a great local group. They are a Facebook based group. They have indicated to me that it is frustrating because, quite often, they cannot update their Facebook page due to their poor connections. People who have visited the Illawarra would be aware that the northern suburbs of the Illawarra are a beautiful part of the world. There is an escarpment that comes down and meets the sea. There are a whole lot of villages up and down that area—fantastic lifestyle with beautiful views. A lot of people in that area work from home, have businesses they run from home, do contract work and so forth. They are now back on the map but they had disappeared for the last 2½ years. They were so frustrated they set up this Facebook page. It is called '2508+disconnected'—2508 is the postcode. They are now a very active member of the ACCAN network. In fact I caught up with them when they were here just last week for the ACCAN forum that was held in this area. They continue to lobby very hard not only for fast but, most importantly, reliable broadband.

I would like to acknowledge Mark and Karen McKenzie, who initially set up that Facebook site. Sometimes I do not dare look at it because they are really on the ball. They pick up whenever there is a service breakdown or whenever there are delivery issues around the speeds that they are getting. I know that is like the canary in the mine—it is a warning to me that my office is about to get flooded with a whole lot of people complaining. Probably Telstra watches it avidly too because it is a pretty clear indication I am about to ring them as well.

The change that has occurred over the five for six years that we have been discussing broadband has been to me a really significant indication that people really are living the 21st-century lives that we were talking about five for six years ago. A really important survey was done by the Bundeena Chamber of Commerce in my area, which indicated an enormous percentage of local people working from home—if not full-time then part-time to avoid a couple of days commute—or running businesses and this infrastructure has to be not only fast but it has to be reliable. We continue to see a commitment by the government to this multi-technology mix that is just not going to deliver that into the future. I hope the next bit of legislation is a bit more organised and a bit less catastrophically amended. I look forward to further developments. (Time expired)

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

Malcolm Turnbull's handling of the National Broadband Network has been nothing short of calamitous. His government's desperate attempts to cover up the mess he has made of the NBN is no less spectacular. The facts are extremely clear. Malcolm Turnbull said that his second-rate NBN would cost $29.5 billion; instead, we found out it is costing almost double, up to $56 billion now. He said he would get his second-rate NBN to all homes in Australia by this year, by 2016. This time frame has of course not been achieved and indeed has now blown out to more than double. We are now looking at 2020, not 2016.

Malcolm Turnbull said that his second-rate copper NBN would cost $600 per home. We know that the cost has nearly tripled to some $1,600 per home. He said it would cost $55 million to patch up the old copper network and this cost has blown by more than 1,000 per cent to more than $640 million. Indeed that has been the particularly astonishing part of the mess that we now find ourselves in. As the member for Cunningham said previously, the government is replacing 19th-century copper with more 19th-century copper for a 21st-century technology. The stupidity of that has not been lost on the people of Newcastle, I can assure you. The fact that we have purchased enough copper to go to Bangkok and back now is ridiculous.

Let's not forget Malcolm Turnbull said that there would be 2.61 million homes that would be connected to the pay TV cables also by 2016—that is, this year; nbn co is now forecasting that it will connect only 10,000 homes by June 2016. So we are not getting the 2.6 million homes that we were promised; indeed, it is significantly scaled down to just 10,000. Malcolm Turnbull said that his second-rate network would also bring in $2.5 billion in revenue in 2016-17. This has crashed to only $1.1 billion. He has blown a $1.4-billion hole in nbn co's revenue line already.

Malcolm Turnbull guaranteed NBN downloads speeds between 25 and 100 megabytes per second; instead NBN users in my electorate of Newcastle are getting about five megabytes per second on the highest available NBN plans. There is a big difference between five megabytes that people are getting in actuality as opposed to the promised 25 to 100. He also promised more accountability and disclosure to the Australian people; instead we have seen cover-up and loaded review panels.

How did we get to this very sad state of affairs? While in opposition, the then shadow communications minister, now Prime Minister Mr Turnbull, said 'we are going to do a rigorous analysis'. That was what he promised us. He said:

We are going to do a rigorous analysis, we will get Infrastructure Australia to do an independent cost benefit analysis.

Instead of appointing the independent Infrastructure Australia as promised, Mr Turnbull appointed the so-called Vertigan panel—former Labor Liberal Party staffers, Liberal Party advisers, and noted and strident critics of the NBN. 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. The cost models have since been proven to be hopelessly wrong as the cost of the government's second-rate NBN has blown out from the $41 billion assumed in December 2013 strategic plan up to $56 billion assumed in nbn co's latest corporate plan. When Malcolm Turnbull released his strategic review in December 2013 he said it was:

… the most thorough and objective analysis of the National Broadband Network 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.

But the Vertigan panel also made other 'assumptions' to deliver to their master, to make sure that the answer he was looking for was always going to be provided. The Vertigan panel 'assumed' that the median household in Australia would require only 15 megabytes per second by 2023. This absurd assumption was universally panned—67 per cent of Australians on the NBN are already ordering speeds higher than this. This was a loaded panel that made assumptions well outside of reality.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015, as introduced, was a misguided and ideological attempt by government to roll back a number of competition- and consumer-friendly reforms underpinning the National Broadband Network. The industry response to the Vertigan panel's market and regulatory report was rightfully scathing. The Competitive Carriers' Coalition released a statement calling on the recommendations to be 'binned', noting that:

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.

The industry response to this bill before us here has been scathing as well. Industry has pointed to the risk of consumer detriment from the proposed measures. The peak telecommunications consumer body in Australia, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, ACCAN, has raised similar concerns about the risk of consumer detriment. The government ignored these concerns in its majority report of the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, recommending that the bill be passed without amendment. But today the government has been forced into a humiliating backdown on this bill. The amendments introduced by the government follow to the letter Labor's recommendations in its dissenting report to the legislation committee. Labor is pleased that the government is finally heeding the recommendation of industry and is 'binning' the recommendations of the Vertigan review.

I guess the big question is: what has this government really got to hide? Last week, the Senate was forced to amend the Communications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation and Other Measures) Bill 2015 due to the Turnbull government's refusal to provide the most basic financial information about how nbn co is spending $30 billion dollars in taxpayer investment. Late last week the government then amended this legislation so that nbn co does not have to release information that it used to release—basic, simple information like total capex, total opex, total revenue and the amount of interest that nbn co will pay. This is all information that nbn co used to release in corporate plans when Labor was in government. This argument that the government is using—that this information is somehow commercial-in-confidence—is complete nonsense. It is a move by a desperate government and a desperate Prime Minister who is willing to do whatever it takes to try and hide the mess he has made of the NBN.

How can the information be commercial-in-confidence if nbn co used to release it in the past? It is an outrage indeed that nbn co and the Turnbull government will not provide the Australian parliament, and the Australian people, with basic financial information about how nbn co intends to spend $29.5 billion dollars of taxpayers' money. The Senate has asked for this information in committee hearings, questions on notice and through orders for the production of documents, but on each and every occasion the government has refused to provide this information. The hypocrisy of this government and this Prime Minister is breathtaking. When Malcolm Turnbull was shadow minister he used to lecture us about transparency. On 24 September 2013 Malcolm Turnbull said:

… our commitment is, our focus is, to have a much greater level of transparency and openness …

That was in 2013. But even on 11 February 2014 the now Prime Minister was arguing that:

Maximum transparency is going to be given to this project.

That is what he promised when he was the shadow minister for communications. Likewise, in the same month, February of 2014, he said:

The bottom line is that as far as the NBN project is concerned, the government's commitment is to be completely transparent.

Again, in April 2014, he reiterated:

The government requires a high degree of transparency from NBN Co in its communication with the public and parliament.

There is a series of these fervent pleas from the Prime Minister for transparent democracy and, of course, we on this side of the House could not agree more. Regretfully, and somewhat typical of the Prime Minister now, these promises have turned out to be nothing but waffle—saying one thing while in opposition and doing exactly the opposite when he gets in power and is in a position to bring about serious change. A shroud of secrecy has descended over this project since Malcolm Turnbull took over, with basic information that was previously made public now being completely hidden. It is little wonder that people are asking, 'What is it that this government has to hide?' How could it possibly be any worse than the complete mess the Prime Minister has already made of this project?

In my electorate of Newcastle we were one of the first to be dudded by Malcolm Turnbull's mess of the NBN, with most people only receiving access to the fibre-to-the-node network. Since the rollout started, my office has been inundated with complaints about the NBN and the work being undertaken on the ground.

Firstly, there are those who have been able to connect to the NBN—like Simon from Merewether, who hooked up to the NBN as soon as he could, hoping to get a dramatic improvement in speed compared to his existing ADSL connection. He used to get eight megabits per second on ADSL; now, on the NBN, he gets less than three.

There is Robbie from Newcastle. He too signed up to the NBN as soon as he could. He used to get 12 megabits per second on ADSL; now he gets speeds as low as one megabit per second on the NBN, despite signing up to a 100-megabit-per-second plan.

Then we have Bill from Hamilton. Bill signed up to the NBN after being convinced by his service provider that it was the right thing to do. Since he got hooked up he cannot be on both his home phone and the internet at the same time. Calls come through and the internet drops out. It is a very frustrating experience when he is trying to download larger files.

Secondly, there are those who have been taken out as collateral damage, many having services cut despite their best efforts to steer clear of the calamitous NBN rollout. There is Robert from Carrington. Robert and his wife are an elderly couple who do not use the internet but do rely on their home phone. Robert's wife has cancer and is heavily reliant on the home phone for emergencies and to coordinate medical appointments. They do not want the NBN but they have quite a bit of work going on in their suburb—work that has led to their home phone service being disconnected without notice.

There is John from North Lambton. He lost his home phone and ADSL broadband without notice and went three weeks without any service whatsoever. Thomas from Cooks Hill suffered the same deal. His home phone was disconnected without warning.

And then there are a series of local business in Newcastle—a bridal business, a medical surgery and a florist—all of which have had significant losses and impacts on their capacity through the NBN.

Malcolm Turnbull's second-rate NBN is an absolute mess. Costs have doubled, time lines for the rollout have blown out, patching up the old copper network is a lost cause, revenue has crashed and speeds are abysmal. It is not good enough. (Time expired)

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The NBN rollout has become a personal embarrassment for the member for Wentworth, now the Prime Minister, as the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015 highlights.

When Labor were elected in 2007, Australia lagged behind the rest of the world with respect to internet connections. It was affecting Australia's competitiveness and ability to operate in a global 21st-century economy and social world. Labor understood that and commenced a plan to roll out a high-speed broadband network across the country. We did that because we understood that connection to a reliable high-speed network was no longer a luxury but in fact a necessity in today's life. Labor committed to the largest infrastructure project in memory with a plan to roll out a fibre network to around 93 per cent of all Australian homes and connect the other seven per cent to wireless or satellite. The planning was underway. Relevant negotiations took place. There were many, many impediments to overcome at the time, and those impediments included opposition from the then opposition, but the rollout was well underway when Labor left office. I can say that with confidence because in my own electorate I could physically see the rollout taking place. The network had already been rolled out past several hundred homes in my electorate.

We then had a change of government. The member for Wentworth, now the Prime Minister, became Minister for Communications. The NBN rollout became his personal responsibility. His promise at the time was a faster, less costly and better serviced NBN rollout. Two and a half years later what we have is the complete opposite and a national embarrassment, not just for the Prime Minister but for this country. The Prime Minister's incompetence is there for all to judge, as the member for Newcastle said a moment ago when she referred to the many people in her electorate who have contacted her about the current rollout. People are continually contacting MPs because of the poor service. I am sure the member for Wakefield, who is here in the chamber, would attest to my comment that hardly a week goes by when we are not contacted by a business or homeowner with respect to the difficulty they are having with connection to the NBN.

What is even worse is that this is the Prime Minister who claimed that there would be absolute transparency with respect to his plan. What we now have is the opposite. Not only are we seeing information about the current plan withheld; we also saw a panel, the Vertigan panel, hand-picked to supposedly provide advice to the government of the day. That advice, as we now know, was based on grossly inaccurate information and costings, and I want to go through some of those costings.

Firstly, the advice was based on the NBN rollout costing $41 billion. As we now know, the cost is $56 billion. It was based on a fibre-to-the-node cost of about $600 per home. Again, as we now see, the cost has gone up to $1,600. It was also based on expenditure of $55 billion to fix up the copper. We now see that that figure has blown out to $641 million. And we were told by the panel that there would be 2.6 million homes connected to the NBN or pay TV by December 2016. We now know that the figure is somewhere between 10,000 and 875,000 homes that will be connected by the end of this year. Lastly, there was $2.5 billion in revenue tagged for 2016 and 2017, which has fallen to $1.1 billion. Those figures speak for themselves. The Prime Minister does not come into the House and deny those figures; he is simply not prepared to provide the relevant information.

The critical matter with this legislation is the government's intent to axe Labor's policy of universal national wholesale pricing, which would have meant that people in regional and rural Australia would pay the same wholesale price for equivalent services as people in the city. In other words, they would not be disadvantaged. This is the government that wants to reverse that policy and yet it is the government that also claims to represent country Australians. Why are the National Party MPs and the country government MPs in this place not standing up for their regional communities?

With respect to that, I want to quote from a letter that I received from the West Coast Council in South Australia. The letter is addressed to Minister Fifield. 'I refer to the recent briefing by nbn co to the new council on 7 September 2015 at which your representative confirmed that five towns and several villages of the West Coast municipality are not being considered for a fibre or even fixed wireless service and are instead being limited to a satellite service only. By not being considered for a higher level of service, the West Coast will be left behind. That is, while the desperately needed NBN infrastructure program has the potential to deliver improved communication capability that will see some disadvantaged areas increase their competitiveness and ability to attract investment, I strongly believe that the West Coast will likely see further declines should we not be able to keep pace and to build our capability with a modern, competitive communication platform that has the potential to create more jobs in the region that has been hard hit in recent times with changes to the mining sector and the consequent loss of jobs in locations such as Queenstown.'

It goes on to say: 'The default option of satellite-only flies in the face of the federal government's own priority criteria for the NBN rollout. The West Coast population centres were slated for a fibre rollout under the previous government. Therefore, the argument that the infrastructure does not exist to underpin the business case for the higher upgrade services that fibre or even fixed wireless will bring would appear to be a poor excuse and not true. Higher grade NBN services will provide critical improvements not only to general residents but can improve our health service such as e-health and education services such as e-learning and should provide a solid platform for the region to attract new investment, population and business development.'

The letter further goes on to say, 'Real-time high-bandwidth services cannot be guaranteed with a satellite-only option due to latency issues, and nbn co itself has admitted that NBN satellite broadband may be prone to rain fade and service disruption in heavy rain conditions.' There are other sections of the letter. I seek leave to table the letter.

Leave granted.

The West Coast Council is not alone as a remote community in understanding the importance of a reliable NBN fibre-to-the-home service. Jackson County and Owsley County in the Appalachian Kentucky region of the USA have a combined population of 18,000, with the largest community a town of 900, and last year completed their fibre rollout to every homeowner through some of the toughest terrain one could imagine. These are some of the most economically disadvantaged parts of America, with low income and high unemployment, yet such was their appreciation of the benefits modern high-speed internet could bring that they relied on mules—an old Kentuckian tradition—to haul the fibre through the rough terrain where it was too difficult to use modern machinery.

Rural workers in those counties now have work-from-home employment opportunities that previously did not exist. They can participate in the global economy without relocating. In fact, it also took less than a year for the Teleworks USA program to place more than 100 trainees from those communities into jobs, which further added US$2 million to the local economy. Here is a community that was prepared to do whatever it took to ensure that everyone had access to a fibre connection.

It is also evident that the Turnbull government and the so-called small business advocates on the government benches do not really understand the benefits of the nbn to business. An analysis by North American firm Strategic Networks Group showed that broadband enabled 39.7 per cent of all new jobs from 2013-15, a dramatic increase from an already large 25.5 per cent over 2010-2012. When job losses were subtracted—that is, quantifying the net new jobs created—the figure rose to 51 per cent. It is therefore obvious that, if we want to tackle unemployment and ensure jobs growth, we must embrace the use of reliable broadband and make it available to all. Logically, broadband which is faster and more reliable would enable greater job creation opportunities.

The Prime Minister talks up an agile economy, small business and start-ups, but the mess he has presided over with the NBN is doing the most damage and creating the greatest barriers in those very sectors. We know that the greatest potential for jobs growth is with small business and we also know that small business employs about 4.7 million people. However, the digital divide is affecting and limiting small business around the country. The SNG research also shows that, the smaller the business by number of employees, the lower the internet utilisation rate. The same research shows that a business that increases utilisation by 10 per cent is likely to increase revenues by 24 per cent and decrease costs by seven per cent. The reliability, expense and connection speeds are all factors which can prevent small business from making greater utilisation of the internet.

Indeed, I am frequently contacted by businesses in my local area—especially by small businesses—which are being held back by poor internet speeds. Whilst most home users will be more concerned with their download speed, many business are finding upload speeds are their main frustration, with one or two megabits per second or less being insufficient for their needs. Some of the businesses that I am contacted by are moving out of the area in order to expand their business and employ more people, because they cannot access reliable, high-speed internet.

It is clear that this government's management of the NBN service has become chaotic. It is clear from all the figures that have been presented both in my own contribution tonight and by others. We also see that this is a government that is spending millions of dollars on thousands and thousands of metres of additional copper wire. Labor was prepared to roll out an NBN plan that ensured that we could meet the needs of the 21st century right through to the end of the century, yet this is a government that has gone backwards by relying on a copper system that we all know is fraught with faults, a copper system that we were trying to move away from and which every other smart country in the world is moving away from but which this government persists with. It should be condemned for that—and will be by the voters of this country. I believe this legislation highlights the ineptitude of this government with respect to the NBN rollout.

Debate interrupted.