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

My constituents are paying iiNet for a standard of telecommunication services that they are not receiving. Businesses have experienced on-again off-again service that is quite frankly embarrassing. Some have seen their security systems go offline without explanation, while others have faced days of lost income thanks to persistent interruptions to phone lines and EFTPOS terminals. They have been left without the means to process electronic payments and they are watching customers literally walk out the door. You can imagine the reputational damage that it is caused by having your businesses phone number listed as 'out of service' for 15 consecutive working days. How does that look to customers? What does that say about the business? This is a harm forced on Canberra small businesses through no fault of their own and it should not have come to this.

If the government was true to its word, its second-rate copper NBN rollout would have been at scale by mid-2014. But now the Turnbull government's NBN rollout map has failed even to mention Canberra's south. We are not even on the map; we are invisible in large parts of my electorate. So Canberra is stuck in limbo: no NBN, no alternative and no EFTPOS for 15 days straight. It is a complete and utter mess. As the minister formerly responsible for the NBN, the Prime Minister has failed Canberra's people— (Time expired)