Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might start where the member for Menzies left off and add my words of heartfelt appreciation to Reverend Peter Rose. I wish you all the best for the future. Your presence in this building makes an enormous difference. Having someone to talk to, and your giving your time, is certainly something that I have appreciated. Good luck.

If everyone is experiencing troubles downloading onto their computer, if it is taking hours, if the excitement of getting Netflix is turning into the experience of watching buffering on their TV, they can all blame the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was a failure as communications minister, and his second rate NBN is a complete mess. He promised the entire country that the NBN would be rolled out this year, and yet 83 per cent of the country are still waiting for his second rate NBN to arrive. The costs of the second rate NBN have doubled and the time taken to build it has doubled, and in that time Australia has dropped from being 30th in the world for internet speeds down to 60th. By any definition this is a disaster. What in 2013 the then communications minister said would cost $29.5 billion is today costing $56 billion, for this second rate NBN, and the rollout will not occur until 2020.

In Geelong, this is particularly felt given that Labor's planned fibre optic rollout was one of the first things cancelled by this government, and the replacement in the electorate of Corio and Corangamite is the plan for the second rate NBN, for which we are all still waiting. That means that suburbs like Bell Park and Bell Post Hill, in my electorate, are still waiting for the NBN. East Geelong, the city, Geelong West and South Geelong are all waiting for the NBN. From Lara to Leopold, from Chilwell to Corio, everyone is waiting for the NBN. The same is the case across the river in Corangamite, in suburbs like Grovedale, Highton, Belmont, Marshall, and Wandana Heights. They are all waiting for the NBN. What is amazing is that the member for Corangamite is running on the delivery of the NBN. Indeed, a sign she has put up—reputedly, some say, at the cost of a $40,000 a month—in Waurn Ponds, a suburb which does not have the NBN, says that Sarah Henderson is delivering NBN fast broadband to Geelong. That is an amazing statement to make. There is an old adage that says that nothing kills a bad product quicker than good advertising. When you make people aware of that about which they are grumpy, they become even grumpier. What we say to the member for Corangamite is: keep rolling out the NBN signs because you are certainly doing a better job of that than you are of rolling out the NBN itself.

The Prime Minister was a failure in this regard—only a Labor government can fix this and 2 July will provide the opportunity to elect a Labor government.