Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Greenway proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The government’s second-rate NBN failing Australians.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Few things better exemplify this Prime Minister being all talk, all spin, or buzzwords, but no delivery than his failed National Broadband Network. The disappointment felt by Australians in this Prime Minister, who promised so much but delivered so little on the National Broadband Network, is truly something to behold. Today in this parliament the Prime Minister was asked two questions and his responses say it all. On the first, he was challenged on the fact that he promoted particular technologies over others, that he would somehow be able to deliver with his multi-technology mix—MTM, or 'Malcolm Turnbull's mess' as we know it—that he would somehow deliver the holy trinity of promises: faster, sooner and more affordable. On each count it has been fail, fail, fail. On each count he has let the Australian people down.

I note my specific question about his bungling of HFC. In his answer he did not refer once to HFC, because he was completely incapable of defending the mess that he has made in this area. And with respect to the member for Cowan's question, he gave his typical condescending response, basically saying the voters of Cowan got it wrong. He gave the lecture he loves to give about how he knows everything. But what he is missing is the knowledge that we on this side of the House have, and that is the lived experience of our constituents, the lived experience of those people we represent, who have been let down, who are living in broadband backwaters and who cannot in many cases even get basic internet standards. It took three years of dictation from his then leader, whom he despised, the member for Warringah. He gave him a remit to destroy the National Broadband Network. And who will ever forget that unedifying spectacle of then Prime Minister Abbott, with his communications minister, and supposedly Sonny Bill Williams, announcing that by 2016 every Australian would have minimum broadband speeds. Well, he has 81 days to go. So good luck. As he just said in his answer earlier today, there are just over one million premises connected and only seven million to go—in 81 days.

When this Prime Minister came to office he knew he would not be able to deliver on the promises he made in this area, but he persisted with them to all ends. When Labor was in government we knew we needed to deliver a future-proof set of infrastructure for the 21st century and beyond—the best infrastructure we could provide. This Prime Minister has ignored that, and every single assumption that has gone into his mess has been proven utterly wrong in every respect.

But you do not need to take it from me. You can take it from then-senator Barnaby Joyce and Senator Fiona Nash, who is now a minister in this area. On 7 April 2009, when Labor was announcing the NBN, they claimed credit for it. In fact, they said the NBN stood for the 'Nationals Broadband Network'. The plan from them was to roll out fibre optic cable. They said that rolling out fibre optic infrastructure across Australia would be like a 'glass Snowy'. Let's look at what else Senator Nash had to say about copper, the current government's preferred delivery mechanism:

The Copper Age was 5,300 years ago, and that is where copper belongs. We need to embrace optic fibre, wireless and satellite so that we have the right mix of infrastructure to take us into the future.

And I will give Senator Nash even more credit, because she labelled anything that was fibre to the nodes as 'fraudband':

It’s widely understood in the telecommunications industry that FTTN will not deliver improved broadband speeds to rural and regional areas.

Those opposite—and I see the minister here at the table, the member for Bradfield, ready to have a go—are very keen to point out what they would see as the evidence to show that their plan is working. Well, let's have a look at what the minister had to say in June 2011 about fibre. He talked about how Japan, for example, which had 55 per cent of its total broadband services delivered over fibre, actually did not rate that well and was only two places ahead of Australia in the internet speed rankings. Let's look at where Australia is today. At that time—he quoted the OECD figures—Japan, favouring fibre, was only two slots ahead of Australia. Today Australia is rated, on the Akamai broadband speed rankings, as 56th; Japan is No. 7. Australia is languishing in 56th spot. And where were we? Where did we stand in 2013, when Labor left office? We were 30th.

On this Prime Minister's watch, Australia dropped to 60th in the world, beaten by an array of other countries, including most of the countries in our region. But few things typify this Prime Minister's utter duplicity on the National Broadband Network as much as when those opposite, and the Prime Minister in particular, hailed the NBN satellites as a great game changer, the second one being launched last week—a great game changer. But what did he say in 2012 when Labor commissioned these satellites? I will tell you what he said: 'more wasteful NBN spending', and he called them a Rolls Royce solution. Not only that, but he advocated leasing capacity from a third-party satellite provider. Such is this guy's business acumen—do you know what happened to that satellite provider? It went bankrupt. Such is the business acumen of this Prime Minister. Not content with the duplicity in this area, this Prime Minister is now stuffing up the connection process for the NBN. We have had retail service providers who are using the NBN satellites reporting that they have connected around 10,000 customers—Activ8me, for example—but have 24,000 customers waiting to be activated because this government had three years with its own hand-picked team to work out how they were going to do activations and have completely stuffed it up. You listen to anyone in rural Australia who has been trying to connect to Sky Muster. The fact is that Labor put those birds up in the sky. It is this government that is letting them down, with a third-rate connection process, denying them what would end up being the great ending of the digital divide when it comes to broadband access.

Again, the people of Australia know this. Last week we had the release of the Essential poll as to who has the best NBN. The Labor plan rated 42 per cent. What did the Liberal government's plan rate? A measly 27 per cent. Even more worrying for this government, and something they should take note of, was the number of Liberal voters who think their policy is absolute rubbish. I point to the fact that under Labor's NBN we were able to deliver real transformational change for small businesses, for education, for health care. Few things typify this better than a company in my own electorate called The Good Egg Studio, which is set up in Riverstone, which was the site of the first Sydney metro rollout. Warren Kirby, the proprietor, has said:

We have the full fibre to the premises model and it works so well we can run our business from here without any problem.

So, what has this government actually delivered? It has not delivered faster, sooner and more affordable. It is slow, it is expensive, it is obsolete.

The residents of Australia know what they want out of their broadband services and they are not afraid to demand it. Just the week before last I was in Perth with the member for Perth and a number of our other Western Australian members. On a wet and windy night, we had over 120 people come to a forum to demand a real broadband network. They know that the state of the copper is such that they will not get what they need through this. So you do not have to take it from me. If this government would listen to their own constituents, they would know that they are not delivering for the Australian people.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a more depressing job than being Labor's shadow minister for communications, trying to defend Labor's disastrous record of NBN incompetence and trying to distract people from the relentless and ever-increasing NBN rollout? The member for Blaxland dutifully performed this thankless task for three years, trying to be continually gloomy when the light of broadband availability shone ever more brightly across the land. On 17 September 2015 he brought forward a matter of public importance debate—'the Prime Minister's mismanagement of the NBN'. At that time there were 1,291,635 premises that were able to connect. He had another go on 21 October 2016. 'The Prime Minister's second-rate NBN' was the topic of the MPI that he brought forward then. At that time, 1,374,408 premises were able to connect.

But he did not give up. He was persistent, even in the face of the facts. On 10 February 2016, he brought forward yet another MPI, 'The Prime Minister is failing Australians with his second-rate NBN'—again, the member for Blaxland determinedly running the ideological line in the face of all the evidence. By that point, the number of premises that could connect was 1,719,122. You will note that, as each MPI comes passed, the number of premises has increased by many thousands. So, by 3 May 2016, the dutiful old member for Blaxland, still trying to ignore the ever-better story on the NBN and still trying to tell a very different story, brought forward yet another MPI. His topic was 'The government's failure to deliver on the NBN for Australians'. At that point, there were 2,428,606 premises that were able to connect.

The member for Blaxland naturally could not wait to get this smelly dead cat of a shadow portfolio off his shoulders, and finally he escaped. He is now happily off doing trade investment and resources and there is a new shadow minister, the member for Greenway—full of enthusiasm; full of bold new ideas like having an MPI on the topic of 'The government's second-rate NBN failing Australians'. If we now look at the numbers, there are 3,207,727 premises able to connect. So the fact is that the number of premises which can connect is increasing rapidly and remorselessly, even as Labor, with their ideological blinkers, try to cling to set of facts which are utterly different to the reality.

The reality is this: Labor has a hopeless track record on delivery, including a particularly hopeless track record on the delivery on the National Broadband Network. The reality is that the coalition came to government with a clear plan. We are executing on that plan and we are getting the NBN rolled out. The third reality is that Labor has no clue what it is going to do about the NBN, as we saw demonstrated comprehensively during the 2016 election.

Let us remind ourselves of Labor's record on delivery across a whole range of areas. How many naval ships or submarines did Labor order in government? None. Let's talk about delivery. Remember the member for Lilley coming into this place and saying, 'The four years of surplus I announce tonight'? How many were delivered? None. What did he deliver? Absolutely nothing. Remember Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch? What was delivered there? Nothing. Remember the housing insulation program? Sadly, we know what was delivered there. Tragically, four young Australians died and hundreds of houses were burnt, because of this Labor Party's hopeless track record on delivery. Remember the mining tax—the tax that delivered no revenue? Remember the GP superclinics? At the 2010 election, Labor promised there were going to be 28, and there was one operational. Remember ending the double drop-off? In the 2007 election, Labor promised 260 childcare centres—the double drop-off delivered by that public policy genius, the member for Adelaide. How many of those 260 had been built by February 2010? Three. This is the Labor Party, with their track record of being utterly hopeless at delivery.

And when it came to the National Broadband Network they were on form; they were on song. They produced a delivery stuff-up right up there with the levels of excellence in all of the other portfolios. Let us remember what they promised in the 2007 election. They promised that there would be a fibre-to-the-node network to 98 per cent of the population and it would be delivered in partnership with the private sector. They could not deliver it—abject ignominious failure. In April 2009 there was another plan—fibre to the premises. It was going to be 12.2 million premises—but, again, 'Don't worry; there is going to be private sector involvement.' Of course, by 2010, they discretely slipped out the news that the private sector consultants they had retained, McKinsey and KPMG, had said, 'Actually, no; the private sector won't be touching this with a barge poll. So the taxpayer is up for every dollar of the National Broadband Network.' That is just one other example of Labor's delivery incompetence.

But what did they actually deliver by September 2013 when they shuffled crippled off the national stage and left us to pick up their mess? I will tell you what they had delivered. They had spent $6 billion and they had connected barely 50,000 premises. That is an ignominious record of incompetence, an ignominious record of hopelessness, at delivery. We inherited this chaotic shambolic mess from this pack of incompetents on the other side, and we were charged with getting it under control.

We established a competent management team. Bizarrely, under the previous government, there was virtually nobody on the NBN board who actually had any familiarity with telecommunications. That is why we put in Ziggy Switkowski, former chief executive of Optus and former chief executive of Telstra and one of the most experienced telecommunications executives in Australia. We also put in Bill Morrow as the chief executive—again, a very experienced telecommunications executive. We developed a credible plan. Out of the shambles that we inherited, we developed the multi-technology mix, using the most cost-effective combination of fibre to the premises, fibre to the node and HFC cable, rolled out faster and more affordably—limiting public investment to $29.5 billion—and yet 90 per cent of fixed-line premises will get 50 megabits per second.

How have we operated since we came to government and once we had control of the NBN? There has been transparency, there has been weekly reporting on the rollout—because we have got nothing to hide, unlike the previous government—and we now see that for seven quarters in a row the National Broadband Network has met its delivery targets and its financial targets. How may times did that happen under the previous Labor government? Not once. And this shambolic pack of people, who are completely incompetent of delivery, the Labor Party, bizarrely keep coming back to this topic rather than slinking away from it in shame—which, frankly, is what they ought to be doing.

What did we see during the 2016 election? After all kinds of chest-beating and bold promises on the NBN—they were going to fix it all, they were going to deliver fibre to the premises everywhere, and it was going to be fantastic—what did they actually announce as a policy? Listen to this, because it is pretty good, they were going to spend not one dollar more than the coalition. But, here is the good bit, they were going to connect two million more homes by fibre to the premises. A little factoid for the Labor Party: a fibre-to-the-premises home costs $4,400—these are numbers from the corporate plan—fibre to the node costs $2,300, roughly half. Yet our friends in the Labor Party, these people with a chaotic record of incompetence with the NBN, thought it was a good idea to tell the Australian people that their plan for the NBN in 2016 was to spend not one more dollar but you could have two million more fibre-to-the-premises homes. It just does not work. It was a completely incredible and completely implausible policy, because the frank reality was, as they effectively admitted by putting that policy out, they had no idea what to do.

Thankfully for the Australian people, there is a government which is committed to the NBN, which is committed to delivering the NBN, which is populated by people who have serious business experience, which has put in place a competent management team, which has a credible plan and which is systematically rolling out the National Broadband Network. That is what we are doing. It is a story of it of success. There is a lot more to do, and we are doing the job. We are delivering.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In question time today we saw the Prime Minister, in his amateur theatrical mode, make a huge song and dance about the government's great successes in rolling out the National Broadband Network. Well, right around the country you could hear people switching off their television sets, because there is a huge gap between what the Prime Minister thinks is reality when it comes to the rollout of the NBN and the lived reality of people in their homes right around the country.

For a bloke who is alleged to have invented the internet, he is doing a very good job at stuffing up the rollout of the NBN. He promised us, before the last election, that he was going to deliver the NBN and it was going to be faster, it was going to be cheaper and it was going to be delivered to our homes sooner. In fact, he promised us that the NBN was going to be rolled out to every premises in Australia. When?

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By the end of this year.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before the end of this year. Now, I am looking at you, Deputy Speaker Coulton, and I am pretty sure that is has not been rolled out to your house. It has not been rolled out to mine and I am sure that, all of the people that are listening to this today, the vast majority of them are yet to see an NBN truck roll down their street. So much for doing it faster.

Let us look at the other claims that he made. He claimed that he was able to deliver faster broadband and every household was going to be getting 25 megabits per second. I know, as a matter of fact, that in those places around the country—and in the vast majority of those places around the country that have got the NBN connected by the Prime Minister's second-rate fibre-to-the-node model—they are getting nothing like 25 megabits per second. They will be lucky if they are getting that in the middle of the night when no-one else is in the suburb or no-one is doing any homework or no-one is doing any business.

He promised that he was going to do it cheaper. Let us have a look at that. His first big promise—and he is big on making big promises and big on making the grand statement—was that he was going to be able to deliver it for $29.5 billion, and that was in 2013. He made the promise of $29.5 billion in April 2013. By December 2013, that cost had blown out to $41 billion. It would be bad enough if it stopped there, but before we got to the last election the total cost of this second-rate NBN was going to be $56 billion. You have to have got to ask yourself: how does a guy who is supposed to have the business acumen that the Prime Minister prides himself on manage to see a blowout of this proportion? There are lots of places that you can look, but the one that really bells the cat, the one that shines a light on why this guy has stuffed it up so much, is if you look what he has done with the copper network.

I have gone around the country and visited many of the regional towns throughout Australia during the last election, from Cairns and Townsville in the north, down to Hobart and Launceston in the south, right throughout regional New South Wales—I had the pleasure of visiting your electorate, Deputy Speaker—and out through Adelaide and Victoria as well. It was not unusual that when I visited a town and I talked to people about the state of the network to be shown pictures that look like this—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will remind the member for Whitlam about the use props.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The picture that I am unfolding and looking at is the state of the copper network. This happens to be in the Hunter Valley, but it could have been in any place throughout the country. You ask yourself why the Prime Minister and his fibre to the node is spending so much on copper? It is because this is the state of the network. This is a guy who spent close to half a billion dollars on copper—last century's technology to deliver this century's National Broadband Network.

In the old days education, health and welfare were the big levers that you pulled down upon to deliver more equity in this country. In this century it is going to be broadband. It is in regional Australia where the Prime Minister and this government are failing so much. We have seen study after study showing the failure of the government to deliver basic services such as the National Broadband Network and basic infrastructure services. That is leading to growing inequality in this country, and this government has absolutely no plan to do anything about it. We have seen only last month a study from the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, which compared the digital inclusion of people living right around the country. It showed huge gaps between people living in the regions and people living in the cities. (Time expired)

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

It is great to be able to talk on this MPI today on the NBN. You have to laugh when people like the member for Whitlam want to talk about their record on the NBN. Labor had such an abysmal record on the NBN between 2007 and 2013. The member for Whitlam was part of that government and part of the decisions that caused the chaos that resulted in the disastrous NBN system that we had to clean up. The rollout was so badly managed by Labor that they missed every single target they set for themselves. They set targets and missed every single one of them. Imagine if you did that in business. You would be going broke. Under Labor, taxpayers paid more than $6 billion for the NBN rollout. Guess how many Australians' premises that passed? Three per cent. Labor's NBN passed just one in 50 premises. We are now at one in four. I could go on and on.

The fact is that Labor's record is appalling. Part of the problem is they were not focused on the people; they were more focused on the politics. Their solution was not really a fibre-to-the-premise one; it was a fibre-to-the-press-release one. Labor's fibre-to-the-press-release solution resulted in disastrous telecommunications for people in my electorate, particularly in North Lakes, for years to come. What did Telstra and other companies do? They said: 'The NBN has come in. We won't bother putting anything in, because Labor is bringing it in.'

I also believe the rollout was politically motivated in parts of marginal seats, particularly in the southern end of my seat right on the border of Petrie and Lilley. There were Labor members there. Their rollout was not done for the benefit of the people but for the benefit of the Labor Party. Their budget blowouts, higher debt and fibre to the premise would have resulted in residents receiving NBN some six to eight years later. In the world we are living in, where businesses need internet connectivity as fast as possible, this is very important. As I said, one in 50 premises were connected under Labor. We are now three years into our term and we are now at one in four and in my electorate at almost 1½.

I say to new members opposite: if you want to get things done, do not listen to your shadow minister and do not listen to the negativity we saw from Labor on this issue at the 2013 election, which they lost, and at the 2016 election, which they lost. In three years time most of the country is going to be done. That is the goal we need to set for ourselves. That is the goal I have set for myself. I talk to the minister. If members opposite have problem suburbs in their electorate, they should talk to the minister. It is okay. It does not matter that it is a coalition minister. You can go and see them. Do not listen to your shadow minister. That is what I encourage you to do.

The very first minister I invited into my electorate when I was campaigning in the 2013 election was the shadow minister for communications, who is now of course the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. I know that the internet and communications are very important for my electorate. I am very proud to announce that in the last six months almost 20,000 households in Redcliffe have been connected to the NBN or are ready to be connected and the build has begun on another 4,000 houses in Scarborough. The number of premises ready for service is close to 30,000 and about 10,500 have an active service. MPs and senators in the other place, rather than being negative when the debate has been lost at the last two elections, need to be encouraging people to take up a NBN connection and actually connect to the NBN. That is what I would be saying.

I spoke before about North Lakes having a major issue. I am very pleased to say that right now the build is commencing, cables are being laid, in places like Copeland Drive, Discovery Drive, Lakefield Drive, Memorial Drive, Anzac Avenue, parts of Bounty Boulevard, Tuckeroo Parade, Endeavour Boulevard, Freshwater Creek Road and Halpine Drive. There is a lot more work to be done. This NBN is about the people. The government have prioritised jobs and growth, because that is what we know people are interested in, and stability. We need to be encouraging NBN Co to roll out the service as quickly and efficiently as possible for all Australians to benefit.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Petrie is completely right: the NBN is about people. Last week Labor's spokesperson on communications, Stephen Jones, the member for Whitlam, joined me in my electorate of Paterson to meet with real, everyday people who are having problems—it is not actually problems that they are having; they are going through a nightmare. They told us about this second-rate National Broadband Network. Stephen and I visited the Early Links Inclusion Support Service, a not-for-profit doing critical work with children with disabilities and high needs in my community in the suburb of Ashtonfield. It is a support service that cares for children with very high disabilities. They operate from a council owned building. They are struggling with the most basic of internet needs.

When parents phone to make an appointment for their children, they cannot get onto the internet to make an appointment. When they try to access files for the children, they cannot get them. When they try to report for the NDIS, which is a whole world of pain that I will not go into now, they cannot get onto the internet to do it. So they divert precious resources, money, to buy dongles so they can do this basic work.

Here is where the injury and the insult really come together. They have a box on the wall which should connect them to the NBN. It is not connected. What is that about? It is absolutely disgusting. We have looked at the box. We had a photograph taken with it. That is all you can do. It is not useful. It is not connecting anyone to anything. It is a pretty little prop box on the wall.

A staff member at this establishment—a single mum; she is a fantastic person who does great work for Early Links—told me that she spends $300 a month on mobile broadband for her two teenagers to do their high school work because they cannot even get ADSL in her part of Thornton. She spends $300 a month. I have been a member for only a short time but I can tell you that my office is inundated every day with complaints. Chris Lindus from Aberglasslyn said that the NBN website says that the address is ready to connect but all of the internet service providers say that the property is not ready to connect.

Some neighbours are able to connect but not Chris, and he said that he is currently on very slow ADSL. What about Jacquie Esder, also from Aberglasslyn? She has the same story as Chris. However, she has been told by NBN Co that they only have to have 90 per cent of the suburb ready before they can declare that it is actually ready for service. So apparently 90 per cent is okay—do not worry about the other 10 per cent! They just say, 'Yes, it's a little bit of froth and bubble there.' What about poor old Angela Niznik from Chisholm? She has no access to the NBN at all, and it is not on the build plan. The other half of the suburb is already connected. Talk about a digital divide!

Earlier in the day the member for Whitlam and I went to Fern Bay and Fullerton Cove. They cannot get mobile service there, even though they are only 10 kilometres from Newcastle, Australia's seventh largest city. One resident in the gorgeous over-55's development that we visited said that she can sometimes get one bar of signal if she stands on the kitchen sink and holds the phone above the venetians, but her husband has a dodgy hip and he has had to stop doing it. Yes, just get up on the sink—she will be apples!

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Not a day goes by when we are not fielding complaint after complaint about this, and my office is not the only one. Many people go to Facebook and all the sites to have a whinge about it, and no wonder. When we refer the complaints to NBN Co they are obliging, but they can only follow their riding instructions. They are constrained. Of course they are constrained. Like attracts like. The government are like copper. They bend under pressure, they melt when the heat is on and they have lost their lustre quickly. This is a patch-up of all Australians. I say to you that the government talk innovation but only deliver frustration.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting that the theme of this MPI is about being second-rate. Well, nothing was as second-rate as Labor's absolute dog's breakfast of an NBN rollout. What we saw at the election was that construction had actually stopped completely. That is how good it was—it had stopped. Instead of, as we saw, building in areas where there was a real need, they were actually overbuilding in areas that had 100 megabits already available. In my seat of Forrest in Western Australia at the time of the election, there were zero NBN connections—zero! Now that is what you call second-rate.

Of course, this government have prioritised underserviced areas like the rural and regional area of Forrest. My area in the south-west of WA has been a major beneficiary of investment in communications, and we are delivering better broadband sooner to the south-west. Unlike the Labor Party's pie-in-the-sky proposal—and it was, because we were looking at construction in my area at least into the next decade—today my region has towers going up and boxes being built on street corners. Of the 62,000 or so premises on the NBN rollout plan, there are currently some 35,000 premises in Forrest that have access to the NBN, and close to 10,000 have taken up NBN services. Mind you, a vast majority of these have fibre-to-the-premises connectivity.

Around 7,300 premises in the greater Bunbury area are in the process of getting access to the NBN, with construction on the fibre-to-the-node network now well under way. It is a really important milestone because we had zero premises with access to the NBN when Labor was in government. We have greater certainty for homes and businesses as they switch to fast broadband in the suburbs of Usher, Withers, South Bunbury, College Grove, Dalyellup, Gelorup and Carey Park. Final network designs are now complete and we have already seen NBN's subcontractors in streets in other areas of Bunbury. Of course, the NBN rollout plan identifies at least 50,000 premises that will soon be able to access the NBN by fixed line technology and additionally through wireless and also through satellite.

The Busselton region will see even more people accessing the NBN much faster than previously thought, with a total of 16,600 premises that already have or will soon receive access to fixed line technology, and another 2,500 will have wireless access. There are two people in the chamber today from Busselton—David and Rosemary Ryan. When we got into government and the NBN started to roll out in their area of Busselton, they accessed the service and are extremely happy with the result. So, when we talk about second-rate, what was second-rate was the fact that they did not have a service before we got into government.

It is great to see the interim satellites that were launched and now the Sky Muster satellites—the second being launched only last week—providing much better services through regional and remote areas for regional and remote users. I saw in a press release that the Shire of Capel Council President, Murray Scott, said:

"The NBN is vital piece of infrastructure for the Shire of Capel providing enhanced connectivity for those who live and work in the region.

That is what we did not have under Labor. He also said:

Residents in the Shire’s rural locations—

not overbuilding in areas that already have access to fast broadband like Labor—

will at last have the option of a fast internet service to cater for their family needs and home businesses.

I also saw that Regional Development Australia's Executive Officer, Charles Jenkins, said:

"The South West is going through a period of unprecedented economic, population and tourism growth. Access to better broadband gives local businesses the opportunity to improve productivity through internet enabled innovation, market the region as a tourist destination through social media and open up opportunities for online wine sales both domestically and internationally."

Well, in my electorate of Forrest, we would have been waiting at least another 10 years at best for these types of services that were going to be delivered by Labor. That is what you call second-rate.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had an early uni job working as an on-site technician for iiNet, and, working through the period of the old dial-up modem and the introduction of DSL, I have to say that my excitement at Labor's NBN program when announced was sky high, although it has now come crashing down over the last three years, as the Luddites on the other side of this chamber have trashed the NBN with their copper fetish, delays and cost blowouts—aka fraudband.

I have said it before and I will say it again in this place now: if the Prime Minister had been in charge in the 1850s and 60s, Australia would never have gotten the telegraph; he would have been telling us that mail services were more than sufficient. But, as they say, the more things change the more they stay the same, because in the 1953 maiden speech of a certain EG Whitlam, he raised concerns with the number of unsatisfied telephone applications due to the then government's cuts causing a three-year delay on the completion of new telephone exchanges. Sixty years may have passed for residents in Australia's outer suburbs, but it may seem to them like we are stuck in the 1950s with a Liberal government that refuses to meet their needs for 21st century internet access.

According to some results published in The West Australian, Perth is officially Australia's broadband wasteland. Perth's 7.1 megabit figure of average internet access speed is slower than Indonesia's average download speed and well below the national average. In fact, even those great some time Liberal supporters, the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have said that internet reliability is a major issue for WA businesses.

This year I was contacted by a Thornlie business in my electorate, Resurfacing WA. Sharron and Greg need to send and receive high-resolution images in order to be able to provide quotes for their customers for kitchen and bathroom renovations. It is a fantastic small business; it is employing a handful of people in Perth's south-east, which is vitally important as we are a high-unemployment area. But Resurfacing WA has hit a snag.

Thornlie is one of those unlucky suburbs that has been entirely left off the NBN rollout plan. Homes and businesses to the south, west and north of Thornlie at least have a glimmer on the horizon—they still have to wait a number of years to receive their fraudband, but at least they are on the rollout. Not so for Thornlie. As in older suburbs across Australia, the existing copper and exchange infrastructure in Thornlie is failing to provide adequate ADSL internet access. For Sharron and Greg, this means running a business from home is almost impossible. The snail-speed internet means they cannot even get their email to work on occasion, and so they are relying on 4G phone hotspots, which is an enormous financial impost to their business.

It also goes without saying that NBN might actually fix this mess if it worked. I have to say that I have gone in to bat for Thornlie; I arranged a meeting with NBN Co., hoping they could provide some clarification to this mess. I asked them why Thornlie has been left off the rollout plan. Their response was to blame Telstra. They told me that it is up to Telstra to get the exchange ready to hand over to them and that they are waiting for that to be dealt with before they can put it into their rollout plan. But when I talk to Telstra, they say, 'Oh, no. It's NBN Co.'s fault.' They blame NBN Co. because they say they set the timetable. It turns out that NBN Co. have not even asked to have that exchange put onto the rollout plan. This is completely unacceptable. While NBN Co. and Telstra bicker and play the blame game, Sharron and Greg can't even send an email, and their business is hurting because of it.

In 2013, Malcolm Turnbull promised that every household and business in Australia would have NBN by the end of 2016 and that the areas with the worst broadband would be prioritised first. Indeed, only a handful of areas in Burt are going to have any hope of NBN by the end of 2016. Homes and businesses across Burt have been forgotten by the Turnbull government's NBN.

To add insult to injury, Cecil Andrews Senior High School in Seville Grove in my electorate, a STEM specialty school which was much feted by the government during the recent election, is in one of these areas. While it moved all its students over to tablets, it is of no use, because the internet connectivity of the school is pretty much useless.

We also have the Forrestdale Business Park, a new industrial development in my electorate. One of my constituents recently contacted me because he found his business is in an internet black hole. He has been left without internet at all—no copper, no fibre. The business park is due to be connected to the NBN apparently in a matter of months, but, under infrastructure provider of last resort and universal service obligations, NBN Co. has a clear responsibility to provide an interim solution until there is a fixed-line rollout for that the business park. But they have been ignoring this responsibility.

This is the model that the Turnbull government has fostered—customer last. And now it is costing us $54 billion. In a 21st century economy, reliable internet is not a luxury; it is a necessity for our homes, education and for business, but 20th century internet access appears to be all we are getting.

Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to be able to make a contribution to this matter of public importance. I think it is fair to say that the manner in which this MPI has been brought to this place by the member for Greenway has been churlish and very negative. It is been full of confected outrage, but I do give the member for Paterson some credit because, even though I did not agree with a word that she said, she at least used some rhyme in her MPI speech and you do not hear that very often in parliament. Despite the churlish display from the member for Greenway and the very negative nature in which it was brought to this place, there is a silver lining.

It gives me the great opportunity to tell the House about some of the wonderful things that are happening with the NBN rollout in regional Australia. There is no greater example of that than last week when the NBN network was officially switched on in the great city of Orange. I was there for that occasion, when 9,250 homes and businesses in Orange were officially connected to the NBN; the remaining 9,800 homes and businesses will be progressively connected over the next months. That is terrific news for our area. Those new homes and businesses join about 3500 premises that are already connected around the city of Orange, including Glenroi, Lucknow, March, Orange West, Spring Creek, Spring Hill town. There are many other people in our area who are now eligible to connect to the NBN through Sky Muster. We are all very excited about that.

Ms Rowland interjecting—

The confected outrage continues, Mr Deputy Speaker. Despite the confected outrage, by November the rollout of the NBN on the Orange network will be complete with more than 19,000 Orange homes and businesses able to access fast and reliable broadband. It is important for regional Australia because—the member for Hume nods in agreement—it is all about bridging the great divide between the city and the country and bridging the tyranny of distance.

Where did we have this launch in Orange? At a company called Focus, and their business is selling cloud based data analytics software.

It is a great new high-tech company in Orange. They currently employ 110 people, with 35 staff in Orange, but they actually want to double that. And now that Orange is connected to the NBN they will be able to do that—supplying, developing and growing regional jobs in our area.

For example, I had the pleasure of meeting Phocas CEO, Phil Dodds, there and one of his support managers, Anthony D'Amico, a local man who has finished high school and who is now working as the Phocas support manager. This is a company that services its software all around the world from Orange. So it is an international company doing all of this from Orange in regional New South Wales, all made possible by the NBN.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We back people there!

Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, we back them—we back them and we support them, and we want more of them to come to country New South Wales. CEO, Phil Dodds, said to me, 'I could have set this business up anywhere in this country, but I chose Orange, and as long as the NBN is there we will be able to develop the business and continue to grow it.' So it is wonderful news for country New South Wales and country Australia. It is a wonderful thing.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you can imagine what a disaster it would have been had the other side had control of such a huge project. We all remember the Building the Education Revolution. We all have school halls which are overpriced and too small—not fit for purpose. There were the pink batts—you name it, Mr Deputy Speaker. But it is not just about high-tech companies. We are a major mining centre; we have Australia's largest gold mine right on the fringes of Orange.

Health: Orange is a major health hub. All over Western New South Wales they are linked up through the internet into Orange so that the professionals in Orange can provide mental health advice. The physicians are all connected as well through that network, so it is very important for regional Australia. And so despite the churlish display by the members opposite, we are delighted that the NBN is rolling out through country Australia.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's the Canobolas killer!

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Longman, I will remind members that while this is a free-ranging debate the exuberance is taking off. I remind the shadow minister and member for Whitlam that using his hands as a megaphone is unparliamentary behaviour.

Susan Lamb (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Malcolm Turnbull came into government with a promise to get every Australian on the NBN by the end of 2016—not very far away. He promised the NBN would be sooner, he promised it would be faster and he promised it would be cheaper, and what a colossal disappointment he has been. His hypocrisy is now being exposed at every single turn. He is committing a fraud on the Australian people and he is trying to jeopardise our economic future by saddling Australia with second-rate copper and second-rate infrastructure.

And if we are talking about copper, I might add that the Minister for Regional Communications, Senator Nash, said:

The Copper Age was 5,300 years ago, and that is where copper belongs. We need to embrace optic fibre, wireless and satellite so that we have the right mix of infrastructure to take us into the future.

Well, I do not believe the minister has yet hugged this supposed 'right mix of infrastructure'. And why? Because it just does not exist. Well, I am all too ready to embrace infrastructure, but there has to be something to hug in the first place. The Australian people recognise this focus on second-rate copper and second-rate infrastructure simply represents a lack of vision. In fact, a recent Essential poll of Liberal, Labor and Greens voters reported that barely one in five Australians—that is one in five—considers the NBN to be adequate to meet our future needs.

And what I can say is that the dissatisfaction rate in my electorate of Longman is significantly higher. In fact, I can inform the House that at least one-third of all constituents who call my office—phone, email or walk through that door—are seeking help with their substandard connection. I know this government struggles doing their numbers, but they should at least realise that a dissatisfaction rate of 70 per cent is dire.

Take Nigel, for example. Nigel lives in Ningi. Ningi is a really small, beautiful place between Caboolture and Bribie Island. It is a really beautiful place; it is the sort of place where lots of people are moving to. Unfortunately for Nigel and for many other Australians who live in new premises, the NBN node is installed at the top of his street. Now, the surrounding streets and his neighbours are all connected to the NBN, but guess what? Nigel's house is not. He was told that this is due to the placement of the node. His provider said that the reason is poor infrastructure. It took five months—five months!—before it was resolved. Such delays are not acceptable and they are most certainly not indicative of forward-looking technology.

Let me talk about Stephen. The situation is even worse for Stephen. Let me tell you about him. He lives in Caboolture—not far from Nigel in Ningi. He reviewed the NBN rollout map and then he was advised by the NBN Co that it was all systems go. He was pretty happy, right? He needs the NBN. Unfortunately, Stephen subsequently received a phone call saying—guess what?—no infrastructure exists. There were no nodes and no hub in place; it would not be possible for him to connect via the NBN.

I might observe that information on this rollout map looks pretty lovely: it has pretty colours and interactivity. I mean, it is positively 21st century. But there is one small problem: it is not accurate. This government must stop wasting money on superficialities and just focus on the basics—the basics! We want affordable, high-speed internet with a reliable connection. That is all we want: just the basics! The people of Longman deserve better infrastructure for the 21st century. They currently have infrastructure that is reminiscent of the 1990s.

So whether it is in Burpengary or Bribie Island, or Morayfield, or Caboolture or Woodford, or whether it is a small business, or a student or one of our retirees, from the central coast to regional Australia this government has shown that it does not care about the lived experience of people in Longman, and indeed in the rest of Australia. It has treated them with contempt, and that is shameful!

John McVeigh (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise and participate in this MPI debate. As I do so, I reflect upon some of the contributions of those opposite and note that whilst they have acknowledged NBN Co in particular a number of times, they clearly do not listen and it is proven that they do not study their progress reports.

It is important that we return to the facts of this matter. Across all NBN technologies, as evidenced in the last NBN progress report, around 90,000 homes and businesses have purchased an NBN connection over the past four weeks. That compares, as we heard earlier, to just 51,000 paying customers on the NBN during Labor's six years in government. That is almost twice as much achieved by the coalition government in four weeks as Labor achieved in six years. Today, one in every four Australian premises—3.2 million—are now able to purchase a connection to the NBN, compared to just one in every 50, or 300,000, at the time the coalition came to government three years ago.

As the Prime Minister updated the House earlier, half of Australian households will be connected by June 2017, three-quarters by June 2018 and the project will be completed by 2020. The Prime Minister quite correctly reflected on that as a tremendous corporate turnaround, versus the catastrophe that we saw under Labor. The coalition is achieving a cost-effective approach utilising available technology and infrastructure. Labor would have cost Australians another $30 billion and taken six years longer.

The coalition's approach, as I said, is a practical and cost-effective one that utilises state-of-the-art technology available across the modes that are being put out to Australia householders and businesses. That is particularly important across regional areas such as the one that I represent in Groom. Back in February 2012 the Prime Minister stated, quite rightly, that Labor had failed to explore all of the available options for providing broadband across Australia, but most particularly in the bush. He made it clear from opposition that we would not compromise on the objective of delivering fast broadband to all Australians, wherever they lived. We have clearly been fulfilling that promise.

In the electorate of Groom I am so thrilled that construction works began in the village of Kingsthorpe, outside Toowoomba, just last month, and they are expected to start in the neighbouring townships of Oakey and Cambooya before the end of the year. This signals a concerted push into the rural areas of my electorate. The next construction phase will see a further 4,000 premises being able to access the NBN by the end of the year through various modes.

The initial time for works to be finalised in Groom was 2020, but under the Turnbull government we have accelerated works such that in the entire Groom electorate anyone who wants to order an NBN service will be able to do so by the end of next year. Therefore, we in Groom and the Toowoomba region are one of the most connected regional areas in Australia. I say to those opposite, who I would suggest have collectively neither an understanding nor an appreciation of regional Australia, that that means a tremendous opportunity for Toowoomba and Darling Downs businesses, which now have endless possibilities for growth and innovation using the NBN network. That, together with roads, airports and inland rail adds to the infrastructure that people in our electorate of Groom can benefit from. That is an example of the Turnbull coalition government implementing state-of-the-art solutions, affordable and practical solutions in our approach to the national broadband network.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The discussion has concluded.