Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the topic of hunger: I am also very hungry but not for fish. I am hungry for a fast, decent and reliable national broadband network, which is yet to find its way over to the far-flung suburbs—or so it is according to those in this part of the world—of Perth in Western Australia. It is noteworthy that only a couple of weeks ago, on a cold winter's night—and, yes, they do happen in Perth from time to time—more than 120 locals from the suburbs of Noranda and Morley braved the cold to come out to the Morley Sport and Recreation Centre to hear the member for Greenway, the shadow minister for communications, Michelle Rowland; as well as Amber-Jade Sanderson, Labor's very hardworking candidate for the state seat of Morley; Alannah MacTiernan, former member for Perth and current candidate for the North Metropolitan region at the next state election; and me. We talked to residents and listened to their frustrations about the absence of any meaningful direction from this government in relation to a fundamental piece of infrastructure that they have failed dismally to deliver: the National Broadband Network.

Some examples from what the locals had to say in the course of that cold wintry night include: when local high school, Morley Senior High, is running its media class it has to shut down the internet connections everywhere else in the school, including the administration, so students can do what they need to do in the class, which goes directly to the issue of education; one resident with a son in year 11 complained that 30 minutes of homework takes him three hours because of his slow internet speed and the fact that communications keep dropping out; a senior who completely disconnected from the internet out of frustration; and a couple who refuse to do any online banking or online shopping lest they be disconnected in the middle of a transaction.

A retired telecommunications technical adviser explained that even when Mr Turnbull's fibre-to-the-node NBN is eventually rolled out, the poor condition of the ailing copper network will mean that those mentioned will still be on the wrong side of the digital divide. If we need any further evidence, it is in our rankings in the world internet speed. We are now at 56; we were at 30 and even New Zealand is ahead of us. So for all his big talk about being the inventor of the internet, Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, and the Liberal Party have let down the people of Perth, they have let down the people of Western Australia and they have let down Australian communities all over the country in an absence of action on the National Broadband Network.