Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with utter exasperation that I rise today. It is rare that I reach the point with constituent issues of WTF, but now I simply do not know what to do. I am making a plea to the Minister for Communications and the Prime Minister to do something—anything—for my constituent Allan in Wheelers Hill and his neighbours regarding their ongoing saga of trying to get a working NBN connection. In November, in December, in January, in February, in March, in April and in May there were numerous circular emails, buck-passing the incompetence, between iPrimus and the NBN. There is no hope in sight. It keeps failing. They are living their life between dongles.

Eight NBN technicians have visited this site, yet none have fixed it. They all say the same thing. The problem is the NBN is run through old cabling in an old pit. It is rusted and corroded. Every time it rains it dies. There is no facility in the system to fix this. The recent tech said, 'This problem should be prime ministerial level escalation,' shaking his head. He knows the NBN copper mess is a Turnbull special.

I repeat my call. There is no accountability in the system between the telcos and the NBN, and people get stuck in loops. It is time that monetary compensation was introduced to people in Allan's situation, as used to happen under the customer service guarantee with ADSL, to put an incentive on the telcos and NBN to fix these problems that go on for too long.