Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight, I rise in the parliament to brief the parliament, but also on behalf of the residents in the Centenary Suburbs of Brisbane, which I proudly represent here, to raise their concerns about the continual problems they face with the NBN rollout. You'd have to be living on the moon to not realise that the NBN rollout in this country is in crisis. This was made abundantly clear to me by residents in my own community last Tuesday night when almost 300 people from the Centenary Suburbs packed out the Jindalee Bowls Club for the second of my NBN crisis meetings.

Local residents are angry. They are frustrated, and they are fed up with this government's second-rate, second-class, failed NBN rollout. They've simply had enough. They want answers and they want problems fixed. They're sick and tired of the blame game. They're sick and tired of the ping-pong between Telstra, the service provider and NBN. They're sick and tired of no-one taking their issues seriously. As their representative in this parliament, I take their concerns very, very seriously. I only wish that NBN Co and this government would also take their concerns very seriously.

As I said, the crisis meeting was held because local residents, who I represent, are at breaking point. I was really pleased to be joined by the shadow minister for regional communications, the Hon. Stephen Jones, and the local Labor candidate for the state seat of Mount Ommaney, Jess Pugh. We were able to hear from dozens of residents about their NBN horror stories. I did invite Telstra and Optus to attend. Sadly, they declined to meet with their customers. I invited NBN Co, and I pay tribute to the officers who attended and heard the responses from a large, angry crowd. We heard from a resident who has been forced to buy and install their own cabling just to get a connection. We heard from a resident who has had 18 missed appointments with NBN technicians to install a connection. These missed connections are part of the 82,000 appointments missed by NBN technicians in the last year alone—in one year gone by, 82,000 missed appointments by NBN Co. We heard from a resident whose access to the internet and phone services has simply been cut off.

The NBN is in crisis. Anyone who doesn't think so and any of those members opposite in the government who continually get up and say, 'There's no problems with the NBN; it's fine,' needs to fly to Brisbane. And the minister needs to get out of Canberra, come to my electorate, talk to businesses and look them in the eye. Some are looking at closure and moving jobs offshore, out of Australia, because of the blame game between NBN Co and the retail service providers to provide a reliable internet connection.

I was on site last week with a business in the Sumner Park estate in my electorate. I met with the owners, their staff and the manager for the body corporate who owns the building. They are at a point where, I'm advised today, their head office is looking at moving the company overseas. We should not be losing businesses. Forget my electorate—we need to keep them in Australia. They are so frustrated with not being able to connect to the NBN that they are now at the point where they are going to lose jobs. Surely the government has to take this seriously. The NBN issue is not just about Netflix; it is not just about Facebook. This is about Australia's economic credibility, and we are failing. We are falling further and further behind the rest of the world. The latest data shows that, on internet speeds, Australia is ranked 50th in the world—behind Kenya, Sri Lanka and the Deputy Prime Minister's friends across the ditch in New Zealand, whose average speed increased by 40 per cent in the first quarter of this year to rank 27th in the world.

Residents are sick and tired of the blame game. That is why I wrote to the Prime Minister seeking a meeting to find a resolution to this mess. I know that the Prime Minister has a lot on his plate, so I then wrote to the communications minister. Both of them have refused to meet with me as one of the representatives in this place. The Prime Minister does not want to talk; he wants to bury his head in the sand. But let me be very clear: the government will pay a huge price if it does not start engaging with the community on this issue. My residents will not accept it and I will not accept it. That is why I want to get on with the job of fixing this mess.

I have written to the CEOs of Telstra and Optus and to the CEO of NBN Co, Bill Morrow. Through the media, he has said he wants to improve service times and look at customer satisfaction. I have invited Mr Morrow to come to Brisbane to meet with stakeholders—a round table that we have set up with residents who have come out to the crisis meetings—to sit with businesses and residents and to hear from them firsthand. I do not think NBN Co is doing enough outreach into the community. I have not heard back from Mr Morrow, but I will be following that up. If he doesn't want to come out and meet with residents, he can Skype in. We can use telecommunications to bring him in—as long as the NBN is okay in the area where we do the meeting. I need NBN Co to hear that message.

I gave a commitment to residents that I would be raising this in the parliament this week. I met residents at a mobile office last week, at a street meeting in a Springfield, who have no internet, no phone line and no explanation for months at a time. They are not even on the rollout map at the moment. And we certainly cannot have businesses moving offshore. We cannot have residents in Westlake, Jindalee, Mount Ommaney, Sumner and Sinnamon Park suffering because of this government's failed NBN rollout. I again call on the government to put a stop to this mess and start working with residents to address this unacceptable situation. Coverage of this issue in my local papers goes on and on: 'Dropouts, delays spur follow-up NBN crisis meeting', 'Meeting to air NBN fail concerns', 'Vital meeting to address NBN crisis' and 'Residents raging over NBN'. A front-page story on the Southwest News back in May says it all. It has a couple at Springfield and the headline 'Stranded'. This is a couple who are trying to run a business from home, and someone in that family is trying to do a master's degree online. They are at breaking point. They have had so many issues with the NBN that they have now resorted to using the wi-fi at McDonald's at night to complete their studies and do the basic paperwork for their business. No-one in this parliament would see that as acceptable. No-one would think that in a country like Australia we would treat residents like that.

The feedback was very clear from the residents I met with last week. It was a very respectful meeting but very constructive. I was interviewed about the meeting on the ABC next morning and it was really clear to the residents across Brisbane that local residents in south-west Brisbane do not expect favourable treatment; they just want a fair go from a $49 billion piece of taxpayer infrastructure that is being rolled out across Australia. Let's remember that this is taxpayers' money. The residents I represent, who faithfully and loyally pay their taxes to the government, expect a better deal from NBN Co. They also expect a much better deal from the telecommunications companies.

We need to have a serious discussion, and I will be working alongside the shadow minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, the shadow regional communications minister, Stephen Jones, and, of course, our leadership team, to look at a new way of putting pressure on the telcos to make sure they're doing their bit to honour their customer service obligations and to make sure that, when a customer turns to them for help, they receive the help and we don't see examples like that of a customer from Westlake in my electorate who had to wait eight times for someone to turn up. That person's got to take time off work. They may miss a shift at work. They may miss study time. There's no compensation for that person who has to give up a day's wages or a week's wages simply because they want access to the National Broadband Network.

Once again, I'll continue to speak out for my residents and make sure that their voices are heard, but, more importantly, I'll keep working with the NBN Co and with these telecommunications companies to lift the access to broadband for the south-west of Brisbane and, indeed, for every resident in this country.