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 copper NBN creating a digital divide across Australia.

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

Mr Speaker, if you were looking for your daily dose of inspiration today, you certainly would not have taken it from the Minister for Communications. On the Today show this morning we saw the following:

Stefanovic asked Senator Fifield to fast-forward to 2020 and give his 30-second pitch to sell the "great turkey" to investors.

"This is a national broadband network, we're the first continent this sort of fast-broadband network," Senator Fifield said.

"It's fit for purpose and it's over to investors."

After an awkward pause, a baffled looking Stefanovic asked: "That's your pitch?"

"You're not going to be able to sell it, who is going to buy it?" Stefanovic asked.

"Australians just want hard talk from their politicians, they want you to take responsibility," he said.

The Minister for Communications may have no passion for this portfolio whatsoever and no vision about digital inclusion and ending the digital divide. But what is most telling is the fact that again we have all blame and no responsibility on the part of this government.

I tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, you only have to look at some of the effort that this government and the current NBN Co put into spin over improving the consumer experience. We have, for example, the 'gen nbn' marketing campaign. How much money has it spent since January this year on that campaign alone? $9.5 million. In contrast, how much was spent on consulting engagements for customer experience and customer service? $2.6 million. Imagine if the amount of effort that went into spin from this government actually went into improving the consumer experience.

But, no, this Prime Minister has thrown up his hands and said, 'Big mess; not my problem.' It is an extraordinary change in language from what we have seen from this Prime Minister in the past. We had him talking only days ago about how the NBN was all in hand. We had the Minister for Communications saying that the NBN under this government would be the envy of the world. We had the Prime Minister waxing lyrical about how the NBN under his tenure is the biggest corporate turnaround in Australian history. All of a sudden, the Prime Minister says, 'Well, the NBN's a train wreck.' We've gone from it being in hand to being in chaos. We've gone from it being commercially viable to the boss of NBN Co saying he's not even sure if it's commercially viable.

The question arises: what has changed? What has changed in the space of such a short time? I'll let you know what hasn't changed. What hasn't changed is that the consumers of Australia are still fed up. They are fed up with the second-rate internet that they are getting under this government. The lived experience of consumers will trump any day this government blowing its own trumpet, this Prime Minister refusing to take responsibility and absolutely nothing happening to improve or to shorten the digital divide in this country. You have to ask yourself: do the people opposite actually believe in making sure that we eliminate the digital divide in Australia? When the minister was asked about this issue, what do you think the response was? Maybe it was a response about how we recognise that Australia is part of a global economy and that we need to have the highest quality broadband in order to compete in a globalised market for goods, services and employment, and in order to do that we need the best connectivity available for consumers, education and health care. No—none of that. All he gave is an answer that makes even Karl Stefanovic say, 'Are you serious?'

This is not some abstract concept about a digital divide. We saw only a few months ago that the Australian Digital Inclusion Index shows growing evidence around inequality and digital inclusion, and Australians with low levels of income, education and employment are significantly less digitally included. There is a significant digital divide between the rich and the less-well-off Australians. We see in the Australian Digital Inclusion Index yet another set of benchmarks that show that the government can't even get the basics right for every Australian to have the equality of opportunity to participate in our economy and enable Australia to compete on the world stage. Instead, they are ploughing billions of taxpayer dollars into a copper network that is simply not delivering for Australians.

Let's look at how the government has approached the issues of consumers. For example, the Prime Minister responded to last week's figures from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, which reported a 159 per cent increase in consumer complaints about the NBN. What did he have to say? At first, he said nothing. He just gave a smirk in response to a question about this. He then answered: 'Well, you know, complaints—they're a fact of life.' How out of touch can you get as a Prime Minister? How out of touch can you possibly get? The government claimed that the level of complaints is in line with the rollout. It's not in line with the rollout at all. For the first time, we see consumer complaints increasing above the level of the rollout—the first time this has happened. For the first time, we see NBN complaints being the highest source of complaints. The internet is the highest source of complaints in the TIO's complaints data.

What we also see is the business case under this government for the NBN completely unravelling. The economics are changing by the day. As I said, once upon a time, not too long ago, the NBN was supposedly the envy of the world and all in hand. Now the head of NBN Co is calling for protections and new taxes, saying, 'Not even sure that it's commercially viable.' I'll tell you what the reality is: under this government, the economics of the NBN are completely busted, but they throw up their hands and say, 'It's not my responsibility.' So not only are the economics of the NBN busted but consumer complaints are going through the roof. Here is their response to what they've been doing for consumers. They say they've instituted a broadband monitoring scheme to test internet speeds. I'll tell you about this. The minister sat on this advice from the ACCC for 14 months before it was instigated. Earlier this year, he said that this would be 'the year of the customer'. That was in April this year. We're still waiting. There are still about two months to go to see if this is actually the year of the customer.

What do Australians think of the government's second-rate NBN?

I will tell you what they think. You only have to look at the Essential report, where only 27 per cent of those surveyed say they support the Liberal government's plan—which actually represents an increase in support for the Labor plan since the question was asked in September 2015. So, more and more, we see Australians not only completely turning off this government but also starting to understand—indeed, many of them have understood this for some time given the level of complaints—that this is a second-rate network that is not serving Australians.

Talking about the digital divide, have a look at what the rest of the world thinks about us. Earlier in the year The New York Times did a dissertation showing that: 'Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: it's internet speed.' That is how the rest of the world sees us. How on earth is Australia supposed to crack the digital divide under this government with a second-rate copper network, a minister who has no passion and no vision, and a government that won't take responsibility?

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

Let me make it clear that there's one thing in this debate that the coalition takes very seriously, and that is unsatisfactory customer experiences on the NBN. Where there's an unsatisfactory experience we want to see it dealt with, we want to see it fixed. That's why, for example, Bill Morrow, the Chief Executive Officer of NBN Co, said last week:

We're working with retail service providers and industry as a priority to improve these figures and the overall experience for consumers. This work is being reflected in a 13.6 per cent decline in overall TIO complaints between July to September 2017 and a 26.3 per cent decline in TIO complaints about landline and internet services over the same period. We believe it is an early sign of movement in the right direction.

So let me be absolutely clear: if there are unsatisfactory customer experiences we want to see them dealt with, we want to see them fixed; we take them very seriously.

Let me make equally clear what we do not take seriously. We do not take seriously the attempts by the Labor Party to rewrite history and pretend that it wasn't their collection of chaotic decisions which created a starting point which we have been working to resolve. Let me remind you of some of the key Labor mistakes in relation to the NBN, including the shocking process by which this model was first developed. Let me quote from an independent audit into the NBN public policy process conducted by the eminent former public servant Bill Scales AO. He had this to say about the process that led up to Kevin Rudd—remember him—announcing this approach:

After just 11 weeks of consideration, the government had decided to establish a completely new start-up company, now called NBN Co, to roll out one of Australia's largest ever single public infrastructure projects. The NBN was to be rolled out in eight years at a preliminary estimated cost of around $43 billion. There is no evidence that a full range of options was seriously considered. There was no business case or any cost-benefit analysis or independent studies of the policy undertaken, with no clear operating instructions provided to this completely new government business enterprise within a legislative and regulatory framework still undefined and without any consultation with the wider community.

That is what Bill Scales, an eminent former public servant, said about the train crash public policy process which led to Kevin Rudd announcing the NBN in early 2009. So that was the first mistake—the terrible process.

The next mistake was appointing a board with virtually no relevant skills, and management with very little relevant skills. Here's what the forensic accountants KordaMentha had to say when they reported on this issue in August 2014. Their assessment of the board appointed by Labor was that it had 'a collective lack of deep operational experience and insight in areas critical to the success of NBN Co'.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Five years!

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

One of the public policy geniuses on the other side of the chamber says, 'Five years.' That's your argument. I'll tell you what, mate: there's no statute of limitations on public policy incompetence! When you stuff things up as fundamentally as Kevin Rudd did, that stuff-up stays around for a very long time. Be it NBN, pink batts or Building the Education Revolution, Kevin Rudd was responsible for years and decades of public policy stuff-ups—and this government is working hard to fix them.

The next mistake that we saw from the Labor Party when it came to the NBN was hopelessly mismanaging the rollout. By the time we came to government, barely 50,000 premises were connected to the fixed network and they were hopelessly behind their own business case. They were supposed to be achieving 1.7 million by 30 June 2013. In fact, they had reached 282,799—hopelessly behind. Here's another mistake, another fundamental factor that we never hear from Labor today. They wanted it erased from history, but it's a reality and you can't erase it from history. The contract that they did with Telstra was to pay $11 billion in net present value terms to Telstra and $1 billion to my former employer Optus. And yet they want to wash their hands of the fact that through these contracts they put an incoming government into a position where it had to take the most rational choice in the circumstances, and that's what we've done.

The other big mistake they made was saying, 'We'll build fibre to the premises everywhere.' These geniuses said that. Not one of them had a jot or iota of telecommunications operational experience, and their ripper idea was fibre to the premises to 90 per cent of the population. Let's look at how much fibre to the premises costs to connect to some premises. We've seen some evidence of it just in recent days. A premises in Ravenswood in Tasmania costs $91,000 to connect to fibre. Mount Cotton in Queensland is $40,000. The average cost to connect fibre to the premises is $4,400. The average cost to connect fibre to the node is $2,200. It is for these rational business reasons, these sensible public policy reasons, that, when we came to government having inherited this hopeless train smash of a policy, we reconfigured it under the current Prime Minister—then Minister for Communications—who instituted a rational policy to turn this mess around. This turnaround is one of the most successful turnarounds you are ever going to see, and it was from one of the most disastrous starting points you could imagine.

Why did we do it? First of all, changing to this mix means we're going to save $30 billion. Second of all, it means that we're going to get the rollout completed six years earlier than would otherwise have been the case. Let's just go back to the impact of the reduced cost of the rollout. What we've got is one side of politics with their head in the skies: the dreamers, the visionaries—'Don't talk to me about how its done; we've got the dream.' Actually, your dream is going to cost $43 a month more for the ordinary Australian family on their NBN broadband bill.

This is a very familiar story, members of the House. A bunch of completely impractical dreamers and their ripper idea mean ordinary Australian families have to pay more on their bill every month. Telecommunications, energy—it's the same incompetent public policy approach from this hopeless rabble.

Let me turn to another question, which is a very instructive question for the House to consider: what is Labor's alternative plan? Here's a very instructive quote from The Sydney Morning Herald, not notorious for its friendship with the coalition government, this morning:

Labor communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland was sharply critical of the government's handling of the project, but could not say whether in government it would spend billions more to deliver fibre to the home connections or what it would do to fix speed issues.

There's Labor's policy: Labor's communication spokesman could not say. We can go back to 2016 and we can have a look at the ripper policy that was put forward by the member for Blaxland, who is now very relieved to have got away from this particular policy area. This was a ripper policy. What a genius! This genius said, 'A Shorten Labor government will roll out fibre to the premises to up to two million additional Australian homes and businesses.' That sounds great. Listen to this bit: 'Labor will spend exactly the same amount.' What a miracle. The ordinary rules of economics have been abolished. They're going to find a way to build two million more fibre to the premises at not one extra dollar. It's a miracle! It's a miracle! The conventional rules of economics have been thrown out the window by these geniuses in the Labor Party.

What did the Financial Review have to say about it? Here we go again: 'Labor's announcement it will reinvigorate the NBN fibre optic cable to every home network, but not share any details or even admit it will cost a lot more money than the current mix of technologies, should come as no surprise. Labor has no credibility in this area.' You could not find a better summary of this public policy area. Labor has no credibility in this area. So let's be clear: we inherited a mess, thanks to Labor; we're fixing it up. Over six million premises are able to connect and we are getting on with the job. This hopeless rabble has no idea and no plan.

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

I think it's time we took the volume down after that rant from the minister. They say the hardest word to say is 'sorry', and I know it's impossible for that word to come out of the mouths of any of those opposite. In the alternative universe that those opposite inhabit, I note that this morning the foreign minister said to the party room that, and I'm quoting here, 'Julie Bishop tells the coalition room that the NBN is a success story for the coalition.' That is the alternative universe. Look, I'll be honest sitting on this side of the chamber: if that's the policy of the government, they will be the opposition very shortly because the people of Australia are onto this government. Don't take my word for it—

Mrs Prentice interjecting—

The member for Ryan says 'overconfident'. I'll ignore the 21 Newspolls that we're seeing; I'll ignore that poll after poll shows us that Australians do not trust, through you, Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton, you to handle telecommunications in this nation.

Let's deal with what the minister, who has now vacated the floor, just said. If that's what the foreign minister is saying about the NBN then I suggest she spend a little less time on the red carpet and a little more on blue carpet. I know, by listening to what the government says, that it does not match the commitments that it's promised the Australian people. We have had a lot of history lessons today. That's fine, that's the narrative from the government. We know that the Prime Minister had promised that every household in Australia would be connected to the NBN by last year. We know that the NBN, as promised by the Prime Minister, would cost $29.5 billion. That was your commitment to the Australian people. His multitechnology mess now costs $50 billion, a blowout of $20 billion. He made a commitment; it blows out—the assistant minister is shaking his head.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's not right.

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

He's saying that's not right. The Prime Minister promised everyone would have access to NBN by the end of 2016. Through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, is that correct? No answer. By the end of 2016, more than seven million premises were still waiting for connection. The Prime Minister also promised that the NBN would be faster and cheaper. The reality is that he is delivering a second-rate NBN that is slower and more expensive.

We know that last week the communications minister said the government's second-rate NBN would be the envy of the world, but all of a sudden this week the NBN is a train wreck. So what's happened in one week? It went from being in hand to now being in chaos. It went from being commercially viable to the NBN CEO saying that he was no longer sure. As the shadow minister has said, the economics of copper are destroying the NBN. We all know it because when we're out campaigning we're listening to constituents in street corner meetings, at shopping centres—and the member for Macarthur receives the highest amount of complaints of anyone. Yet I know those opposite, who are campaigning and doing street stalls at yacht clubs and at Point Piper and country clubs, don't hear the same message that those on this side of the House are hearing. We hear it day in, day out. And do you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? I know those opposite get complaints from constituents. I know the so-called minister has said that they deal with every one of those complaints.

Let's talk about my electorate of Oxley, and about my constituent Pam, of Sinnamon Park, who has had problem after problem since the NBN was installed in March this year. Of course, the service provider is blaming the NBN, and the NBN is blaming the service provider. It is still currently unresolved. Another of my constituents, Jean, of Westlake, finally had her issue resolved yesterday. Seven months it took, to solve a simple issue.

This is what the foreign affairs minister said this morning is a great success story for the coalition. On the front page of my local paper we read: 'Stranded. Switching to the NBN was supposed to be a godsend, but for five days last month Naomi and Marcus Hodgson had no internet or phone line at all. The couple, who study and run a business from their Springfield Lakes home, wish they had never chosen to be connected to the NBN.' Yet the foreign minister this morning told the party room it's a complete success for the coalition. Those opposite are in an alternative universe. Just once we would like them to apologise for the mess they've created in Australia which is their NBN. (Time expired)

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government was handed a pup—and that's as far as I need to go with that analogy. But Labor's NBN was a pup, and it's those opposite who are living in an alternative universe. It's Labor, Member for Oxley, who should be saying sorry on this one, not us. It's Labor that should be saying sorry. But we haven't heard that. Now, as usual, as is customary in this place, and as has been customary in recent years, we're cleaning up their mess. We have taken responsibility to fix their mess.

Time and time again I discover in this place that Labor doesn't show much respect for the facts and is constantly in denial. In fact, in recent times we've seen the professional apparatchiks from the union movement turn Labor into a shadow of its former self. Rational arguments have been lost in a mist of fact-free fervour where spin merchants can create their own reality. So let's bust apart a few of those Labor myths.

False claim No. 1 from those opposite, from the earlier speakers, is that nations around the world are rolling out fibre to the premises. Well, that is rot. Nations around the world are overwhelmingly rolling out a mix of technologies in an economically pragmatic way. Fibre to the premises might make sense in city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong, where almost the entire population lives in high-rises, but not here. They have population densities of 300 people per hectare; we're about a 10th of that in our densest cities. I know those opposite would love to turn our cities into apartment-living, basket-weaving, sandal-wearing, car-free utopias, but it isn't happening anytime soon. In the meantime, we need a range of technologies, and that's exactly what we have done in cleaning up your mess.

The second claim from those opposite is that, under Labor's original rollout, all Australian homes would have had the NBN by 2021—more rot. Labor's fibre-to-the-premises NBN policy would've cost, we know now, $30 billion more. That's generous, by the way. We're hearing this week about $90,000-per-premises rollouts. We read in the media it would've taken six to eight years longer to complete, and it would've left millions of households waiting another decade for better broadband, including those in my electorate—and I'll come back to that in a moment. Labor drastically underestimated the time and cost involved in a full fibre rollout when they embarked on the NBN program, because they didn't understand the basics of our cities and our regions—the lack of density that they thought that we had, as I explained earlier, in some kind of utopian view about what Australia should be. We know that every 10 days we're rolling out more than Labor rolled out in its whole time in office. So the reality is very different from the false claims of Labor.

The third false claim is that the network is behind schedule and that there are cost overruns. Under the coalition, NBN has hit every rollout target we've seen since coming into government. We had a three-year rollout plan released in July 2015. We set the target of reaching half of the premises across Australia by mid-2017 and three-quarters by mid-2018, and we are right on track. In contrast, back in December 2010 Labor forecast it would reach a target of 1.2 million premises by the end of 2013, but it only passed 200,000 premises. It had burned through $6.5 billion in funding out of its total budget. That was over $300,000 per premises.

The Labor Party sold us a pup. We have spent the last four years cleaning up the mess. In my electorate, we are at a point where 89 per cent of premises have access and over 50 per cent have connected, and that rate is increasing by the day. It's time for Labor to say sorry for the mess they left.

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

Before I call the member for Werriwa, the volume of interjections is increasing to a point where I'm issuing a general warning. The member for Macarthur is out of his place and is grossly disorderly, so he's warned.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The frustration that people are experiencing in my electorate in the growing south-west region of Sydney is clear to see. Last week's figures released in the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman annual report listed both Liverpool and Campbelltown as being in the top 10 postcodes for complaints. In fact, the only areas in the electorate with positive feedback are those with fibre to the premises—and they were part of the original rollout.

Recently, I held an NBN forum in Werriwa. Even on a very cold night, over 100 people attended. Thirty more contacted my office to provide apologies and seek further support. The forum was attended by a representative of the NBN. I thank her for her presentation and willingness to answer questions from my constituents, but it is clear from the forum and the inquiries my office is dealing with every day that the NBN providers and retailers are failing every segment of my electorate, and this is creating a difference in the experience of our residents. Elderly residents are confused as to why they need to change their phones and medical alert devices. Technicians show up but don't ensure the phones are put in the most convenient places in the house or even that they work properly. Young people are being promised and are paying for speeds which are just not being delivered. NBN Co says this is because the retailers are not buying enough bandwidth or because there's still ADSL on the line. However, the fact is people aren't getting what they were promised. My office has received in excess of 300 inquiries since June alone, when we began promoting the NBN forum. Regardless of the issues with the NBN or the telecommunication providers, the sheer scale of the issues that have been raised is astonishing, ranging from issues with installation and technician appointments to the quality of installation and the speed and reliability of connections.

One of the most consistent issues raised comes from constituents with hybrid fibre-coaxial, or HFC, connections. These are used when the existing pay TV or cable network can be used as the final connection for the NBN. Many constituents who've been using an existing ADSL connection have been switched over to HFC before the connection was correctly activated, thereby leaving them without any phone or internet connection, sometimes for weeks at a time. This is particularly prevalent in Macquarie Fields and Hinchinbrook in my electorate. When finally the connection does work, many of my constituents are so disappointed to find their service quality is, in fact, significantly diminished with this connection. The difficulties with switching households to HFC have been disastrous for the elderly in particular. The lack of access to a phone connection is creating a great deal of anxiety for older constituents and their families, as they frequently don't have mobile phones—and don't want them—and rely on their landlines for cases of emergency. There is also ongoing confusion about how the NBN will interact with special-need devices, such as landlines for the hearing impaired, which NBN Co have failed to truly clarify for many of the constituents in my electorate.

Many young families moving into new neighbourhoods in my electorate are discovering that their new 'NBN-ready' properties are not actually ready at all. In Edmondson Park, the residents of Zulu Road were very pleased to recently have their residences connected, except for the fact that they waited well over a year without any fixed-line connection. The most egregious example, however, is probably the suburb of Long Point, which I've spoken about in this place previously. Long Point residents barely have mobile coverage and, despite NBN Co earlier promising rollout dates and connecting suburbs that are less than 60 metres away, they remain left behind.

I recognise, though, that it's not just the constituents of Werriwa who've been let down by this government's bungling of the NBN rollout. Australia's average download speeds have reached 11.1 megabits per second. This leaves Australia ranked 50th in the world for average speeds, behind South Korea, New Zealand, Thailand and Kenya. While it's frustrating enough for someone to stream the latest Netflix series or communicate on Skype, this also risks leaving Australia behind while countries such as China and India look to keep their economies on the cutting edge and compete with the success of Silicon Valley. This will not occur with the current NBN rollout that we've got. This has been compromised. By no longer connecting homes and businesses directly to high-speed fibre to the network and using this second rate copper wire, we have seen— (Time expired)

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll get to the good work that we've been doing as a government with the NBN, but this whole story reminds me of an Irish joke I might share with you, Deputy Speaker. You may have already heard of it. There's this American tourist and he's driving around Ireland. He's in his convertible. He's got the roof down. He's enjoying the Irish countryside—the stone walls and the green fields—but after about an hour or so he feels as though he's lost. He feels, 'I think I've driven past this place before, or down this lane before.' After a while, he sees an Irish farmer putting some hay into a shed, and he walks over to the Irish farmer and says: 'Sir, I'm trying to get to Dublin. How do I get to Dublin from here?' The Irish farmer says, 'Oh, sir, if I were going to Dublin, I wouldn't start from here.'

I think that says it all about the NBN. We were left something which certainly isn't the place you would have started from. The minister spoke about—and it's been well documented—the complete public policy wreck that the NBN was as it was created by Minister Stephen Conroy. Some of his exploits were well documented, but the minister alluded to a few of them. In 11 weeks it was put together. There was no business case. There was no independent study. Let's look at this, because this was always a project of tens of billions of dollars, and there was no independent study ever done on it. There was no cost-benefit analysis. The board was put together and, as has been documented by independent people, there was no operational experience on the board. This was a thing that was hatched together by a minister who did no consultation and no independent study on it. So what were we left with? We were left with the debacle that it was.

Deputy Speaker Coulton, I share a thing with you. When I'm not in Canberra and I'm with industrious Australians who are out there having a go and starting small businesses, out and about doing it, it's easy to feel optimistic about Australia and everything that's going on. When I'm in Canberra, I feel less optimistic as the week goes on, having to listen to the ideology of those opposite and the diatribe that comes out of their mouths. They have no commercial experience. Most of them have never run a business or had management experience, and then, of course, you hear them say things like this.

If you were to run it as it was originally designed by the Labor Party, where they were going to do fibre to the premise everywhere, that was obviously going to mean a couple of indefutable things. It was always going to be more expensive to build. To build a fibre-to-the-premise model was always going to be more expensive than fibre to the node or fibre to the curbside. Besides being more expensive to build, it was always, obviously, going to be more expensive for the customer. To build a more expensive project meant that the expense to the customer was always going to be more and, obviously, the rollout was always going to be slower when doing a fibre-to-the-premises model.

What should've happened in the original, as happened in many countries, is that there should have been a mixture of technologies, and not necessarily done by government. This is the shock to them: this didn't have to be done by government! But that's something that they just can't get through their minds, because they have to control everything. Everything needs to be built by government. Many countries have done this in a good model; they have done it with a model with private companies doing it in the high traffic areas. They've done it with a model in capital cities, where people competed to build it, and, obviously, governments got involved where it may not have been commercially viable and they needed government involvement.

Obviously, that is too shocking for them; everything has to be done by government—governments are the only people who know how to do stuff. And, of course, what a great result! It will be a thing that goes down in history as the diabolical thing we were left with—much like the Irish farmer said: 'You wouldn't start from here.' It's where we were left when we took over.

But much good has been done. Firstly, the Prime Minister, who was the previous Minister for Communications, got in and put the management team and the governance system in place with NBN. This meant that the statistics and the rollout have been much better than they otherwise would have been. In my electorate of Page, we've had the rollout of the fixed broadband, which is now covering just about all of the electorate where the fixed broadband was going. We're going to have a mixture of fibre to the node and fibre to the curb. It's been redesigned in some of the CBDs where it floods, so there is good work happening.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And the member for Page is spot-on: the NBN, as it currently stands, is 'bolical'. It's indisputable, it's irrefutable and it's even, if you like, 'indefutable' that this is 100 per cent on you. This 'bolical' NBN is 100 per cent on you!

It's a rare achievement to stuff up the policy and program implementation for an essential service twice—not once: twice. It was the Howard government, in its wisdom—in its unbridled enthusiasm for privatisation—that decided to sell off Telstra, and they consigned Australia to life as a broadband backwater. That decision in the late 1990s, at the relative dawn of the internet, put us into a 20-year broadband limbo—a 20-year holding pattern. Other countries, including much less developed countries in our region, surged ahead. We have the 13th-biggest economy in the world—sometimes the 12th, sometimes the 13th—and we currently have broadband speeds at 53rd in the world. The member for Page told an Irish joke. As the member for Lyons points out, in Ireland, they're seventh in the world. We are 53rd in the world; it's a crying shame.

Labor's creation of the National Broadband Network was designed to repair that damage—to create an affordable, consistent, high-quality broadband framework for this nation in the 21st century. And it was going to be based on fibre, because all the evidence and all the expertise showed that fibre is the state-of-the-art, future-proofed technology. As every person who knows anything about broadband the world over will tell you, 'Do it once, do it right, do it with fibre.'

So how did it all go wrong? I think I'd be tempted to borrow a phrase from the Prime Minister and put it down to ideology and idiocy, because it's hard to explain it in any other way. It began with the lunacy of privatising an infrastructure monopoly. Privatisation at any cost is the path they wanted to go down, and that's where we are now, 25 years later. It continued with the abandonment of a fibre based network in favour of the multitechnology mess and the 19th century copper catastrophe that we live with now in 2017. It's not just decades-old copper, where they found it buried in the ground after 70, 80 or 90 years, but brand-spanking-new copper that they've brought in, becoming one of the largest copper wire stockpilers in the developed world, and shipping it around to put back into trenches where the old copper just won't do. Why? Why did they do that? Because the Vertigan review—geniuses; cutting-edge high-tech users, like Henry Ergas—decided that the biggest risk was that a fibre network might just be too fast. A fibre network may give more speed and more data than we actually needed. Never mind that since the 1970s computer processing power has doubled every single year. It's called Moore's law, a law that computing power and processing power will double every year.

Ninety per cent of all the data on the planet right now was created in the last two years. But those on that side were concerned that the fibre network would be over par—that it would be too good for Australia's needs. What is the result of all that? It means that Australian households and businesses continue to go without an essential service. It means we remain at a global disadvantage. It means our economy misses out on the most important infrastructure investment that is critical for us to take advantage of the areas that our economy needs to move into: high-tech manufacturing and agriculture, and creative industries. We are missing out on all of the various different creative and productive opportunities that the 21st century holds and it's because of the policies of this government.

The saddest thing, if you take a broad view of social and economic life, is the creation of a savage and steep digital divide that will lock in and exacerbate disadvantage. That will mean that people who live in poorer areas, people who already face significant disadvantage, are locked into that set of circumstances. They are held out from access to health, education and essential services.

The NBN disaster is the Prime Minister's pet project. It's his area of special interest. It was his portfolio responsibility. It is 100 per cent on this government. They have done the double: they sold off Telstra and they buggered up the NBN. It is 'indefutably' a mess of their making, and they will wear it around their necks.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor's attacks today are as fantastical and lacking in preparation as their plan for the NBN was in 2009. This MPI is one of the greatest own goals ever kicked. When I read The Australian yesterday morning, I thought, 'Surely they won't do anything in the MPI in relation to the NBN.' I will have great delight in going through that great article from The Australian just yesterday. They couldn't even let the dust settle for a couple of days or a week. The best form of offence is defence, they say, and that has clearly been exhibited by those opposite today.

Let's have a look at this. Labor is as credible on the NBN as they are on the NDIS. With the NDIS, they promised the world; they gave us an atlas; they delivered a $55 billion funding black hole. With the NBN, they told Australians that they must all have fibre to the premises, whether they needed it or not. Even if they didn't want it, they would still get it. What they delivered was fewer connections in four years than we are delivering every fortnight, and yet there is another black hole. Labor's impractical plan would have cost up to $84 billion—over $30 billion more than the coalition's business-like approach. I know those opposite don't care about money—'We'll just keep putting up the taxes to pay for it.' The gall of members opposite, in seeking to attack the government for so effectively cleaning up the mess of that lot, is hard to stomach.

Labor's NBN was two years behind schedule before it even connected a single home. Labor's NBN would have been finished, if it ever was, in 2028, and would have cost $3,500 for every man, woman and child in Australia. Labor's NBN spent $50,000, $80,000 and even $90,000 to connect single premises to the network. I'm going to return to that article, because that article from The Australian was an absolute pearler. Labor's NBN, according to one analysis, would have driven up average home internet bills by more than $500 a year. Labor's plan, if you can call it that, was an impractical, financially illiterate, technologically uninformed shambles. In contrast, the coalition has taken pragmatic, business-like and evidence based action to give Australians the high-speed broadband that they need.

This government adopted a mixed technology approach, giving NBN the option to choose the best-fit and most cost-effective technology solution for each area. This government saved the taxpayer $30 billion. This government fixed the build costs to ensure that the NBN's business model delivers a modest return on taxpayers' investment. This government has made the NBN available already to 6.2 million premises and prioritised regional Australia, ensuring that two-thirds of regional premises are already connected. This government got the rollout back on track, ensuring that NBN has beaten its financial year 2017 target by 100,000 and that the full rollout will be complete by 2020.

In my electorate of Fisher, the rollout is 53 per cent complete. That's 45,000 households who are ready to access the high-speed broadband. Tens of thousands of people have already signed up. Though we have around 39,000 of our 85,000 premises still to connect, we're at least six to eight years ahead of where we would've been under Labor's fantasy version of the NBN.

Let's have a look at some of these costs to connect to the internet. This is from The Australian yesterday, and what a great article it was. For Ravenswood in Tasmania it was $91,196—that's not to connect the town; that's just one house. For Invermay in Tasmania, it was $86,533; for Kingston in Tassie—the good place of Tassie—$55,766. In relation to speed, 80 per cent of users of NBN are opting to buy the two slowest NBN speed packages of up to 25 megabits per second. That's half of the average capability of 60 megabits per second, plus— (Time expired)

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on this MPI because the NBN is in Labor's blood. It's in our DNA. We created the NBN, and we're incredibly proud of it. These guys opposite mucked it up. They messed it up. They've killed it. There are just a couple of issues I'd like to go through before I get to the substance of my speech.

The member for Page, who's unfortunately no longer with us, said the NBN didn't have to be delivered by government. He is a member who represents the far north-east of New South Wales. I cannot imagine any corporation or any telecommunications company breaking their neck to deliver NBN services to the good constituents of Page. So he might want to have a talk to his constituents about that.

My good friend the member for Fisher was scoffing at the cost of service delivery for cherrypicked premises. I wonder if those opposite, especially National Party members, have the same attitude and put the same logic to extending services like roads and powerlines and power poles and telephone wires to remote and rural areas of this country. They cost more per premises to deliver as well, and they too, like the NBN, are essential services. So there are two issues there.

Tasmanians know about the digital divide. We live with it every day. The Australian Digital Inclusion Index, which the shadow minister referred to, shows that Tasmania still lags in the broadband stakes. Southern Tasmania, which includes part of my electorate, is in the bottom five digitally included regions in Australia. In 2014, Tasmania's digital inclusion score was 4½ points behind Victoria. Now it's 7.7. For digital ability, in 2015, there was a 5.8-point difference, and now it's 8.6. The affordability gap has blown out from one point in 2015 to 7.9 points now. It's going in the wrong direction under this government. Ever since the election of the Liberal government, Tasmania's digital gap has widened.

What a different story it was under Labor, when Tasmanian towns and cities were the first in the country to benefit from Labor's real NBN, with fibre to the premises delivered in Sorell, Midway Point, Smithton and Scottsdale, Launceston and Hobart. These places are now the envy of the country, delivering superfast broadband. We've got Launceston, the first gigabit city in the country. One can only imagine how bad the digital divide in Tasmania would have been if Labor had not delivered fibre to the premises.

The Prime Minister says that Australia should have followed the New Zealand example—he's quoted in the press—of splitting an existing telecommunications company into wholesale and retail rather than creating the NBN. He conveniently forgets that his side privatised Telstra, as my friend the member for Fremantle mentioned, and refused to include separation when it did so. And those opposite, including the Prime Minister before he became the Prime Minister, opposed Labor's legislation at the time for separation. He says that Labor should have followed the New Zealand example, but he was one of the very people who prevented it from happening.

The NBN didn't exist before 2009. It was conceived, developed and started under Labor, and it was starting to roll out in just four years, a mammoth infrastructure project. The size of it almost can't be conceived, and it was rolling out in four years, and it was well underway when those opposite came to power and they demolished it. Who can forget that cringe-worthy performance by the Prime Minister when he was the shadow communications minister, with the former opposition leader Tony Abbott, member for Warringah? He was the man who invented the internet! They said they were going to crush the NBN and create their version of it—a cringe-worthy performance. That was the beginning of the end for the NBN in this country, and this Prime Minister has kept that up. He's been an absolute disgrace as a Prime Minister and the worst communications minister in this country. He had one job, to deliver an NBN that this country could be proud of, and he's wrecked it. As Prime Minister, he's had the power and the authority to deliver an NBN that Australians can be proud of and that can close the digital divide in this country, but instead he's widened it. He's made it worse. He's delivered an NBN that no-one is proud of, where complaints are soaring. Nobody wants to be part of it. He's so embarrassed about it that he doesn't want to answer questions in this place and defers to his junior minister. It is an absolute disgrace, and I back the shadow minister in this MPI. Only Labor can deliver a real NBN. (Time expired)

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We just heard from the member for Lyons, and he said that, when we took over as government in 2013, the NBN was well underway, but during part of my speech I'll be happy to remind him how well it was underway. We also heard the member for Fisher talk about an own goal, and it reminded me of a question from the Leader of the Opposition back on 14 September, when I managed to send a GIF to one of the members opposite. I won't name who it was, but I sent a GIF to one of the members opposite of a bloke playing soccer who tries to kick the ball over his head but actually kicks it into his head, and it goes into the goal. That reminds me of this MPI. It's an own goal.

These MPIs on the NBN have been going on since 2010. There are a lot of new members here, but I see the member for Hunter. He'll know. He's probably participated in a few MPIs on the NBN over the years. Back in 2015, when some of the members who are now in here weren't here, there was a question I gave to the Minister for Urban Infrastructure, who at that time was the Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects. He certainly wasn't the minister for the Asian century. I don't know where he's gone now, but I know there was one back when Labor were in power. They have all disappeared, those ministers. My question to the minister at the time was:

I have received … letters from my constituents about the poor broadband service in the Ascot exchange. In 2007 the then Labor member wrote to the constituents of Swan and said that they would solve this—

by 2009.

They said they would fix it, but in six years they did nothing. They were absolutely useless. What action is the coalition government taking to reverse Labor's inaction and pathetic uselessness, and to help my constituents in the Ascot exchange?

There were a lot of interjections, because a few of the members over there, particularly the Manager of Opposition Business, said there was argument within that particular question, but the Speaker allowed it, and this was the minister's answer. I'll remind the member for Lyons to listen to how well underway they were in Western Australia. This'll tell you how well underway, after five years of rolling out the NBN, they were in Western Australia. Mr Fletcher said:

I do want to thank the member for Swan for this question, which really reflects a campaign that he has been assiduously pursuing in the totality of his time here in the parliament in relation to the delivery of broadband in Ascot.

There is, as the member informed the House, a letter on the record from Kim Wilkie MP, the then Labor member for Swan, from September 2007 which says:

Labor's National Broadband Network will solve Ascot's broadband problems.

There it was. There was the promise in 2007. And so, when the new member for Swan—as he then was in 2007—came to the parliament, he understandably pursued the delivery of that promise—

through the Labor government. What happened? Nothing. The answer continued:

To his great surprise, when the city of Belmont and the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council put forward a proposal to prioritise the Ascot exchange, it was rejected by the then minister for broadband, Senator Conroy. He rejected out of hand the proposal, when there had been a promise only two years before by the then Labor member for Swan that Ascot would be sorted out.

It has fallen—as it always does—to the coalition to sort out Labor's mess. We are doing that with the NBN all around Australia. We are doing that in the electorate of Swan, where there are 28,000 premises ready for service today. I am sure there are many in the House who recollect that the total number of premises connected in all of Western Australia in 2013—

wait for it—

when we came to government, was 34.

After five years, only 34 premises in the whole of Western Australia had been connected.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What have you built in five years?

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And the member for Lyons says, 'It was well underway'—it was well underway after five years. What an absolute disgrace. Do you know how many premises were connected in Swan? Eighteen.

Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—

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

The member for Lyons!

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister's response continued:

Yet today—only slightly more than two years later—in just one electorate in Western Australia over 28,000 premises are ready for service. Indeed, when we came to government, Western Australia's NBN rollout was in such disarray that the primary contractor, Syntheo, had pulled out of that market.

This was another contract by the Labor government. Remember that contractor, Syntheo, you guys selected to roll out the NBN? Where are they? They pulled out of the market. Mr Fletcher continued:

So we have turned that situation around in a short period of time. Thanks to the advocacy of the member for Swan on behalf of his constituents, some 15,500 homes and businesses in Ascot, Belmont, Cloverdale, Perth, Redcliffe and Rivervale will see construction begin in the first quarter of 2017 …

To update the member for Lyons, we have now connected over 59,000 premises in Swan.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, but it's all rubbish!

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, they're working well, mate. I've actually been out on the site. The NBN is being rolled out by the coalition government and is successful, particularly in my electorate of Swan.

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

The time allotted for the discussion has concluded.