Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister promised that all Australians would have access to the NBN by the end of 2016. But last week NBN Co announced it was immediately halting the rollout of the second-rate NBN to two million premises because the technology still doesn't work properly. How much will the HFC delay cost taxpayers?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The claim about 2016 is wrong. I did not say—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is absolutely wrong. I know exactly what we said. I said that everyone would have access to at least 25 megabits by 2016. When we did the audit on the NBN shortly after coming into government in 2013, it was perfectly plain that that objective could not be realised.

Opposition members interjecting—

The proposition you have made is completely wrong. The member for Grayndler was more convincing when he was talking to James Massola and Nick McKenzie.

An opposition member interjecting—

I assume it was him.

Mr Albanese interjecting—

Do you want to disavow this? What are you doing?

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

The member for Grayndler on a point of order?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Mr Speaker—on direct relevance: this is a very specific question about the cost to the taxpayers of the HFC delay.

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

The member for Grayndler will resume his seat.

Mr Pyne interjecting—

The Leader of the House will cease interjecting. So far the Prime Minister has only spoken about the NBN.

An opposition member interjecting—

He's come to a point about Fairfax, but he hasn't proceeded. So far he has only spoken about the NBN. We do have points of order, but we don't have points of order in anticipation.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government has not been advised about what additional cost will be consequent on the delay in the connection of premises to the NBN for customers that are on HFC. The honourable member should be very clear about this: the NBN is currently available to around 6½ million premises across Australia. The 350,000 that it's available to on HFC is, therefore, a little bit more than five per cent of the total. So the rollout is proceeding at the rate of around 40,000, or thereabouts, active connections a week. It is the fastest deployment of a telecommunications network in the country's history.

What the NBN Co is doing is moving at this extraordinary pace. It's connecting more people every 10 days than Labor did in six years. It is an outstanding effort. What they're doing with HFC is making sure that customers get a great service. They have identified some technical difficulties, and so they're going to get them right. That's the difference—Labor promised the world, as the minister described, and delivered nothing. Labor promised the world and delivered billions of dollars of wasted investment. We're getting on with the job and connecting and delivering. That's the difference between our government and the failures of the six years of Labor government that preceded us.