Susan Lamb (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Broadband Network, if it had been done right, had the capacity to be the most amazing piece of infrastructure, to change lives and to build livelihoods. But, instead, we've got a national failure. The rollout has blown out, the cost has blown out, it's unreliable, it's slow and, in some cases, it's life threatening.

If you live on Bribie Island and wear an emergency response alarm, it doesn't work when the NBN goes down. If you live in Beachmere and have an emergency response alarm it's even worse if your NBN drops out, because you live in a black spot area, so your mobile phone doesn't work. If you live in Wamuran your livelihood is stopped from growing, because of constant dropouts.

But it's even better if you live in Narangba—you're stuck. The NBN's not reliable there. It's not slow there, because—guess what?—it doesn't even exist. Take the story of Jason from Narangba, who contacted me. He is currently connected to ADSL2. He was of the understanding he'd be switched over to the NBN in May 2017. He made inquiries with Telstra in May to switch over to the NBN. Telstra then contacted the NBN to help support them through this. But the last time he contacted Telstra, while he was waiting and waiting and waiting—at least on four occasions—he was told to go back and check the map because it will be 2020 before he can get connected. For your information though, there is a node just down the street—he can nearly touch it—but he can't get it till 2020. Jason said, 'It's disappointing that so much money has been spent on the rollout. We're not seeing any benefits to our community. What would be interesting to know from an environmental and cost point of view is how much power is being used by these nodes that aren't functioning.'

Jason's not alone. I have Facebook posts saying, 'NBN sucks,' and, 'Someone decided copper is the future.' 'Good luck with the whole thing,' they say. Someone from a neighbouring suburb offered this. She said, 'The NBN sucks because someone decided,' like I said, 'that copper is the future.' There are also posts on my Facebook page that I can't read out, Mr Deputy Speaker Howarth, because that would require me to use some unparliamentary language and I don't think you'd want me to use that—and you know I wouldn't use that, of course.

But what does the minister say? The minister says that there's nothing he can do. That's what he's told us. NBN say they're sorry. My message to the minister is: fix this problem for the people of Narangba. Stop saying sorry. We're over your 'sorry'. We just want this fixed.