Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will pick up from where I left off yesterday in the debate on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the related bill, with just some of the 490 NBN complaints that my office has helped our constituents handle. Yesterday I mentioned the 'You're not on the map' NBN problem. Today I will start with the 'It's somebody else's problem' NBN problem.

Abigail is from Blue Haven and runs a mobile locksmith business with her husband. When they applied to have their business connected to the NBN, their landline was cut off before switching, resulting in missed calls and lost business. When they asked Telstra to fix the problem, Telstra advised that it was not their responsibility and referred them to the NBN. Guess what? The NBN referred them back to Telstra—back and forth, back and forth. Then there's: 'Oops! You need a landline to operate your medic alert.' This one is really serious. As a pharmacist who worked in a hospital, I understand it. Of particular concern to me is the case of an 85-year-old constituent who contacted me because her landline had not been working properly for six months. This was particularly worrying, because, like many older Australians, she had a medic alert system which operates through her landline. When she tried to get Telstra to fix the problem, Telstra claimed it was an NBN issue, and NBN told her it was a Telstra problem—and so it goes on.

It is not surprising, given that my office has handled over 490 NBN complaints, that yet again we hit the top of the league table in the TIO report. In the last six months of 2017, there was a reported 203 per cent surge in NBN complaints compared with the same period a year earlier and, all the while, the Turnbull government has been a bystander in my community. They simply don't care about people or small business owners who are struggling with this substandard service, particularly in regional areas. This is not acceptable for somebody trying to operate a small business. It's not acceptable for people relying on the landline to stay safe and connected in their homes. It is not acceptable for school students or people trying to do TAFE or uni. It just isn't working.

Normally, as a local member, I would be pleased to see a suburb in my electorate at the top of a league table, but, unfortunately, Toukley in my electorate is the top postcode in Australia for complaints to the TIO, and the main issue being complained about is unreliable landline services. That's not all. Wyong in my electorate, where I grew up, is also in the top 10 postcodes in Australia for complaints to the TIO. In this case, it is for delays in NBN connections. I will give an example. This is the case of Albert and Christine. This one is known—and some of you may know it—as the 'paperclip procedure'. Albert and Christine have had to endure the all-too-familiar ordeal of attempting to get answers from their service provider about the dropouts that result in missed telephone calls and crashed websites. They spent hours on the phone and were sent several new modems. They also became pretty handy at performing the paperclip procedure, which most of us know from being forced to reset modems over and over and over again. At least Albert kept his sense of humour throughout the whole ordeal, suggesting the NBN might stand for the 'No Bells Network', given their home phone rarely rang and most telephone calls would divert automatically to voicemail. While Albert and Christine's service was eventually restored, Albert noted that even the Telstra representative admitted to him that the copper network was so unreliable that he couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't happen again. This is what Albert had to say on the NBN:

It is a shame this current Government has virtually destroyed a brilliant idea but it is also extremely sad that the Post-Master General's Department was not re-established as the sole provider which would have been much better at organising a superior service for communications.

This can't go on, particularly in regional centres like mine where the NBN was meant to transform our community.

Labor is committed to a sustainable funding arrangement to support and improve NBN services in regional Australia. These failures of the current government have placed pressure on the sustainability of the future funding arrangements of the NBN. Labor supports measures that create a level playing field for competition in telecommunications. There were better and more efficient ways to achieve this than the bill currently before the House. However, we won't oppose the bill in the chamber today.

Ultimately, the Prime Minister owns this levy. It is for the Prime Minister to explain why the government wants to give big business an $80 billion tax cut while introducing a new telecommunications charge that will add $84 to the annual broadband bill of households on non-NBN networks. It is for the Prime Minister to explain why occupants of new homes on non-NBN fibre networks will eventually have to pay an extra $84 per year on their internet bill. It is for the Prime Minister to explain why it is always the Australian customer and the Australian taxpayer who foot the bill for his poor judgement and policy failures. Regional Australians know that, when it comes to broadband, only Labor will be there to consistently deliver on their behalf. As we've done for over a decade, we will continue to put regional consumers front and centre of our policymaking.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm proud to be able to support the amendment proposed to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 by the member for Greenway and to follow on from my friend the member for Dobell, who has so eloquently expressed a lot of the issues that we've been experiencing, particularly in rural and regional Australia, over this disastrous management of the National Broadband Network. This government has completely destroyed the complete transition of what was a clear, consolidated and efficient process to deliver effective broadband services to this nation.

Let's have a little historical reminder of how we got to this point. We had 13 years of the Howard government where there were 18 failed attempts to do something about this issue, and nothing happened. Every year we slipped further and further behind not only our like countries in the OECD but also competitors, trade partners and countries in the region. If you look at the economic success story that South Korea has been, the almost 100 per cent fibre penetration of their industry and homes has meant a lot to their growth as a country. Here was an opportunity for us to achieve that final breaching of the tyranny of distance and overcome the final barrier towards the full economic realisation of the potential of this country, particularly in human resources in rural and regional Australia. So it was critically important. There were so many things that could have been spun off it—the benefits to education, the benefits to health for remote Australians, and, in particular, the ability for businesses in the new start-up space and innovators, who only needed good, sound broadband communications infrastructure, to be able to operate anywhere. That was the beauty of it. Particularly in a region like mine—sitting where we do and offering a wonderful lifestyle—if they had had that support, businesses could have been operating for the benefit of their families and local areas and not needing to be in one of our big cities.

A really wonderful example of that has been what Jane Cay has achieved with her company, birdsnest, in Cooma, because we have reasonable communications there. She established her company and grew from a very tiny operation. Now, she has been announced as No. 1 in the top 50 people in ecommerce by Internet Retailing in 2018 and winner of the Hot Innovator award at the Power Retail All Star Bash 2018. Birdsnest was voted as the fourth-best place to work in Australia for the over-100 employees category in the Great Place to Work awards 2017. She employs over 110 local women. There's actually only one bloke there. They have incredibly flexible, wonderful working arrangements, Google style, for women who have kids they have to take to school or who have something to do on the farm et cetera. It is a wonderfully inclusive workplace that encourages innovation and ideas from all of the workers. They're loving it there. Birdsnest was also a winner of the best online marketing initiative for their changing room service. If you haven't seen that, you should check it out—at least women should. It's has a wonderful set-up where you can go into a changing room and it has an iPad on the wall where you can mix and match your clothing and accoutrements. They'll then bring it out from the warehouse and talk you through it. Also, they were a winner of the best online customer service in the Online Retailer Industry Awards 2015-16. They show what is possible in a country town by taking advantage of good communications infrastructure. But that opportunity is sadly missing in the broader reaches of Eden-Monaro and, in fact, in large parts of our landscape. That was what the NBN offered us.

When we came into government, we had a very simple three-technology approach to this. There would be fibre to the premises where that could be effectively and efficiently delivered. In remote areas or if terrain issues were a problem, you would have a mix of either fixed wireless towers or the satellite service. Labor commissioned the two satellites that are up there now, but it had been Labor's plan to put a third satellite up. One of the issues you have with services on satellites is that volume has to be managed carefully. Large volume on satellites will slow down the service. But what this government tried to do was create a multitechnology Frankenstein's monster disaster, which created a whole range of extra expenses and costs in the system. This bill, in introducing this levy, is a bit of a confession note to that. When we came into office, they were running with this OPEL idea, which some might remember. For Eden-Monaro, they put out maps of how this completely wireless service was meant to support Eden-Monaro. The only problem with their maps was they didn't take into account mountains or vegetation. I don't know if people are familiar with the terrain of Eden-Monaro, but we do have one or two hills. In fact, we have the Great Dividing Range right through the middle of it, we have Australia's highest mountain and we have a hell of a lot of vegetation. These maps were complete rubbish, and within 48 hours they had to be taken off the web. So the OPEL offering for Eden-Monaro would not have worked; it would have been a disaster. Nothing that the coalition put forward worked.

When we came in, we had some major public policy issues to resolve. There was the structural separation of Telstra, something that should have been tackled long ago. We had to do the deals with Telstra and Optus on the arrangements for setting up a wholesale platform on which retailers could compete and the universal pricing policy approach to that, which was really going to benefit rural and regional people. On top of that, we had to ensure that there was a wider spread of fixed wireless towers so that there wouldn't be so much pressure on the satellite services and everyone would get maximum benefit from the new service. Obviously, the design of that system required building a slow development of productivity as that process got rolling. If it had been left in place, we would have been hitting high straps of productivity and speed right now, as we were really swinging into that. In addition to those big public policy challenges, we faced the discovery of asbestos in the pits around the country. That was no small matter. I personally know the hazards of asbestos, having worked with asbestos victims when I first came out of university. That was a massive challenge.

It is completely hypocritical and disingenuous of the coalition to have pointed the bone at us for any delays in establishing this massive new infrastructure project. It's been the largest in our history, but we got it rolling. There are so many problems that the coalition has created through its approach to this. One is that it severely underestimated the failings in the HFC capabilities that existed in the cities and the cost of even creating the software management of the system, across this Frankenstein's-monster mix. It's estimated to have cost well over $1 billion to address that issue. And how absurd and insane it was that they had to go out and buy another 15,000 kilometres of copper wire for this system—unbelievable, in the context of where the rest of the world is going!

The copper has been a huge impediment. I'm getting so much feedback from constituents that the fibre-to-the-node process is just not doing the job. The further you are from the node and the greater the number of people using it—it's like an elephant trying to push itself through a garden hose at the end of the node line. It's a disaster. Worse than that, there is now a digital divide in some places, like Queanbeyan, right across the border here. Half of Queanbeyan received fibre to the premises while large areas of Jerrabomberra ended up with fibre to the node. That has not only created poor services—and Jerrabomberra is a very tech-savvy community with a lot of small business people who would have made the most of those services. Not only are they missing out on that level of service; this digital divide has created a devaluation of their properties. People now come to Queanbeyan and say, 'Does this premises have fibre to the premises or is it on the node?' It is definitely having an impact on decisions people are making when buying homes in Queanbeyan. This digital divide has created inequity across so many levels through this crazy multi-technology mix that's been created by the coalition.

In addition to that, we're having issues with Sky Muster, as I mentioned. Every time I hold a forum in Eden-Monaro, we get a massive roll-up. This is something that's really burning in the bush, on top of the issues about the forced mergers that we've had. The anger in rural and regional communities over the coalition's attempt to protect the banks—rural and regional people were the ones who were most upset about this banks issue, and communications is right up there with those grievances. I would have 100 people roll up to a forum in Queanbeyan, and dozens and dozens of people in other towns around Eden-Monaro, to discuss these problems. There's a huge volume of correspondence, as the member for Dobell referred to; we've had the exact same experience.

In Eden-Monaro in 2017, 33 per cent of all premises were only able to connect to the NBN via Sky Muster. That was well beyond what was originally intended. With that, we've had people seeking clarification on how the NBN services were allocated to certain areas. They can't get answers to those questions, because the government hasn't allowed the information on how they've been allocated to be released. We've continued to call on the government to commission an independent expert review of the NBN satellite service to set the record straight and provide a clear plan forward.

One really good example of how this has played out, if you need further proof, is that of the Barton Highway—and I'll be happy to speak more on the Barton Highway as a major disingenuous infrastructure deception that the government's committing on the people of the Yass Valley. The Barton Highway in Murrumbateman is presenting a great divide in NBN services. Residents on the western side of the Barton Highway are able to connect to fibre to the node, while those who are on the eastern side of the highway are only able to connect to Sky Muster. There's absolutely no logical, technical reason people can see for that, and no explanation has been given by NBN as to why there would be such a difference in technology based on this road border. It's just crazy.

We also know in Eden-Monaro that we're under one of the busiest air routes in the world. They're offering up services under Sky Muster to those airlines, which is putting further strain on the services available to my community. It's been plagued with ongoing installation and reliability issues as well as higher costs compared to other NBN services. We had data limits as well, which had to be addressed. The feedback I'm getting from the community is continuing to pile up. If the government had stuck to our original plan of putting up three satellites, we would have seen a bit of an easing of the circumstances there, but we certainly need more fixed wireless towers to take the burden off the satellite.

We've seen the huge volume of complaints that have emerged in the TIO report in April. There has been a 204 per cent increase in complaints. Certainly I've been experiencing all of that, with people coming to me to try and get their matters sorted out. We really have to get this sorted out, because it's holding us back. Many small business people have also come to me about the limitations that have been placed on what they want to do as a result of confusion over communications infrastructure.

This is going to be a mess that Labor will be required to unravel, because it's very clear that, in all the history of the coalition's dealing with this, they just haven't managed to come to grips with it. I remember, vividly, Senator Helen Coonan. She was a wonderful lady, a decent person, but she'd been pitchforked into this issue at the end of the Howard government and she clearly didn't understand any of the technical aspects. It was a shock to watch her trying to explain the OPEL plan to my regional communities in Tumut and elsewhere. She left people completely unimpressed. This was in contrast to Stephen Conroy, who was well and truly over all the technical issues. In fact, my only issue with Stephen, when I took him to the communities, was to try to get him to tone down the technical language so that people could get their heads around it. He was completely across all this. If we'd stuck with the original plan, how much further ahead would we be now and how many gains would we have made?

I remember at the time that one estimate of the benefit of our original NBN plan to our economy was that it would have added $60 billion worth of value to the Australian economy. That's the kind of investment that we want to see from government to address our growth and our new economy issues. We've seen none of that imagination, none of that understanding out of this government. The only plan they've been able to put forward in all the five years they've been in government has been a tax cut to big business. That's it. Where's the imagination? Where's the creativity? Where's the approach to addressing the skills and workforce needs of this country to address the huge technology curve that's presenting this nation with problems?

Instead of understanding that challenge, what have they done, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird? They've cut TAFE spending. I know this is a great passion of yours and that you've put so much love and passion into it and understand how important it is, particularly to rural and regional areas. We've seen not only the $3 billion worth of cuts up until now but this extra $270 million hit. We are seeing all this when we in our region are facing the challenges of supporting Snowy 2.0, which is likely to be developed. This will see another 5,000 jobs, but we don't want them hived off to 457 visas or skilled migrants from overseas. Our kids in the region deserve to have those opportunities, and our workers, our kids and our entrepreneurs deserve good-quality communications to support and give flight to their imaginations and their business opportunities, to make rural and regional Australia grow. That's how we do it—not stupid decentralisation. (Time expired)

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to endorse the comments of my colleague from Eden-Monaro. He absolutely understands the issues that we're facing. I rise to speak about the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017. I will be supporting this legislation in the House. If passed, these bills will establish statutory infrastructure provider obligations on NBN Co to support the ongoing delivery of superfast broadband services and will provide sustainable funding for NBN Co's loss-making fixed wireless and satellite services to regional areas through the Regional Broadband Scheme, the RBS. I welcome these changes.

As a member of the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN, I, along with many of my colleagues in the House, heard firsthand of the dissatisfaction with the rollout of the NBN. The dissatisfaction absolutely seems to be highest in regional communities. The purpose of the NBN rollout committee is very clear. Our job is to assess the rollout of the NBN and ensure that this significant infrastructure project for Australia is delivered in a way that delivers the social and economic benefits it promised.

My office, like those of many members in regional areas, is acutely aware of the gap between the promise and the reality of the NBN. The experience of one of my constituents from the King Valley, a wine-producing and agricultural region 300 kilometres north of Melbourne, is a clear indication of this. I would like to read this into Hansard because I think it encapsulates the enormous frustrations that we're experiencing, but before I do I'd like to acknowledge the Minister for Regional Development, Territories and Local Government, who's in the House. It's lovely to have you here, Minister. I know that you understand this more than anybody else. Through our work on the House Select Committee on Regional Development and Decentralisation you've just heard of the opportunities that we've got to face. I really look forward to working with you in your role to see what we can do about making sure all the regions and agriculture in particular have access to the internet that they need.

Here's a case study of a business in my electorate. They had NBN Sky Muster satellite installed in November 2016. The telecommunications office has had a case file on the complaints since mid-November 2016, with no resolution. NBN contractors have visited the property on six separate occasions to replace satellite dishes, NTD units and cables to the house. Each instance resulted in the technician reporting to NBN Co and Ericsson, the satellite provider, that there was no internet signal. NBN continued to close each case, and each time a technician went to the property a new case was opened.

Their ISP is iiNet. They have had two case managers at the TIO who have expressed their frustration in dealing with NBN Co. The assigned NBN Co case managers claim to have not had the emails sent by the TIO, even though the TIO have copies on file. The ISP seems powerless to pursue the case on behalf of the customer, even though NBN Co insists that the fault complaints have to come from the ISP.

The constituent has 4G with Optus, which they say works well. They want to keep a wireless internet arrangement at home using Optus, but they've been told that they have to be on satellite, which eliminates other options. NBN claims that they can opt to retain their legacy copper services as well as, or instead of, switching to NBN, as there are no plans to switch off the existing copper networks in these areas. That has been a hard-fought battle. But this particular constituent doesn't have fixed copper wire to their property, so it's not much help. They want the government to give the TIO more power to compel NBN to meet requirements. Despite the many fault lodgements to NBN, NBN continues to dismiss the issue.

There's not even the option to switch ISPs, because the fault continues with the satellite. There are only six providers to choose from, and my constituent believes that they've got dubious reputations. He tells me that the Sky Muster satellite ISPs do not include Telstra or Optus. The constituent tells me that he feels his hands are tied and he has been spun around like a yo-yo, with no resolution, as NBN refuses to admit that it cannot provide the capability for an internet service. This has affected the constituent's health and has been detrimental to the spouse's ability to work from home. They've agreed for me to put a ministerial into the system. They want the government to authorise on paper that he be allowed to continue to use his 4G for internet. It's just a comedy of errors—shock, horror! How could this be the case?

Sadly, it's not a one-off experience. My electoral officers constantly regale me with stories, saying, 'Guess what else has happened?' I know it's not new, but really we need to put energy into what we do about this. The strong message from my community is that the NBN is not delivering as promised. Their concerns and dissatisfaction with the rollout illustrate a lack of equity between metro and regional communities, particularly in relation to slow speeds. When people in my community try to address this, there is a lack of clarity of responsibilities between NBN Co and retail service providers. Ultimately, they turn to the office of their member of parliament for help.

As part of my role on the NBN rollout committee, we spent 12 months meeting with communities across Australia, talking to businesses and local and state governments and taking submissions. In total the committee took 191 submissions from a range of individuals and organisations, 39 of which were from my electorate of Indi. I thank those constituents for playing an active role in this process, for engaging with me and the committee and for building the evidence base so that the committee can make informed decisions and sound recommendations. I have here the list of the 39 constituents, which I was going to read to the House today, but I think that would use up some of my scarce time, and I have more important things to say. But I want to acknowledge every single one of those constituents for the time and energy they put into putting their concerns in writing. Many of them turned up to the inquiry and actually spoke to their own issues. We do get that you are busy people, and I really do appreciate the energy it takes to work with government, so to every single one of you: thank you. I look forward to continuing to advocate in parliament so that we get a better outcome.

I want to turn my mind now to the recommendations of the committee. There were 23 recommendations, but there are just a few I would really like to highlight, as I think they address the needs of rural and regional communities. I continue to call on the government to direct the NBN to establish a regional and rural reference group to support the rollout of NBN in rural and remote Australia. Minister, this is where you could really help me. When we put this recommendation up, the NBN said they didn't need a rural and remote reference group—that they knew about what was going on. Well, they might know about it, but I tell you what: their communication to the regions is not strong. I do acknowledge that they brought a roadshow bus to north-east Victoria and took it around many of the towns in my electorate, which was certainly a beginning, but there are so many issues that still need to be addressed, and communication back to my electorate and my constituents about how these are being addressed is really needed. So one of the recommendations is that we set up a reference group.

The committee has seen really clearly there needs to be greater consultation with rural and regional end users in the development of NBN user policy and NBN rollout plans. To the advisers in parliament today and to the people listening, I plead: this is really important and not an optional extra. Just saying that the telcos understand rural and regional Australia is not good enough, because we don't have evidence of that and we think it needs to be done much better. This recommendation was accepted by the majority report of the committee. It went to the government, who came back with, 'No, we're not going to do it,' for no good reason. So I reiterate that in my speech today.

I understand that, if you could set up such a reference group, the group would include consumer advocacy groups and departmental representation from the communications and regional development areas. It would be a really important step in improving the end user experience and increasing transparency. It's easily done, with huge output. I can't see why we wouldn't agree to it. When business decisions fundamentally change, the NBN experience for the end user in regional and rural communities should be referred to the reference group for consideration and analysis as to whether the decision will result in NBN not meeting its responsibilities outlined in the statement of expectations. When changes happen with NBN, you really need to consult with your regional users and say: 'How is this going to impact on you? Is this actually going to work, yes or no? What's a communication plan we could put in place to actually make it work better?'

We also called for a clearly identified complaint-handling process which would include complaint resolution processes and time frames and complaint acceleration processes, internal and external, and would meet Australian government accessibility guidelines. It should not be hard to do that. We've been hearing about the problems with the TIO. They say, 'It's not us.' Why couldn't we set up something very specifically to meet the needs for rural and regional Australia? You've heard today that we've got special and quite different needs to the city people. If we could have a process where our needs were met directly and quickly, I could say that you would be a friend of every single regional member of parliament, because it would take the huge workload off our officers and it would be really appreciated by constituents.

I know we have a helpline, but it's not targeted specifically to rural and regional, and we don't get a sense that our particular issues are being addressed in the right way. We have seen that there are significant inadequacies in resolving customer complaints—notably, a lack of direct access to the NBN and a gap in the knowledge of available avenues for complaints and dispute resolution. Whilst these issues cost wholesale and retail providers, there is a need for a single agency to provide this information to ensure the uniformity and consistency of messages and advice. If the minister and advisers would like to meet with staff in my department, I would be really happy to sit down with them and talk about the complaints that we get and how this recommendation could be worked to resolve some of the issues in a speedy way.

Before I get to the end of my talk, I would like to address my comments to agriculture and rural and regional development. In doing so, I want to acknowledge the enormous difference that the NBN has actually made to my community. My speech so far has mostly been about the problems, but, truthfully, it is a most wonderful, essential service that is going to be such a game changer for communities like mine. Where it's working—and working well—it has made a huge difference, so it's fantastic to have. I refer to an experience that the minister and I had as part of the inquiry into regional development. We went to Launceston, in Tasmania, and also to Geraldton, in Western Australia. We heard from both of these cities, which are gigabit cities; they've got infinite internet. The envy that it evoked in the rest of us, because we don't have that and we put up with such substandard—it was like dirt road problems. These two cities can advance because they've got the capacity to do it. It unleashed, I think, in all the people on our committee, an understanding of the opportunities from this technology for rural and regional Australia—and our frustration that we have to come to parliament and argue to get the changes made, as opposed to being on the front foot and being able to bring all our resources to work with the Department of Communications and the Arts, NBN Co and the TIO to actually sort out and solve the problems—because of all the benefit.

I know that the cities will benefit, but, in seeing what Launceston and Geraldton were able to do and the enormous optimism that those cities have because they've got such good internet, I could imagine that in my communities. We have so much potential to produce more. Fifty per cent of the water in the Murray-Darling Basin falls in my electorate. We could do so much. We could triple our agricultural production. We could triple our manufacturing. We're on a main transport route. We could do so much with 21st century agriculture if we could get hold of this technology. I've had the opportunity to go to Armidale, to the University of New England, to see what their smart farms are doing for agriculture. It is so exciting to see the research, but at the moment we can't bring that to our electorate. I can't bring that to my farming, manufacturing and stock and station agents, because we don't have the capacity. I'm here in parliament asking for basic services rather than being able to say, 'Let's work together to do what we can.' I'll be supporting this legislation. It is a good beginning, but we've got a long way to go. I offer the support of myself, my offices and my community to see if we can get over the hump and deliver what we know the potential of this technology is.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to contribute to the debate today on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017. I want to build on some of the comments the member for Indi has made. She is an incredibly passionate advocate for her community, as all of us in this chamber understand and acknowledge. She is talking about potential here, and that just frustrates me in this debate about the National Broadband Network, because in the electorate of the member for Indi and in the electorates of other members in this House, and certainly in my electorate, we know that we have businesses and innovative, smart people—scientists—who could be doing so much more, who could be taking their innovation and their knowledge right out to the farthest corners of the globe, but they're stymied, and it is frustrating. Deputy Speaker, I'm sure you experience this in your community when you talk to people there. I've spent a lot of time talking to farmers on this issue, and they tell you they could build much better and bigger businesses, but they can't upload receipts onto their computers so that they can pay their bills. I've talked to farmers who actually have to get up in the middle of the night to do their accounting, because that's the only time at which their internet will work fast enough for them to download the things they need for doing their accounting. Every time I engage in this debate about NBN, it is always in the context of missed opportunities. I'm happy to have a discussion today about some of the technical things. As the member for Indi said, we are talking about pretty basic standard services here.

It's disappointing for Labor MPs and other MPs to engage in this debate, because we know what could have been. The truth is that Labor had a better plan for this. That plan would have delivered fibre to the home to 93 per cent of Australians. That plan was going to cost a lot of money—no-one can deny that. I would point out that the coalition's plan—their half-baked effort—has cost a lot of money, too. Labor's plan would have cost a lot of money and it would have taken a long time to do, but, as our friend Tony Windsor says, 'You do it once, you do it properly, you do it with fibre.' We had a plan that would be coming to completion right now, and all of my constituents and almost all of the member for Indi's constituents—I'm assuming, as it depends on whether the satellite was going to be connected to her area—would have had a broadband connection. That broadband connection would have had a fundamental difference to the coalition's plan in the way it has connected Australians up to broadband—that is, it would have been futureproof.

We know that when we lay fibre under the ground we can continue to upgrade the technology that sits at either end, the technical electronics that help us to connect to the internet, but fibre is what's needed as a starting point. That's what we've missed out on. That's why the member for Indi's constituents, the member for Chifley's constituents and my constituents are not able to build the innovative businesses they could, because they are struggling with an internet that frankly is just not good enough for a First World country like Australia.

We are here to talk about some of the technical aspects of how the NBN is being regulated. I will go those issues, which are in the context of this extraordinarily frustrating public discussion on where we have ended up with a second-rate NBN. I feel that not a week goes by in which another scandal or another issue does not come up, whether it be about the fact that speeds are lower than expected, that the internet is more expensive or that it is less reliable. A lot of people in my community—and I will speak about their experiences specifically—are telling me that after signing onto the NBN they have an internet service today that is more expensive, less reliable and slower than it was when they had an ADSL connection. It's pretty frustrating.

I want to mention a recent report that I found incredibly disturbing. There are organisations that rank internet speeds around the world. The last report from one organisation, Speedtest, found that Australia has dropped to 55th in its global ranking of internet speeds. This is an incredible report and I would encourage those of you listening to look at it. The report lists countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Barbados, Thailand, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Moldova, Estonia, Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine and Uruguay—I could list 56 countries before I get to Australia. We have an average download speed of 29.5 megabits per second. The fastest country in the world is Singapore, which has an average download speed of 174.94 megabits per second.

Mr Deputy Speaker, it is not a mystery as to why we are 56th in the world and Singapore is No. 1. Those of us who have been following this debate will be able to tell you why Singapore has a high internet download speed, and that is that Singaporean residences have fibre to the home. It is a real illustration of how badly wrong we have got this. We are seeing that the countries in the world that made the big one-off investment up-front in building fibre to the home are the countries that are leading the world in internet speeds, while the system that we've cobbled together with the different mix of technologies and the 'one street with one type of technology and the next street with another' approach is seeing us decline. We are getting worse over time, not better. There are all the other issues that I've talked about, as well as the expense and the issues around reliability.

I will speak briefly about the Statutory Infrastructure Provider scheme. The bill that is before us goes into a bit of detail about some changes that will be made. I've talked a lot about the government's failures on the National Broadband Network, but I'm happy to admit when the government gets something right. It's not all that often that I have to make that concession, so I'm happy to do so now.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It makes a difference.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly. I'm glad to see that the government will be putting the principle that all Australians should have access to a high-speed broadband connection into legislation, for what it's worth—as they say on the internet. It is a sensible extension of the reform that Labor started while in government, with the statement of expectations that we provided for the NBN Co. That statement required NBN Co to ensure that the network was available to all Australians, and the bill before us means that this principle will continue beyond the completion of work. It is a sensible reform, and I think the least we could expect. Given that we've got the NBN so badly wrong, we should at least have regulation that allows people to have that sense of certainty. It is a bit disappointing to see how long it took the government to get to this position and to realise that this was an important principle, but we've been campaigning for this for some time and it is great to see the government join us on that and we can have a bipartisan approach on at least this small element of the scheme. Perhaps it might be wishful thinking on my part, but if the government had moved ahead on this principle a little bit earlier then maybe we would have also seen them admit their mistake in trying to use old technologies for the NBN rollout, because that's the issue of controversy between the two big political parties in this country that needs us to get to a bipartisan position. We simply can't continue under the current constraints. It is not good enough for a First World economy, and we need to do better.

The Prime Minister and his government told us that they were scrapping the rollout of Labor's fibre-to-the home technology because it cost too much. That probably sounded like a good political exercise at the time, but I have to say today that I think most Australians would agree it would have been much more sensible, much more beneficial, to pay a bit more at the time and get internet that was going to last us beyond this current iteration of technologies. What we've also seen is that the cost of the Prime Minister's NBN has blown out to $4 billion more than the cost of Labor's fibre NBN. So we are back again at this incredible frustration—and I'm just reflecting what I hear from my constituents—of having thrown billions of dollars at this problem, but, because we've done it in this cobbled-together way, because we've had this irritating policy change between Labor and Liberal, we've ended up with an internet that is slower, more expensive and less reliable than it otherwise would have been. Indeed, a lot of my constituents are having slower, less reliable and more expensive internet than they had before their NBN was connected. You just can't believe how frustrated people are about this, Deputy Speaker.

I've spent a lot of time talking to my constituents about the issues that they are having, because my goal is that an incoming Labor government will try to do something to help fix some of these issues. I've got large parts of my electorate which have not been connected at all to the NBN and in the parts which have been connected there are huge complaints about what's going on. We have received so many complaints about the NBN that we have actually had to set up a survey to collect them all. I want to talk about some of the comments that I've received from my constituents. The first is from Debra in Moorabbin. She said:

We've gone backwards in this house for speed and connectivity. NBN often drops out and speeds are sometimes like old dial up. It's so frustrating. We rarely do work at home as a result.

Tracey in Dingley Village describes Turnbull's NBN as 'an exorbitant waste of money invested in backward technology'. I couldn't agree with you more, Tracey. Andrew from Oakleigh South, like many, has had problems with the installation process. He said:

NBN have damaged my house … and they also managed to stuff up the installation in my elderly neighbour's property at well … All this hassle for obsolete technology.

Stephen in Hughesdale said:

This is the worst and slowest internet I have had in a long time.

Paul in Keysborough said:

The NBN is no better than what I had before, in some ways it is worse.

Joanne in Clayton South said:

Australia is so far behind when it comes to the internet. This is outdated technology. If the government wants to spend tax payers money, give us something to be proud of and that is useful. Not this crap.

Excuse my French, Deputy Speaker. That was a direct quote, telling it like Aussies do. I'll end with Matthew in Cheltenham, who said:

I can't say anything nice so I won't say anything at all.

I can assure you that these comments go on and on and on. Among the many people who responded to our survey and those I have talked to about their NBN, I would say there is almost universal frustration and dissatisfaction with the service that is being provided. In the survey work that we did in my electorate, we found that 77 per cent of those connected to the NBN in Hotham are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the network. Of those not yet connected to the NBN, 84 per cent don't want the old copper and cable technology that's planned for them; they want Labor's fibre connection straight to their home. In Hotham—and no surprise here—the vast majority of people connected to the NBN who are unsatisfied have HFC or FTTN. Those are the Prime Minister's old technologies that he cobbled together. It's meant to be called 'broadband'; they call it 'fraudband', and this is why.

But it's not just people in my electorate who are upset and frustrated by this. Poll after poll and survey after survey show us that Australians are fed up with the inferior NBN. They're fed up with the customer service that they're receiving from the organisations. They are fed up and frustrated with the poor speeds. They are fed up with poor reliability.

The Prime Minister's NBN is a failure. He should have done it once and done it with fibre. He could have done that. As a country we are paying a colossal price for the mistake that was made in choosing to cobble together technologies instead of doing it properly with fibre. We don't want a second-rate NBN that costs more and does less. I think it's time that the Prime Minister listened to the public and started to make a concerted effort to try to actually fix the mess that he's created, rather than going ahead as he had planned. Broadband isn't a luxury; it's a critical public service that needs to be done right. It's essential for the people in my electorate, it's essential for our local economy, and it's the least we could do as a government to provide them with this basic service. Many countries that have a much lower GDP per capita are finding parts to give their constituents much better services than we've been able to do. So I regard it as a failure of the government in a most profound way.

We are now having to deal with the consequences of these actions. One of the concerns I have is with the implementation of an internet tax on 400,000 residential and business services on non-NBN networks. These are the same networks that the Prime Minister, when he was in the Communications portfolio, encouraged. It is the constant failures with the NBN that have led us to this debate in this place. You are going to have member of parliament after member of parliament getting up and telling you the same thing, Deputy Speaker. We have the same message for the Prime Minister: the technology that you have chosen and the way that you have decided to do this are wrong. It is not taking us in the right direction; it is taking us backwards.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, every year I get sick of having to look at survey after survey telling us that Australia, instead of leaping forward as we rightly should be doing with all of the incredible assets that we have in this country, is slipping further backwards on this fundamental technology. We had a so-called 'infrastructure budget' announced by the government a couple of days ago. What do you think matters more? Is it building a road or is it giving us a highway that is going to provide a foundation for the future growth of our economy? They can't get that right. I don't think that anyone looking at their record on the NBN would trust them to do any of the other things that are in that budget. It's good to have the opportunity to express the frustration of my constituents, and I've been pleased to do that today on behalf of the people of Hotham. Thank you.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the outset, what the coalition should do is rename the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017. They should be renamed 'the coalition's chickens coming home to roost'. The particular bill we are debating right now represents all the failures of the coalition accumulated and rolling into this. When you get to a point where you need to charge up to 500,000 Australians up to $84 a year more on their broadband, that represents the combined policy failure of the coalition. We've gotten to a point where our download speeds in Australia are slower than in Kazakhstan. We have Borat broadband in this country. Kazakhstan is beating Australia. We fall behind the world standard. How did we get to this spot? How did we get to the spot where Borat beats us on broadband? I'll tell you how.

On this side of the chamber, early on we didn't need to legislate the importance of broadband, because it was in our hearts and in our heads. We looked at the coalition under John Howard—in the 19 times they tried to get broadband plans in place, they couldn't get it done. What did we have? It was patchy in terms of the rollout back when John Howard was the Prime Minister and Helen Coonan was the communications minister. It was patchy. It was dollar driven in that if you got good broadband it was because you were in a richer area rather than the general metropolitan area. If you were in regional areas you could forget about getting good broadband. There was no national network; it was all cobbled together based on a profit-driven approach of Telstra, back in the day of Sol Trujillo—a name we have forgotten these days. Telstra would put up plans for broadband rollouts with a rate of return way higher than the ACCC could stomach.

It took Labor to say: 'No, enough's enough! We will put in a national network. We will make sure 93 per cent of homes are fibred up. The other seven per cent will get it through either satellite or mobile broadband—that's how they'll get their internet. We'll put that into place. Forget the almost 20 instances of failure from the coalition; we're going to do it right the first time with fibre.' Malcolm Turnbull, now Prime Minister, then shadow communications minister, knew he couldn't beat that model the way it was. The then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, had one objective: destroy the National Broadband Network. But Malcolm Turnbull, as shadow communications minister, knew he couldn't do it.

So all they did was engage in political product differentiation to come up with a version of the NBN. They could try and slap the sticker on it to say that it was the NBN, but they knew it was a dud. They called it the multi-technology mix, which is now dubbed 'Malcolm Turnbull's mess', because that's exactly what's happening. They moved from fibre. They rely on HFC, the cable broadband network that everyone was telling them was going to cost a bundle to upgrade to get even remotely near what expectations would be. They relied on that.

The coalition always cheer mobile broadband blackspot programs as if that is the substitute for having fibre to the premises in regional Australia. They cheer because regional Australians will have access to data that is more expensive and not as universally reliable as that fibre connection. That's what they cheer on, but they don't cheer on rolling out fibre to the premises. We have seen this embarrassed, cowardly crawling. They said they would not support fibre to the premises, so it was fibre to the node, then it was fibre a bit further away from the node, and then it was fibre to the driveway—all inching closer to the homes. We said, 'Just do this right the first time,' and they refused to. They put in place this system that is turning out to be a mess.

I remember the Prime Minister, when he was communications minister, teasing both me and the member for Greenway, saying he'd visit Blacktown, which is in part of the electorate I represent and part of the electorate the member for Greenway, the current shadow communications minister, represents. He was saying: 'Look at this! There are these HFC networks that exist—these cable broadband networks that exist—and these members of parliament want to push for fibre when they could just use the cable broadband network.' As my constituents say to me, the cable broadband network works fantastically at 4 am. That's when it works best. If you have a lot of people on it, it slows down—exactly what we constantly told the coalition when we were in government. This network is affected by volume, it degrades and it costs a lot of money to bring it up to speed.

Because the coalition, like I said earlier, wanted product differentiation—they wanted to say that they were doing something different to Labor—they put this forward. So now we are debating a levy that will be placed on Australians to cover the cost. Why? The shadow minister in her contribution outlined why. It is because just to operate this inferior technology mix that has been foisted on us by the Prime Minister, who was then the communications minister, and championed by the coalition, will cost $200 million more each year and it will generate less revenue—$300 million less revenue. So straightaway you have a gap of nearly half a billion dollars—again this reflects the deliberate decisions made by the coalition on how they would mutate the National Broadband Network into this MTM, this multi-technology mix, that would fail to deliver for Australian consumers.

On top of this, in August last year roughly 300,000 homes—220,000 of which would have been revenue generating—literally disappeared off the NBN plan. The capital expenditure forecast for the rollout is up nearly $1½ billion from the year before. Another $140 million in revenue is not coming back. So this levy is reflective of those failures that had been enacted by the coalition. That's what has happened. This is the coalition's chickens coming home to roost, and that is why this legislation should be renamed in that way.

The coalition told us that they would deliver 25 megabits per second download speed for all households by December 2016. The minute they were in office, the minute they won the election, they said, 'We can't make that promise,' and they tried to blame us for it. Everyone was telling them it wasn't achievable but they still pressed ahead with it. They knew they could not do that. They knew that they couldn't deliver their NBN for $29 billion by the end of 2016. They knew that. So we now have a nearly $50 billion multi-technology mix, and questions are being raised about how much extra it's going to cost to build and how much less revenue it's going to generate. In the meantime Australian consumers suffer and wonder whether it would be better to go on the soon-to-be-rolled-out 5G wireless network. They're actively contemplating spending more on data through another system rather than use this mess of a broadband network championed by the coalition.

That raises further questions about whether the network itself will face more of this slow drift away from it. People who should be using the National Broadband Network will be using a 5G network. The revenue forecasts of the Prime Minister's network will slip even further, so now they need to put this type of levy in place. If they don't, they'll be in a world of pain. The parliament has been put in a terrible position as a result of the mess championed by the Prime Minster when he was the communications minister. If we don't support this, it will put the NBN in a worse position. As much as we are uptight about the fact that people will be paying nearly $100 more a year for their broadband in those areas that are not on the NBN, to not support this would put us in a worse position. The coalition forces the parliament to support this because no commonsense proposition would have you put this network, which is already in a bad way, in a worse position.

Every single person who is upset about this rollout should direct their anger to the coalition for the way they have done this.

Mr Stephen Jones interjecting—

Absolutely. Consumers should turn the coalition into a pinata, as the member for Whitlam rightly observed, because they have been let down. The speeds aren't as fast; the network's costing more; it's not rolling out in the way that they promised; it's not delivering the speeds that they promised—and now we have to pay more for it through a consumer levy.

In the architecture of what Labor put together, we had a universal pricing approach that would have seen the cities of the nation cross-subsidising the rollout and the way that the service was delivered into regional Australia. You know what? Australians wouldn't mind that whatsoever. They support the notion that, if you're in the city, you can support regional areas getting this rollout. They get it. It was ticked off. The ACCC ticked off on it. When it was ticked off, no-one ever thought in their wildest dreams that, after having that universal mechanism in place, we'd have to come back and put a levy on top of it. No-one would have thought that. But, because we have Borat's broadband being championed by the Prime Minister, that's what we face.

On top of that, what does it do in terms of the economy? Last month NBN Co released a report. They got a bunch of consultants in to bring together a report called Connecting Australia: the impact of the NBN on Australian lives and the economy. It was breathlessly reported. Guess what? Everyone in the country knew what having a modern broadband network would do for the general community and for business. NBN Co have to put these reports together, but not to convince everyone who's already aware of that; this report seemed more likely to be used to convince the government of the value of the network. We all know.

I point out that you, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, chaired the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications. I was proud to be on the committee that you chaired at that point in time, when we visited the country and we heard directly from regional Australia in particular, who said what mobile broadband networks do and the value they create for the digital economy—for which I'm the shadow minister with portfolio responsibility—in this country. Everyone knew that, but now NBN Co has to spend good money putting these types of reports together to convince the coalition that getting this right makes a lot of sense from the economy's perspective and from the community's perspective.

From people in the electorate I represent—Woodcroft had been stuck for ages. We finally were able to get them on the NBN rollout plan, and then that plan was torn up by the then communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull. It then got put back on, but only half the job got done because the rest had cable broadband—and they're now complaining about the fact that they have that. In other parts of the electorate I represent, like Glendenning, constituents are telling me that they're getting one-megabit-per-second download speed—in some cases, half. They were told that cable broadband would work and are constantly frustrated by it. Rooty Hill and Mount Druitt residents are telling me that they're experiencing this.

The reason why I have a problem with that is that businesses in the CBDs of the electorate I represent in Western Sydney rely on a modern broadband network just as much as they'd rely on having a good connection to gas, water and electricity. A modern broadband network is fundamental for a business to run—and run at less cost—to thrive, to put people on and to create new business opportunity, which we see occurring when you do have a modern network in place.

Some of the other legislation that's before us is all straightforward. Of course, the way in which you relate or deal with developers in the infrastructure rollout and some of the stuff that's embedded in this legislation makes perfect sense. The thing that drives us crazy is not only that there's been a distortion of what we thought could be achieved, what was possible and what should have been rolled out. Now, because of the deliberate mess made by the coalition on broadband, we pay for it economically because the country's denied opportunity; we pay for it socially because communities are frustrated by the lack of the network; and we pay more for it as consumers through the levies that are being advocated by the coalition. It is a complete mess. As I said before, it's not the multi-technology mix; it's the Malcolm Turnbull mess. We are paying for it, and these bills represent that failure. The chickens are coming home to roost as a result of those bad decisions made by the coalition.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to make a few remarks on behalf of the Greens about some of the technical aspects of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017, but I'd also like to share with the House the impact on my constituents of the Liberal government's complete botching of what had been a good plan that was going to deliver some of the infrastructure that this country needs. Of course, Melbourne, being a capital city electorate, is home to many universities, knowledge centres and businesses, which are now suffering as a result. As to the bills specifically under consideration, there are some brief remarks I want to make here that will be expanded on when the bills proceed to the other place.

Firstly, we would make the point that, if and when the bills go to the other place, they should be considered separately. We welcome the introduction of the statutory infrastructure provider obligations, which are set out in schedule 3, because they will start to ensure that all people have access to high-speed broadband. In our view, these requirements seem to be consistent with the Productivity Commission's review of the telecommunications universal service obligations. We broadly agree with the amended network rules set out in schedules 1 and 2. We strongly support the rollout of the NBN to rural and regional Australia and acknowledge the need to cross-subsidise non-commercial services. But, certainly at this stage, we do not support the implementation of the Regional Broadband Scheme as proposed in schedule 4. We would recommend splitting schedule 4 of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017 and introducing them separately. As I said, that matter will be pursued further—not here by way of amendments, but it's certainly something that we'll want to address if and when it goes to the other place, because it's clear that these two pieces of legislation in that sense are not related and don't need to be considered together. And it's important that we have the opportunity to debate them separately because of what's at stake.

I now want to share with the House the impact that the botching of this scheme is having in my electorate of Melbourne. Fast, reliable and affordable internet should be a right for everyone in Australia. In 2018, people shouldn't be left wanting quality internet for use at home or in a business. But our internet is lagging behind the rest of the world under this government. Our internet is slow. In 2017, Australia was ranked 50th in the world for internet speeds, according to the Akamai State of the Internet report. This puts Australia behind nearly all other wealthy countries. Our internet speeds are less than half the speeds of leaders like South Korea. Not only is our internet slow; it's expensive. The Digital Australia: State of the Nation report ranks Australia 57th in the world when it comes to the affordability of fixed broadband. That's why we need to invest in a quality NBN that uses the right technology. We think the previous government had the right approach to this. That's why we supported it not only when we were in a power-sharing arrangement but also in the Senate.

But this Liberal government has botched the NBN, and, what's more, it has done so knowingly. What makes me really angry is that we know what needs to be done. Experts and the community are crying out for fast internet and a rollout of fibre-to-the-premises technology. The Greens have gone to election after election with clear policies that would deliver fast broadband for everyone. With political will, we could've already been rolling out high-speed, affordable and reliable internet to everyone in Australia for years. But this government has deliberately chosen to cut corners and use second-rate, outdated technologies. The government knows what would work; it has just decided not to use it.

The previous speaker made a very good point: why have they done it? They've done it for almost no other reason than for the sake of political differentiation; they wanted to be seen to be doing something different to what the previous government had done. As a result, they have completely botched it. They've taken a plan that could've worked and decided to botch it for no other reason than political differentiation, and it should be remembered that the current Prime Minister was the architect of that—destroying something that could've worked and, instead, turning it into something else, solely to put a different party's sticker on it. As a result, people in Australia and in my electorate of Melbourne are suffering. They are suffering as a result of the government playing politics with something that should be seen as an essential service and should be rolled out for the public good.

In today's Australia, just as we rely on being connected to our electricity networks and to our water and gas, we should also start looking at internet and telecommunications as an essential service. That's the way it has been approached for many, many years in the past. It's the way that we should continue to approach the question of internet access. But this government did not approach internet access as a question of the common good. Instead, it put politics above the public good and, as a result, we are all suffering. What the government has done will leave people around Australia, people in my electorate of Melbourne, worse off into the future. Because of this government, my constituents will lose out—and I say that's not good enough. Because of this government, many suburbs in Melbourne and elsewhere are only getting a fibre-to-the-node connection, meaning slower internet speeds and more cost to residents to connect. Upgrades can only be done at extra cost to residents. So the cost has been pushed downwards, and people are having to pay more out of their own pocket as a result of what this Liberal government has done.

Because of this government, in my electorate—bearing in mind that my electorate is one of the smallest in the country—there are now a variety of forms of internet connection within a very small defined geographical area. So, across the road in some places and across some suburbs in my electorate, they're only getting HFC technology, which was used for people to get Foxtel back in the 1990s. That's what they're getting, that's what they're being sold, instead of having fibre to the premises. Because of this government, most suburbs in my electorate have been left waiting for connection. Residents in Ascot Vale, Flemington, Kensington, North Melbourne, East Melbourne, Collingwood, Abbotsford and Fitzroy North have been told that, because of this government's botched job, they'll face another six- to nine-months delay in getting connected. And, when they are connected, for most of them it will be a connection to an outdated HFC technology that will just not stand the test of time.

This would all be bad enough if it only affected residential internet use, but the government's failure to properly invest in the NBN is going to harm employment too. Quality technology is critical to so many businesses, industries and employers, and nowhere is this more apparent than in inner Melbourne. Places like Richmond, Collingwood and Docklands are increasingly home to innovative industries, tech companies, start-up spaces and social innovators who depend on reliable and fast internet. If the NBN is slow or unreliable or it takes too long to get connected, employers will suffer or they will leave. This Prime Minister, who loves to talk about innovation and being agile, is on the verge of kicking out employers from places like Melbourne in the very industries that he purports to support, because they can't get decent, fast and affordable internet.

The government simply has not been accountable for any of these failures. Despite requests, I can't even get a map of the suburbs that have been hit by delays. My office has been contacted by Melbourne constituents who have had to wait for weeks or months without internet due to installation problems, and they've had to come to their local MP because there was nowhere else to go to get it fixed. You ask for a map about what's happening across the whole suburb and you don't get one. You have to piece it together by asking individual by individual, suburb by suburb, area by area and street by street.

I am furious that my constituents and the businesses that operate in my electorate have been left in the lurch by this government. It is not good enough. This government is actively blocking the sort of NBN rollout that would bring us into the 21st century, especially in a vibrant capital city area like Melbourne. Imagine if we had governments that had the vision to invest properly and continue investing in this key infrastructure and provide it publicly. In the 20th century, governments built transport, sewers and utilities because they knew it was in the public good. In the 21st century, the government should be investing in the NBN in the same way, not making a complete hash of it like the Liberals are doing.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, the NBN and the way in which this government has spectacularly failed to roll out the NBN, particularly to regional Victoria and my constituents in the Bendigo electorate! The Prime Minister really needs to wear how he has failed. He turned up in Bendigo when he was the shadow minister for communications and he promised Be.Bendigo, the Bendigo chamber of commerce, that we, across the Bendigo electorate, would have the NBN sooner, faster and cheaper. Well, on all three promises the Prime Minister failed, first as the communications minister and then as the Prime Minister. There is his arrogance when listening to the people in the bush, engaging with the people in the bush and learning from the experiences so we can fix the rest of the rollout going forward. It is so disappointing that we continue to have delays and we continue to have problems with the NBN rollout.

I will give people in the chamber a bit of background about the diversity of the NBN experiences in my electorate, the Bendigo electorate, and why Labor support some of the reforms but we want to see others heavily scrutinised. We have quite a significant fixed wireless network in the Bendigo area. In the south of the electorate we have a number of towers and in the north of the electorate we have a number of towers, but the towers are not keeping up with the growth of Bendigo. The rollout under this government was so bad. Early on, Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister when towers were built in the north, around Huntly and around Junortoun, but these towers were not switched on until the 2016 election. People were trying to access the network. Retailers would sell people a product and then they tried to connect, but there was no connection—no connection whatsoever; they weren't able to connect. Only after it was made an election issue were the towers switched on. But it was a short-term fix and the service is very slow. Why is the service slow? A tower was due to be built at Mount Camel, near Heathcote, and it was never built, so the government is trying to link nine relay towers to one tower in Bendigo South. So, the further you are from the tower in Bendigo South, the slower your service.

We have been inundated with complaints from people around Huntly and around Junortoun who have a slow and inferior service through the fixed wireless network. One particular resident—and I shouldn't laugh, but he laughed with me about this—actually has a tower. He hosts a tower—it's on his property—but he can't get access to the fixed wireless service when it's on his property. So that people understand the close distance I'm talking about: Huntly and Junortoun are suburbs of Bendigo; they are five kilometres from the CBD of Bendigo. I cannot believe that the government is still saying to businesses and households less than five kilometres from Bendigo—the second-biggest regional city in Victoria—that you have to cop slow, fixed wireless services or, worse, compete with farmers and compete with really remote and regional Australia for Sky Muster. It's unbelievable that the government is still not listening to people in the regions. It would just make sense to roll out more fibre to the kerb and fibre to the premises in places like Bendigo. With more customers on the fibre network you would have fewer customers on the fixed wireless network or on Sky Muster.

I want to take the opportunity during this debate to raise a couple of other examples. When I stand up and raise examples in this place, NBN Co is actually listening. I will log a few service calls in the hope that NBN is listening and that they will actually act on a few of these. When I've had the chance to raise questions in parliament, when I've had the chance to raise issues on this floor, that's how I seem to get a reaction out of NBN Co, and that's definitely how to get a reaction out of the minister's office.

This one will be of interest to people: La Trobe University. We are trying to be a university city. In the suburb of Flora Hill there is a blackspot, and they're told there is no allocation of any kind of NBN at all. It starts at the edge of the university—can you believe it—runs through Flora Hill and takes in a couple of streets. There is no node to be built, there is no access to fixed wireless and there is no access to satellite. It's where people studying at the university live. It takes in part of Keck Street and part of Curtin Street, and it runs all the way to Somerville Street. It's right next to this blackspot next to Bendigo South East College. If there is ever a place in Bendigo that needs access to fibre to the premises and to fast internet, it's right near the university. Yet it is in the too-hard basket for this government and it is sitting to the side.

Then we have Bendigo Fireworks, a small business being run from somebody's home. Peter Daley has spoken to me and spoken publicly about the pushback that he constantly gets about trying to connect to the NBN. Unfortunately his experience hasn't been resolved. He can't get access to decent internet, and it means the end of his business. He's been told by NBN Co that the soonest he can be connected is 2020. Now, he is not that far. Bendigo is a regional seat. He is in Strathfieldsaye, a growing suburb. His house is before the shopping centre in Strathfieldsaye, and he cannot get access to fast broadband. It has been a failure of this government not to run fibre to the premises, fibre to the kerb or even fibre to the node in his part of the world, and it will mean the end of his business if NBN Co doesn't step in and fix this. There was a response from NBN Co in April 2018. They said, 'Look, he could have access to fixed wireless, planned to be available in January to June 2020.' It is still not good enough. This business needs access to the internet right now. It's not that hard. Peter is in a regional city and can't get access to the NBN.

Another constituent complaint that I've had is from Kelly Howard, who is running a business, Accountable Bookkeeping Solutions, from home. If we want to encourage women back into work, to be entrepreneurial and to set up businesses, they actually need fast internet to do it. NBN Co have said in relation to Kelly's case:

It appears the reason for the delay relates to a physical network shortfall. At this stage, it has been identified in the field that the network design is incorrect—

and that there needs to be a change. It's not good enough. If you know it's a problem, get the technicians out there and get it fixed. Kelly Howard and her business need it now. It shouldn't have to be up to me to raise this in parliament for NBN Co to employ people to fix it.

David has fixed wireless with unsustainable, slow speeds. He is one of our people living in Redesdale. He is living a little bit further from Bendigo, but, in saying that, he is living between Bendigo and Melbourne. He is less than 50 kilometres away—not that far from Melbourne at all. It takes him about 50 minutes to drive to Melbourne.

We are talking about people in Woodend. A tower is not being built in Woodend. As a result of this government not building a tower in Woodend, the poor businesses and households of Spencer Street continue to have multiple versions of technology rolling out. Spencer Street is one that I do wish to highlight. There are some people on ADSL2, some people on ADSL1, some people who have been told to use satellite and some people who have been told to use a dongle. They will have absolutely no access to the internet. This is one street in one part of my electorate, only 45 minutes by V/Line to Melbourne. It's faster for them to go to Melbourne to do their work than to wait and sit at home and do it on their computers. That is the disgrace of this government when it comes to rolling out the NBN.

I could speak for hours in this place about this government's failure to roll out the NBN across Bendigo. There are problems in Golden Square. There are problems in Eaglehawk. I am disappointed that this government will not listen to the community of Bendigo and our businesses and the fact that its rollout is now starting to cost us jobs.

One of the businesses that I have raised in this place is Industrial Conveyancing Australia. The response from NBN Co was just unacceptable. They design systems. They are an advanced manufacturer. They've had contracts with Coca-Cola and with Qantas. When you drive to their place, when you turn left at Howard Street, you drive past housing estates that have either fibre to the premises or fibre to the node, but all this government can offer them is fixed wireless. If this government were serious about supporting our manufacturers, if it were serious about supporting regional Victoria and helping to unlock its potential, then there would have been funding in their budget for NBN Co to roll out fibre to the premises to every single one of our industrial estates and to every single one of our businesses.

We are a smart city that wants to engage more. We want to build up advanced manufacturing, but, under this government, we are unable to. Quite simply, under this Prime Minister and this government we have an inferior NBN. It's cost $4 billion more to build than what was originally committed. It's delivered slower speeds—and I've highlighted some examples in my speech today. It is less reliable. Dropouts are constantly occurring. It is costing more to maintain. The skill level of some of the contracted technicians coming out is below standard. It's exposed more competition for more wireless. The cost of upgrading is greater. It's generating less revenue from those willing to pay. This is a real problem when it comes to what's in the bill that is in front of us, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017: because the government have rolled out an inferior NBN, the NBN is not going to make the money that was first forecast. If we had rolled out fibre to the premises to begin with, the original Labor plan, we wouldn't be in this situation.

We hear report after report of NBN Co having to write down its expected revenue. We know that there are problems with the product that retailers are selling. We know that people aren't getting the speeds that they're trying to buy, and yet this government continues to do too little. This bill was late in coming to this place, and it needs more work to ensure that people in the regions will get access to the internet. It's really easy for a Prime Minister living in the inner city of Sydney and for metro based MPs to just dismiss this, but it is a real issue in the regions. In the regions, where people have no access to the internet other than Sky Muster or fixed wireless, we need to ensure we end the digital divide that exists.

I do want to acknowledge that, after I raised a question in this place, the minister's office and NBN Co did fix the issue for our 76-year-old friend who lives in Castlemaine. I want to repeat this story because it's one of hundreds across my electorate. Our friend is 76 years old. When the NBN Co contractor came out, they ran the cable for her new NBN connection over the fence, across the yard, under the bushes and through her bedroom window and basically put everything into the bedroom. She contacted my office because she could no longer lock the window. The NBN Co contracted technician left. After I raised the issue in question time, NBN Co did react, and they sent out a directly employed NBN Co technician, who had the skills and qualifications, who was able to do the testing and to fix the problem—and it was fixed within a couple of hours. It shouldn't take a question to the Prime Minister in question time to get an issue fixed. That was one of hundreds of complaints that I've received, and they are ongoing. There is a skill problem with the technicians and the contractors that NBN Co have engaged. There are people being exploited, working in these jobs, and the government needs to address this.

Quite frankly, what this government needs to get serious about and fund is decent NBN technology in the regions. We need to start fixing these problems. There are far too many problems sitting in the too-hard basket. The levies, the charging, and how the government is trying to make the numbers stack up will not make up for the fact that we have areas around the university that have no access to NBN and that we have businesses who are being told they will get Sky Muster and not fibre to the premises. This government is killing productivity and connectivity in Bendigo in central Victoria, and it needs to step up.

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

I know members of the government don't like it when we talk about the problems with the NBN. I know from when we moved detailed amendments to this legislation, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017, as the shadow minister has done, that members of the government really would have preferred that the NBN would just go away. It gives the government no joy and it gives them no great headlines. Really, they are like the rest of Australia: it gives everyone a headache.

In addressing the bill I will first address the amendments proposed by the member for Greenway. After almost five years in power, it's absolutely crystal clear to everyone on this side of the chamber, and perhaps everyone in Australia, that this government is a complete and utter failure when it comes to the NBN rollout in this country. We know that the government has form when it comes to the delivery of projects and delivery of services, whether it be ripping $17 billion away from our schools and the education of Australian students, cuts to Medicare and hospitals and the rebate freeze, including $600 million of cuts in my home state of Queensland, or the attacks we are seeing over and over again on vulnerable pensioners across Australia. I don't have time in this debate today to talk about the $80 billion tax handout to big multinational businesses and the banks, which is the government's top priority. But, if there is one thing that leaves us in no doubt as to this government's level of incompetence, it is the NBN.

We heard from the member for Bendigo and other speakers in this debate today, and my office is no different to theirs and to other electorate offices in Australia, because I'm pretty confident residents would be sending letters and emails to every MP's office—every government MP's office as well—or would be visiting their offices or stopping their elected representatives in their local communities to show not only their anger but also their disappointment. I would say that it is a community at breaking point, frustrated at the second-rate NBN being delivered by the Turnbull government, which simply is failing them and their families.

I know this firsthand because last year my local community in the south-west of Brisbane was at breaking point when it came to dealing with the NBN. Since I became the member for Oxley—since July 2016—I have conducted a number of public meetings and public forums across a range of portfolio issues of direct concern to local residents. The crisis meetings I conducted around the issue of the NBN were without doubt the largest of those meetings—some 500 people attended forums and meetings. I note the shadow minister, the member for Whitlam, at the table. He was able to attend a meeting of concerned, frustrated people from across the south-west of Brisbane who, on a winter's night, packed out a venue at the Jindalee Bowls Club. When I put on a meeting, I expect to put out a couple of dozen chairs and that I will get a little advert in the paper, perhaps. This meeting was like nothing I have attended as a member of parliament—350 people crammed in. They were worried and concerned and basically had had a gutful. They wanted answers. To their credit, the NBN turned up. I don't blame the professional officers of the NBN—certainly the middle-ranking officers, who are doing very, very well under very constrained circumstances. They are not the people making the decisions. My criticism today is not of the frontline workers; it is of the elites and the executives of NBN who, quite frankly, deserve a lesson in customer service.

I want to put on record that, after that meeting, I wrote to the former co-CEO, Bill Morrow, on behalf of the community. It was one of the outcomes from that crisis meeting, because a delegation of businesses wanted to meet with him to discuss the frustrations and to work out a proactive way to fix some of the problems. Now, I'm a bit old-school. If the buck stops at the top then you are never too good to not meet with your shareholders or, in particular, your customers. So I formally wrote to Mr Morrow to say that I would organise an onsite meeting. Businesses members in my local community were prepared to pay for themselves to fly down and meet with the NBN CEO, to discuss these issues in person, to have a constructive meeting and to iron out some of these problems. They are reflective of businesses right across this nation. They are busy people, building capital and wanting to employ people, but they are failing to meet their deadlines, to meet their obligations, because they don't have a fast and reliable internet service. The was no response from Bill Morrow—nothing; no response from the NBN. When I followed up, there was no response. Either they were not interested or they did not care. Unfortunately, one of the spokespersons at the meeting said to the public: 'We don't talk to residents. We don't talk to the public.' They actually said that to a room of what I would say were 350 irate, angry people. It was probably not the right tone to take, I would suggest.

As I said, they are hardworking individuals. So, following that one meeting, I wrote to the minister, Senator Fifield, to say: 'I would like to meet with you to raise these issues. I would like to talk to you in person about a constructive way forward to deal proactively with these issues.' I give credit to the ministers of the Turnbull government who I have arranged to see on behalf of constituents to resolve situations. I acknowledge those ministers and their staff who engage with both sides of politics—but not this minister. That is not the case with this minister at all. I would be interested to see if this minister has actually met with any members of parliament—quite frankly, on both sides of politics. That's the kind of contempt I think this government has when it comes to rolling out the NBN, dealing with problems and constructively working as a community together. Maybe that's indicative of what's wrong with the NBN. When you have a minister and senior bureaucrats who are refusing to meet with Labor or opposition members of parliament, that's fine, if that's their strategy. They're not interested—fine. But not to meet with a delegation of businesses or even acknowledge them as a courtesy to say, 'Look, I'm terribly sorry, I've got a large number of commitments, but I'll make alternative arrangements'? I can tell you now that a lot of those small businesses were very disappointed in the way that they were treated.

There were community halls being packed out with story after story of residents just wanting basic answers, basic information. So let's just pause and take a look at some of the cold, hard facts when it comes to this government and how it has stuffed up the NBN rollout. What we know was supposed to be an innovative, nation-building rollout under Labor was immediately scrapped by the government, and, as we know, the cost to the Australian public continues to be damning. We were first told that the bill would be $29.5 billion. That increased to $41 billion in 2013. It then increased from $41 billion to $49 billion in August 2015, and then taxpayers were forced into a $19.5 billion loan after the NBN Co failed to secure private debt funding. Now we are here with this bill, with the introduction of an NBN levy. The government is leaving consumers to pick up the tab. It is telling that in the week of the budget this government is seeking to introduce a new broadband tax that is expected to raise nearly half a billion dollars over the next decade. This levy is expected to add $84 to the annual broadband bill for the homes and businesses on non-NBN networks that are subject to this tax. Estimates of the number of services that will be affected by this levy range from 240,000 homes to 450,000 homes. I don't blame anyone else but the government for this increased tax burden on Australians, but I am surprised that the so-called party of lower tax, the party that wants to get rid of taxes, is now introducing a tax on a service.

When given the choice—and why would Australians choose to sign up to the Prime Minister's second-rate broadband if something better is on offer? In the Prime Minister rejecting fibre—as we have heard from the member for Bendigo, the previous speaker—we have seen a digital divide not only in regional Australia but right across the country, including in the south-west of Brisbane in the Oxley electorate. I know residents in my electorate in Mount Ommaney, Jindalee, Sumner, Forest Lake, Springfield and Redbank have had an absolute gutful of this Prime Minister's second-rate, second-class NBN service. I place on the record again: why should residents have to put up with slow speeds, dropouts or simply no connection at all because of the incompetence of this Prime Minister and the NBN mess he has given to almost every home in this country?

We are now here with this government shafting Australian homes and leaving, with this bill, a new NBN levy. The proposed levy before this parliament is a direct consequence, I believe, of the repeated failures of this government. But don't take my word for it; this is what the former head of NBN Co had to say about the state of the project, particularly when it came to speed and faults:

The first and most notable consequence is the maximum speed limitations of copper versus the previous fibre-based model.

The use of copper in the last [approximately] 1 kilometre of the network is the increased fault rate and operating costs versus the all-fibre alternative.

Despite the government promising users a minimum download speed of 25 megabits per second, Mr Morrow said that this would not be possible during the coexistence period, when other services like ADSL are still running. It's here in black and white from the former NBN Co chief himself.

This charade must end. We need some certainty when it comes to the rollout. We need better standards for those businesses and residents who have attended the crisis meetings I have held, the forums and the public meetings. If the government would just look at the feedback from residents—we know that the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman shows a more than 200 per cent increase in complaints. It would be a bit different if we could have some humility or contrition from the government, if they could say: 'We know there are problems. We know we've got a long way to go. We know we're going to work through these systematically.' Instead, it's always the same when it comes to the NBN: 'Nothing to see here,' 'Pretend it's all okay,' 'Ignore the complaints,' and, 'Don't buy into it.'

I can tell you about a great small business in my area, a pest control business run by a husband and wife. He is looking at moving house because he can't do his books. His wife was studying and she had to go to the McDonald's cafe to access the internet so that she could do her online coursework. This is happening 13 kilometres from the CBD of Brisbane. When you ask for it to be investigated, the government says: 'There's nothing we can do; just put up with it,' or the normal rubbish that this government goes on with: that somehow Labor, within the first month of announcing the NBN, didn't connect every single house in Australia! That's the only response from this ridiculous government when it comes to dealing with the NBN. It never actually acknowledges the problem, let alone fixes it.

The member for Bendigo was right. When it comes to fixing NBN problems, I've had the most success stories not from writing to the minister and not from writing to the former CEO of the NBN—do you know how? When you get a story in the local paper, magically the problem is fixed. It takes a little bit of embarrassment for the government. If you put the minister's name in a press release and bag them out, hey, presto, the problem's fixed. I'm not joking. If I am not accurate then I'll sit down now and members of the government can say that that's not the case. Time and time again, all we're seeing is spin over substance, residents being ignored and complaints through the roof. The evidence is simply overwhelming.

As the member for Oxley and as one of the representatives for one of the fastest-growing corridors in this country, I know that access to quality broadband services is essential. It is critical for education purposes, health service delivery and making sure that people are connected to the businesses that they want to build and grow in the south-west of Brisbane. This is an issue that is not simply going to go away for government. This is not an issue about which the government can simply say, 'It's all too hard. Hopefully some other crisis will engulf us today and we can move on to something else.' I won't be letting this go. We will make sure that we deliver a proper NBN for this country.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017. We find ourselves in an era that none of us could have foreseen. We can order our children's lunches from the school's canteen via a smartphone app; most of our bills are paid online rather than going to the post office, as we used to do; we can check the surf conditions through a webcam without even having to drive to the beach; and we can turn the heater on at home without even being there. It is indeed a time of wonder and innovation. I think back to my dad bringing home his pay packet, mum tearing it open and the money being there. It's just not like that anymore. It is a time of wonder and innovation bound by one common thread, and that is the internet—more specifically: high-speed, reliable internet.

With each day that passes, education, health, our businesses and transport all become more heavily reliant upon this invisible wonder web that connects us all, unless, of course, you are one of the 60 per cent of Australians using the National Broadband Network who reported issues with the service within the last six months—that's according to Choice, the consumer organisation—or you're part of the 44 per cent who experienced very slow speeds, the 42 per cent who reported disconnections, dropouts and performance issues, or the 31 per cent who had problems in connecting altogether. We find ourselves in difficult times, attempting to keep ahead of the global technological wave while being weighed down by Prime Minister Turnbull's inferior NBN.

We are here today to consider two bills before the House: the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017. Labor supports the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and its establishment of a statutory infrastructure provider, known as SIP. A SIP would ensure that all Australian homes and businesses are guaranteed access to high-speed broadband. This may be provided through NBN Co or an alternative provider. This bill will enshrine in legislation Labor's long-held commitment to providing NBN services in regional Australia: the universal service obligation.

In my electorate of Paterson, we have a depth and breadth of industries—some pushing innovation with emerging technologies, others re-examining their ways of working to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world. In each instance, the internet is the enabler. It's the connectivity, the thought-sharing, the fingertip access to a wealth of research. When you take all that away, the costs are far more reaching. Let me tell you about Bohemia Interactive Simulations. They're a small software business located in Williamtown, in our major defence tech park in my electorate of Paterson. The ability to both upload and download software is imperative to the operations of this software business. To do so in a timely and cost effective manner is crucial to what they do. To be able to grow and expand their operation, businesses need reliable, affordable and fast internet speeds, yet Bohemia cannot get access to the NBN.

Bohemia are paying five times more by connecting through a private operator than they would via the NBN. This money should be spent on employing people, but they've got to pay more to do business because the NBN is not up to scratch. Ryan Stephenson is the director of Bohemia, and he says Bohemia cannot expand their operations because the speed of the internet just won't support it. He says Bohemia cannot employ more staff because more people using the internet would slow it down even more and make day-to-day operations even harder. What irony—not being able to employ more people in an internet software business because the internet's too slow! This is an example of how a substandard NBN rollout is stunting Australian small business. It's absolutely slaying that growth and innovation that our very own Prime Minister crowed and trumpeted about and told us we all needed to embrace. Well, it's a little bit difficult to embrace something that you can't even get hold of in the first place. And Bohemia's situation is in no way unique.

Clearly I'm outraged that innovative, world-class entrepreneurs and industries that choose to come to my electorate of Paterson, which is at the absolute vanguard of defence technology, are faced with an archaic stumbling block that has the potential to jeopardise their entire operations. It is clearly not good enough. Bohemia's experience is the result of Prime Minister Turnbull's inferior NBN, which, incidentally, has cost Australian taxpayers $4 billion more to build. It delivers slower speeds than were promised. In fact, the technology is so substandard that in many cases it's incapable of delivering at the level it was sold at. It's less reliable. It's so unreliable that the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has experienced a 160 per cent rise in complaints. That's 160 per cent! To put that in perspective, the banking and finance industry received four times fewer complaints—and there have been a heck of a lot of complaints about the banks.

Unsurprisingly, many of the NBN complaints came from regional Australia—well, there you go. They didn't just come from businesses; they came from individuals, families, schools, even medical practitioners unable to connect with patients. In this era of technological advancement, a great many students are learning in a bring-your-own-device environment. Their homework is issued online, it needs to be completed online and it needs to be submitted online. What happens, then, if a child lives in an area that has substandard connectivity? How does it impact their grades and, indeed, their potential, and what of study?

I can speak of my own experience. My daughter did the HSC last year. We used to have a family round table each week to look at what assessments were due, what was coming up and who would use which internet, because we're too far from the exchange to get ADSL and we haven't got the NBN where I live. We had to borrow dongles and figure out who would use what on the internet just so my daughter could achieve her Higher School Certificate. Clearly, this is not about me, but I'm just another example of the many people in my electorate and across Australia more broadly who are facing this problem. They're laughing—well, they're not laughing; I think they're completely dismayed.

The thing that adds injury to insult is the way the Prime Minister, who you'd be forgiven for thinking had invented the internet himself—and I'm sure he's quite capable in terms of things technological—was so caustic about Labor's plan to deliver fibre to the premises and how his model would be so superior, so much faster, so much cheaper. Well, none of this has been borne out. If he'd only had the decency to say, 'I'm sorry, but I really made a mistake on that, and we want to get it fixed up for you as quickly as we can.' But there's been no such backdown from the Prime Minister; we just see this arrogance.

Almost a decade ago Labor initiated an important reform that led to a statement of expectations issued to the NBN board. This statement of expectations required that the company ensure all Australians had access to the NBN. It was fundamentally about the equality of opportunity for which Labor proudly stands. It was about making sure every Australian could access high-speed broadband, no matter where they lived or worked. It was a fundamental part of this new and brilliant technology, a little bit like the telephone when it came along. I am proud to be part of a party that fought to ensure we reached the point we have now, where the fundamental reforms of the statement of expectations become legislation.

Even with the passage of this bill, however, we remain in a mess. Prime Minister Turnbull's NBN bears little resemblance to that which Labor planned. Fibre's been abandoned, and in many instances we have a $49 billion multi-technology mess. It costs more and does less, and it's four years behind schedule. In no way is the Turnbull government's NBN a first-class fibre network. The long-term economics of it are decidedly unsound. We have missed the greatest opportunity, and I weep for future generations, who really could have had something exciting—what this could have been, rather than the miserly expression of what it's become.

In 2013 the coalition committed to deliver the NBN for $29.5 billion and have it completed by 2016. What a load of rot—a bit like the rotting copper you've relied on. Between now and then, the cost has blown out from $29.5 billion to $41 billion to $49 billion, and the completion date has blown out from 2016 to 2020. Seriously, you should all hang your heads in shame. I don't know how you can come in here and gloat about it.

As Deputy Chair of the Select Committee on Regional Development and Decentralisation, I must impress upon the Prime Minister and his government the importance of ensuring every Australian home and business has access to high-speed broadband. We cannot sacrifice the rights of our regional, rural and remote Australians, and that's why my colleagues and I today stand here to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017. The companion to this proposed legislation, the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017, is in some ways the bandaid that the Turnbull government is proffering to fix the broken economics around its NBN rollout. There is no substitute for the first-class fibre NBN supported by sustainable funding mechanisms that ensured sound long-term economics. However, schedule 4 of the bill is a way of ensuring that the NBN competes on a level playing field. This is an important market mechanism and can only benefit everyday Australians.

The upshot of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 is that the Turnbull government will introduce a telecommunications levy. The Regional Broadband Scheme levy will add $84 a year to the bills of up to 400,000 consumers and businesses on non-NBN networks. That equates to $7.10 a month. The cost will rise to $7.80 by 2021. This is, in Labor's view, a regrettable choice. There were better and more efficient ways to achieve a level playing field. Under Labor's plan, high-speed broadband would have been extended to unprofitable areas through a universal wholesale pricing scheme. NBN users in cities, who generally receive higher wages, were better placed to pay more and would have helped cross-subsidise services in the regions, which incur a higher cost.

With Turnbull's second-rate NBN, nearly one in two customers on the copper NBN were paying for plans the network could not deliver. They've been compensated but will not be able to achieve those high speeds or pay for them under the existing technology. But the government's economic plan assumes uptake of and payment for those high-speed plans, plans that would require an upgrade from the current copper footprint for which—surprise, surprise!—there is no funding set aside.

Prime Minister Turnbull's decision to bet on copper has undermined the entire economic plan of the NBN. It's been a liability for broadband consumers and for Australian taxpayers. This places pressure on the sustainability of the funding arrangements for the NBN. That in turn has the potential to jeopardise the services that NBN Co can provide to Australians.

As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Hastie, NBN Co is required to provide broadband in areas that are unprofitable to service. No other provider shares this obligation. That means NBN fixed-line competitors can target low-cost, high-profit areas in the NBN footprint, in places like apartment buildings and central business districts, and leave the tough stuff—the regions—to NBN Co.

As I said earlier, Labor considers it essential that all Australians have access to fast, reliable broadband. Considering all that is at stake, we support the Regional Broadband Scheme. We consider it to be appropriate that the costs of regional broadband are shared among companies who choose to compete directly with the NBN. But make no mistake, this entire NBN mess will go down as one of the great travesties and shames of this time in Australia.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind members, in accordance with standing order 64, to refer to members by their appropriate title. The previous speech should have referred to 'Prime Minister Turnbull', not 'Turnbull'.

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

I'm glad to rise to speak today on this particular set of bills, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017, and the proposed amendment. I'm always happy to speak on the NBN, as members in this House would well know. The NBN has, sadly, been a source of constant anguish for my constituents. Whether it's trying to force 21st century technology down 1950s and 1960s copper wiring in the suburbs of Rockingham, Shoalwater and Safety Bay, trying to fix a botched installation down in Port Kennedy or even just trying to get a signal out in Baldivis, in the east of my electorate, my constituents are always very happy to give feedback to Prime Minister Turnbull on his government's 'fraudband' rollout, just as I'm always happy to rise in the parliament to speak about it. Indeed, my colleague and friend the shadow minister for communications, the member for Greenway, had a chance last year, on one of her many visits to Western Australia, to hear from residents in my electorate on their concerns about the National Broadband Network and the rollout in their district. It would appear, from piles and piles of correspondence to my office on this issue, that residents in Brand would do just about anything to be able to access the internet.

In 2018, internet access is as much a universal right as the right to education or the right to social equality. Indeed, access to the internet and its services bridges the gap between rich and poor, the haves and the have-nots, and is responsible for so much of the world's technological advances over the past 20 years. Everyone in my electorate, indeed Australia-wide, deserves to be able to use this technology and access the internet safely and reliably. To this end, we'll be supporting these bills. I'll support anything that seeks to improve the services available to my constituents. However, I will also be supporting the amendment of the member for Greenway.

Turning to the substance of the bills, we can see their necessity, as well as the necessity of other amendments. The Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 established a universal service obligation that nailed down the need for an easily accessible standard telephone service for all Australians. The problem with that is the date—21 years of technology growth, expansion and innovation has outgrown the act and its perfectly well-meaning intentions. Consumer needs have shifted dramatically away from a basic phone service, moving instead towards internet connectivity, although a basic phone service is essential for many in our community—and I will reflect on an instance I have witnessed myself of the inability of our providers to provide even a basic phone service to the elderly. In this digital age, it's perfectly reasonable that many services have gone online. You can pay car registration, power, insurance and other bills online. Gone are the days of going into an office or even ringing up your insurance company or utilities provider to pay your bill. But we must be mindful that this digital transformation does not move too fast and leave the most vulnerable behind, particularly the seniors in our community. Universal access may be a right, but so is the right to be included, the right to be educated and the right to transition at a reasonable pace. Others can transition as fast as they like, but we must ensure that those who find it difficult to cope with new technologies are helped along the way.

Labor understands these needs, which is partly why the NBN was envisaged in the first place, the other part being, of course, that former Prime Minister John Howard had no foresight on broadband policy, and the Nationals, as usual, achieved very little in this regard. When it was first established under Labor, the NBN was the first initiative of any Australian government that provisionally guaranteed universal broadband access. This was implemented through a statement of expectations issued to the NBN board at the time. Whilst this was a good start, we have seen that since Labor left government much of this goodwill has unfortunately been sucked down the drain of political pointscoring by some who choose to cut corners in the name of cutting costs and lowering expectations in a policy they never truly believed in. Despite this, it is good to see the bill presented as another step in the right direction as it seeks to establish a Statutory Infrastructure Provider regime that makes sure that all Australian premises are guaranteed access to high-speed broadband through NBN or another infrastructure provider in certain circumstances. This places universal broadband access into federal legislation and helps provide certainty to metropolitan and regional consumers beyond the scope of the initial NBN broadband rollout. This is sorely needed in my electorate.

I have heard terrible stories about the lack of access in my electorate and how it is impacting on the daily lives of the decent, hardworking people across Rockingham and Kwinana, as well as many others around Australia. There are people like Mr Dewald Pretorius, who works from home in his own small business and requires the internet to do so. Mr Pretorius told me that he had better internet connections in Africa than he does in Baldivis. How is that possible in a purportedly modern Australia and in an outer metropolitan area of Perth? It's unacceptable. Another is a doctor in Port Kennedy who works from home in the area of aged and palliative care. He looks after 200 residents in aged-care facilities. His practice is fully computerised, relying on internet connectivity to ensure communications, medication orders and test results—to name just some areas of his work. But how can these services be met and dealt with in an accurate and timely manner when he doesn't have access to a guaranteed stable internet service? In fact, according to the official NBN rollout map, some parts of Port Kennedy, which is in the southern part of my electorate, will not be connected to the broadband until June 2019—more than a year from now. This is just another example of how denying the right of access to internet service can impact on other rights, like the right to health care and health services.

I have quite often stood in this place to question the government on their approach to the whole National Broadband Network project. They have been there five years and have failed to make much progress. To say that they are delivering when they simply are not is ridiculous. The appalling and inadequate rollout of the NBN has reached such dire proportions that now, just like walking through a clean house with muddy shoes, someone has to go back and mop it up. This mop and bucket takes the form of a new broadband tax of $7.10 per month. It will apply to services on non-NBN networks. This charge is due to increase by $7.80 by 2021. The government's internet tax, which they are cleverly calling a 'levy', is expected to add $84 to the annual bill of up to 400,000 residents and business services on non-NBN networks. Let us be clear about this: the only reason we find ourselves at this point is the Prime Minister's poor judgement at every turn in this very important policy area.

Regional and remote coverage of the NBN was an important Labor initiative when the NBN was started. It was a decision to extend high-speed broadband to unprofitable areas and fund it through a universal wholesale pricing regime across the country. This meant that NBN users in the city could help cross-subsidise higher-cost services in the regions. There was no contemplation of having a universal wholesale pricing regime and a levy. It was supposed to be one or the other, but not both. The decision by the Turnbull government to slug consumers with a new internet tax is both poorly designed and clearly a stopgap solution. The $49 billion 'multi-technology mix' has cost more and achieved less. It doesn't even generate as much revenue as the original plan. The coalition had a 2013 commitment to deliver the NBN by 2016 at a cost of $29.5 billion. What a joke that commitment was! In late 2013, this blew out to $41 billion and in 2015 by another $8 billion. It's now 2018 and the project isn't slated to be completed until 2020, at a cost of $49 billion to the taxpayer. That is $20 billion over budget and four years behind. It's hard to fathom how the promise of the now Prime Minister when he was Minister for Communications could go so wrong, but it has gone wrong.

In 2017 many Australian retail service providers were caught selling speed plans that the NBN could not possibly deliver with a high percentage of copper in the general infrastructure. This resulted in nearly one in two consumers who were on the copper NBN paying for the top speed tier and having their speeds downgraded. They were compensated as a result of the inquiry via the ACCC and assisted by the NBN parliamentary committee. In that regard, I would like to thank the now former member for Fremantle for his diligence on the issue while sitting on the committee. As he points out, Western Australia will continue to receive the bulk of the rotten multi-mix technology this government is pushing out. It was reported that one in three homes on copper cannot achieve 50 megabits per second, and three in four cannot achieve 100 megabits per second, which is far below what was promised by NBN under this government. And yet we have also learnt that no funding has been set aside in the government's NBN business case out to 2040 to upgrade its copper footprint.

I will turn for a moment to a pretty personal story about the NBN and the problem with the copper wiring, its current rollout and the fragility of the infrastructure we had in place. On 22 April, there was a storm in Western Australia. It was a pretty minor storm. There were some lightning strikes. That was a Sunday. I went to visit my mother. I rang her before I got there, and she didn't answer the phone. The phone rang out. I thought: 'That's pretty unusual. Mum's usually home on a Sunday.' She lives in Shoalwater Bay, so I just rocked up at her house. 'Mum, why didn't you answer the phone?' I asked her. She said, 'Well, the phone didn't ring.' I said: 'I rang it. It should have rung.' So we tested it with my mobile—she doesn't use her mobile. It rang on my phone, and rang out, but it was not ringing physically. She could not hear the phone ringing in the house. No-one could hear it. The phone was not working. By all accounts, the same thing happened for the whole street. It is an elderly community. They talk to their neighbours—most Australians do talk to their neighbours—and we quickly found out that, overnight, four or five houses on that street had all lost their landline. They'd all converted to the NBN maybe six months before.

Then the process started. We couldn't ring NBN on a Sunday—well, we could, but we couldn't get any help and we certainly couldn't make any appointments for a technician—so we started this on Monday, 23 April. On behalf of my mother, I rang the NBN, because she didn't have a phone. We had to charge up her rudimentary mobile that she hates to use, like many elderly in the community, but was forced to use. It's a good thing that she was forced to use it, because, if she hadn't made herself use it, she would have been without any form of telephone communication for over a week. We rang NBN on the Monday. We could not get a technician appointment to come and confirm what was happening until Friday, 27 April. My mother has a medic alert because she's quite elderly and has false knees—although they get her around quite well—so falls are a hazard for her. An elderly neighbour had a technician come a day earlier. The other neighbour also had a technician come a day earlier. Everyone was told, 'Your Telstra modems have been shorted out by the storm.'

So I rang NBN and said: 'All the neighbours' modems have been blown out by the storm. How about you get your technician to bring a modem over, just in case, so we can do it all at once and Mum can be back on the phone within a quick four days?' They said: 'No, that is certainly not the case. That is not going to happen. No-one will bring a modem to your mother until it's confirmed that the NBN is not at fault, and then we can dial up Telstra and get them to sort that out.' The technician comes on the Friday and says, unsurprisingly, 'Yes, it was the modem that's blown out; you need a new modem from Telstra.' So we rang them up and they said: 'That's true. We won't be able to get your mother a modem until 2 May.' Okay, that's how it is.

So then I ring and say: 'Can your technician come and install the modem, because I won't be around to help her. How is she going to have a landline and how's she going to get a medic alarm on?' They said, 'You'll have to call when the modem comes and wait another three to five business days for someone to come and connect your mum to a landline.' So, overall, it was going to be anywhere between 15 and 19 days that my mother would not have a phone. She lives on her own. She's an elderly woman in Shoalwater Bay. She has lived in this house, as has my family, since 1959—I kid you not. It is an old, copper-wired house. She has not been without a phone for more than a couple of hours in a big storm, and then, last month, she lost it for nearly 10 days. It is absurd and obscene that people can be put through this.

I rang the NBN every single day. It's not the fault of the operators on the end of the line. We know that. They're just doing their job. But it certainly is unfair on the elderly in that street. They'd all lost their phones for anywhere between four and 10 days. The only reason my mum got her phone connected more quickly is that as an MP—as all my colleagues in this House know—I have priority access to some of the providers and also have a bit of a platform on social media to complain, and that pushed the service forward. On Monday she did get reconnected, but, if I had not been able to use that privilege, she would not have been connected to a landline until today.

Another thing is that triple 0 calls in Western Australia were not working this week. How is it that Telstra can fail to have an adequate triple 0 service to St John Ambulance across Perth because a cable is hit by lightning in New South Wales?

I call on this government to do something, anything—something productive would be best—to fix the communications nightmare you have put the Australian people in, and, most upsetting for me personally, the nightmare you put my mother through last week, because of this rubbish NBN system you have presided over. You should hang your heads in shame.

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

Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon, I seek leave to continue my remarks on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017. I was most egregiously cut off by a faulty clock in the Federation Chamber yesterday, and I must give the parliament the benefit of the rest of my speech.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a challenging day in the Fed. Chamber yesterday. I understand leave is granted, so you can proceed with your five minutes additional speaking time.

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was saying yesterday that further north in Lyons, in the township of Westbury, another of my constituents, Graham, had been advised by NBN Co that he could commit to the NBN network. He signed up to receive the service. His business, home and fax lines were disconnected from the copper network so he could be connected to the NBN via fibre to the node, which had been run out through Westbury. It was only after he was disconnected from the copper network that Graham was told he could not commit to the NBN because his home was too far from the node. As we know, copper can only go a certain distance with data transmission before it degrades. This is not a problem that would have occurred under Labor's fibre to the premises. If the government had stuck with Labor's fibre to the premises, there wouldn't have been this problem. So no-one told Graham he could not get connected, until it was too late. His phone and fax lines were gone—phone and fax lines vital to his business.

Graham spent weeks trying to get some sort of service connected. Finally, in complete desperation, he contacted me to voice his concerns and frustration and to let me know his accountancy business was in danger of closing—in danger of closing!—after many years, all because essential services were being denied to him, through no fault of his own. Once again, Margaret, in my Perth office, who's just a wonder, was instrumental in getting Graham's phone and fax and ADSL internet reconnected. Unfortunately, the months had taken their toll, and Graham still lost a considerable amount of business that he's now trying to make up for. He was on the brink. So much for a government that likes to brag that it is pro business. And we have heard plenty of evidence today from the member for Bendigo and the member for Oxley about the impact of this government's substandard NBN on businesses in their electorates.

The service is poor; the rollout is patchy. People are being disconnected from their old internet, even though they can't connect to the NBN. In some cases, people on the NBN are not even getting the same speeds that they used to get on ADSL and ADSL2. I know because I'm one of them. At home I'm on a fixed wireless tower. Now, that was fine when the tower went up six years ago. I live on an old sheep paddock. I don't expect to have a fibre connection to my place; I'm out in the sticks. I've got no problem being on the tower. When it was built six years ago, I had good service. But now, at peak time, it's hopeless—a two- or three-megabits-per-second service at peak time. And why? It's because developers have built new housing estates nearby, and, instead of providing the infrastructure to connect those homes to fibre to the node, they've left those homeowners to be connected to the tower. So there are hundreds more people accessing the signal than there should be, which is crunching down the speed.

I must mention here that, under Labor, Midway Point, which is near me, was one of the first places to get fibre to the premises. These new estates in Midway Point were meant to get fibre to the node, but, because of some loophole that allows developers to not necessarily provide the infrastructure that is required, these homes are ending up on fixed wireless instead.

The people of regional Australia know they are being left behind by the widening digital divide between city and country. Before I get to that, I just want to say that I've dealt with Telstra and NBN Co over my particular situation, but I never tell them I'm an MP. I think it's important that I get the same service as everybody else in the community. The way you have to deal with these companies drives you mad, including the long waiting times that Australians have to put up with to get simple resolutions. I've had four modems offered to be sent to me, even though I know it's not a modem issue. I had to move heaven and earth to get a technician to come to my premises and confirm: 'No, it's nothing to do with your technology. It actually is an overloaded tower.' Now we have to deal with NBN Co to see whether they will upgrade it.

This is part of the digital divide that people in the country face every day compared to those in the city, and that's a digital divide that Labor sought to narrow, not widen. It was no mistake that some of the first places to receive fibre to the premises under the original NBN were in regional Australia, including my electorate, because Labor believes that every Australian deserves quality internet, not just those who live in Wentworth and other wealthy, leafy, inner-city suburbs.

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

The government's telecommunications reform package is good for consumers, good for industry and good for regional Australia. The passage of these historic reforms will mean a more efficient and competitive telecommunications sector. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2017 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2017 implement a coherent three-part package to improve the regulatory framework for the supply of high-speed broadband by amending separation rules and creating new supply and funding arrangements. These bills will improve the provision of high-speed broadband in Australia by making carrier separation rules for high-speed residential networks more effective but also more flexible and giving carriers greater scope to invest in superfast networks and compete. They will improve it by introducing new statutory infrastructure provider obligations on NBN Co and others to support the ongoing delivery of high-speed broadband services. They will also improve it by establishing the Regional Broadband Scheme to provide equitable long-term funding for NBN Co's satellite and fixed wireless services for regional areas.

Telecommunications carriers and consumers will benefit from the changes of separation rules. They will improve competition and investment in the telecommunications market. Consumers will also benefit from the statutory infrastructure provider measures, which will ensure everyone in Australia will be able to access high-speed broadband services upon reasonable request. The rules set out baseline standards for these services: peak downloads of at least 25 megabits per second and peak upload speeds of at least five megabits per second. These services also need to support voice communication on fixed line or fixed wireless networks. Additionally, the minister will be able to make service provider rules, dealing with consumer issues like the handballing of disputes between wholesale and retail providers. Consumers will have clear information on why any reasonable request for connection has been refused and by whom, enabling them to pursue redress with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman or the regulator.

Consumers in regional Australia will benefit from the Regional Broadband Scheme, which establishes an equitable, long-term funding arrangement for NBN Co's fixed and satellite networks. We promised to speed up the rollout and deliver broadband upgrades as soon as possible, and that's exactly what we've done, to deliver fast broadband sooner, at less cost to taxpayers and more affordably for consumers. NBN Co is using the technology best matched to each area of Australia. The government requires NBN Co to ensure upgrade paths are available under its statement of expectations. NBN Co also plans to launch new products and additional features over time in a series of product releases to improve the range of products with which broadband retailers can serve consumers and businesses. By 2020, 90 per cent of premises in the fixed line footprint will be able to access download speeds of 50 megabits per second.

It's instructive to remember Labor's record. Labor promised the world and yet delivered service to just 51,000 premises by September 2013 after six years in government and after spending $6 billion. It was a sorry tale of incompetence and abjectly poor performance. By contrast, under the coalition, the National Broadband Network is over half complete and is extending its reach to towns large and small right across Australia. In September 2013, fewer than three per cent of Australian premises could obtain a service on the network. Today, over half of Australian premises—over 7.6 million homes and businesses—are in ready-for-service areas, and there are more than 3.8 million active users.

The opposition's stated approach of supporting fibre to the premises would have made NBN Co completely uncompetitive. Everyday Australians would have paid more for their internet, and the price of internet bills would have risen by over $500 a year. Reverting to an all-fibre-to-the-premises approach would have seen the NBN completed nationwide six to eight years later than it is being delivered under the Turnbull government and at a cost of an extra $30 billion. The delayed rollout would also have reduced NBN's revenue and made it less competitive. By reducing costs, accelerating the rollout and earning revenue sooner, the government has put the NBN business model on a more sustainable basis and made it more competitive. Under the Turnbull government, NBN's annual revenue has grown from a paltry $17 million in the 2013 financial year to close to $2 billion for the 2018 financial year, and we are on track to have eight million paying customers in 2020.

This package includes a range of measures to improve competition because we know that wholesale market competition will result in better outcomes for consumers and the economy. The Regional Broadband Scheme places NBN Co on an even footing with its competitors by ensuring all carriers, not just NBN Co, play a role in contributing to the cost of delivering broadband in regional and remote Australia. This scheme will require all fixed-line carriers to contribute $7.10 per month for each premises on their network that has an active high-speed fixed-line broadband service. NBN Co will continue to pay around 95 per cent of the total cost, compared to the 100 per cent it pays today.

I want to emphasise that the Regional Broadband Scheme will not result in price rises for the eight million—the 95 per cent of consumers—expected to be connected to NBN by 2020. Consumers using the NBN are already paying for the costs of the fixed wireless and satellite networks, which are built into NBN Co's existing pricing model. In fact, under the Regional Broadband Scheme, high-margin networks supplying to big business and enterprise customers will, for the first time, in many cases, contribute to the cost of regional broadband. It is only fair that these NBN-comparable carriers contribute to Australia's investment in serving the one million Australians who are able to access the fixed wireless and satellite networks and the over 320,000 Australians who are already connected.

The government has included provisions in the Regional Broadband Scheme to help small infrastructure providers, like those servicing greenfields areas, to transition to contributing to the cost of regional broadband. These transition measures include an exemption for the first 25,000 residential and small business premises on their networks for the first five years. They also include implementing a cap so that the monthly charge amount cannot be raised above $10, indexed annually to the consumer price index. They also include a statutory requirement for a policy review within the first four years of the Regional Broadband Scheme to assess its scope as technology and market conditions change.

I do want to comment briefly on the sanctimonious, Uriah Heep-style handwringing amendment from the Labor Party. The suggestion in this amendment that this issue is all due to the coalition is entirely and absolutely wrong and also, frankly, historically ignorant. It was squarely part of the policy approach of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government that the National Broadband Network would be a national network and that profits in metropolitan areas would cross-subsidise loss-making services in regional areas. Of course, the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government failed to deliver the policy framework to achieve that outcome in the face of competing networks being rolled out in metropolitan areas. This bill is yet another example of the Turnbull government having to fix up the chaotic mess we inherited in this policy area.

There is a suggestion in the motion put forward by the shadow minister that the Regional Broadband Scheme imposes a charge per line on fixed line carriers as a consequence of the multi-technology mix introduced by the coalition. That is squarely and factually wrong—wrong, wrong, wrong. It is a design feature of the National Broadband Network as introduced by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government that there would be a cross-subsidy from metropolitan services to regional and remote services.

Of course, a key fact about which Labor is completely silent is that the multi-technology mix will reduce capital costs of the NBN by about $30 billion, in turn reducing the amount of that necessary cross-subsidy. But it is hardly surprising that our innumerate and managerially incompetent political opponents would fail to understand this basic point.

In conclusion, these bills create more opportunities for competition at the network and retail levels, while providing consumers across Australia with confidence that they will have access to the high-speed broadband services they need to participate in today's digital society. These bills have been the subject of extensive consultation. They are strongly supported by consumer groups and regional stakeholders, including the Regional, Rural and Remote Communications Coalition and the National Farmers' Federation. I commend these bills to the House.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Greenway has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question, therefore, is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.