Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't want to start off this speech that I'm giving here tonight with the quote, 'We told you so'—and I'm talking about the NBN. We told the government back in the 43rd parliament—we told the government in the 44th parliament and in the 45th—and we're still telling them, that the option that they chose for NBN Co was the wrong one. What we've seen this year is the government do a complete backflip and go to the option that Labor proposed way back in 2013 and that was the fibre option. We know that the NBN Co is borrowing millions more than what was envisaged to begin with to construct the NBN. They have constructed an infrastructure network that basically isn't serving the community. It's not doing what it was meant to do. Had they used fibre from the start we would be in a position now where people would be getting the connectivity that Australia deserves. As I said: we told you so. We said it. It was our option in 2013 and again in the 2016 election. We are still saying it.

What has happened after $51 billion, the purchase of 50,000 kilometres of new copper and a decade of ridiculing fibre—because that's what this government did. They ridiculed our option of fibre—which they've just done a backflip on and have gone to. They have backflipped and they're now listening and installing fibre. They are listening to what we said in 2013. They've arrived back at Labor's original proposal. This was our proposal in 2013. They ridiculed it. We all remember the then Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, and Malcolm Turnbull doing that virtual sales pitch on, I think, Sky News. You could see the awkward moment too, because Mr Abbott had just knocked off Mr Turnbull not that long ago, so it must have been very awkward for the former Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull. He would have known that Mr Abbott's option was wrong. We said it back then: do it once and do it properly. Do it right and do it with fibre.

I have many constituents, as I imagine all of us do, that ring my electorate office to tell me about the problems that they are facing with connecting to the NBN Co. One of my constituents is Elizabeth of North Adelaide. She is a 90-year-old woman. For a close to a year and a half, she has faced one problem after another with her NBN connection. It is not only Elizabeth. We get calls every single day about NBN connectivity. Since July this year, Elizabeth has been living in an independent unit. She relies on her landline to operate her personal alarm and, since moving into the new apartment, Elizabeth has been contacted repeatedly by NBN service operators and NBN contractors. This has been disruptive and very unsettling to her as she lives alone. They contact her via text messages. Every time a text message has arrived, Elizabeth has been obliging and has waited patiently for the NBN service operators to arrive on the prescribed day and no-one has appeared at the designated time. Elizabeth's son contacted my electorate office, at his wit's end after trying unsuccessfully to resolve these ongoing issues. Finally, after further repeated calls, an NBN technician did go to Elizabeth's place to switch her connection from ADSL to NBN, in early November. This, of course, disconnected my constituent's telephone and internet. Let's not forget: this is a 90-year-old woman who lives alone and relies on a personal alarm in case of an emergency.

Elizabeth's son tried everything to resolve this problem but couldn't resolve it. After two hours on the phone with the service provider, trying to configure the router, they were unsuccessful and needed to call an NBN technician yet again. This led to visit No. 10, but the technician also failed to solve the problem and another technician had to be called out for visit No. 11. After 11 visits and countless calls and hours on the phone, the final technician discovered—wait for this—that the block of units in which Elizabeth lives cannot be connected to the NBN yet. So, after traumatising this woman for weeks on end, they told her it couldn't be connected. How can it be that this wasn't identified by NBN or any of their technicians over 11 visits? Elizabeth has been harassed with text messages and calls, she has made herself available for calls and repeated visits and has had her phone and internet disconnected. She was told there was a deadline for her to be connected to the NBN, only to discover that her property isn't even able to be connected. Elizabeth is now left without either the internet or the home phone. I've written to the minister on my constituent's behalf, asking for an explanation and a resolution of this matter because it is simply not acceptable. Elizabeth is not the only one. We have many constituents exactly like Elizabeth who contact us.

The NBN is one of the most important pieces of technology infrastructure our country has ever seen, and it has been botched up by successive Liberal governments in this place since 2013. I don't blame the people who work for NBN or the technicians who carry out the work. They, like all of us, have to make do with a substandard rollout. I blame this government. They've turned the NBN into a shambles and it's about time they fixed it. The NBN program that we had put out as a government in 2013 was for fibre to the node for every household in Australia to provide better connectivity and faster downloading. We argued at the time that it was the way to go. This government argued and ridiculed us continuously. They decided to go with the copper program, which obviously hasn't worked. It is not working, and our nation deserves a better internet service and better connectivity.