Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2024, access to the internet should be a universal, basic right—access to the technology and infrastructure that enables every person in Australia to work, to study and to stay connected. But, unfortunately, here in Australia we're falling woefully short of that standard. Decades of government cost-cutting, privatisation and corporatisation of our essential services have degraded our internet infrastructure. In Ryan, my electorate, many people are still dealing with the fallout of the botched NBN upgrades, frustrated that they can't watch a movie with their family, work or study from home or play games with their friends, despite paying some of the highest prices in the world for home internet.

What's really frustrating is that it didn't have to be like this. The NBN could have been affordable and accessible for everyone, providing gold-standard internet access right across Australia. So how did we get here, in this almighty mess? It started with previous governments' disastrous decisions that led to the privatisation of Telstra in the nineties. This left us without the basic bones to deliver high-speed broadband. It's such a common and sad story—the government selling off yet another essential public asset and good to a for-profit corporation, setting the stage for cost blowouts, delays and the chaotic rollout we've been stuck with ever since.

This was compounded by the government's decision to set up the NBN as a public corporation that had to turn a profit early in the rollout. So what we got was higher consumer prices and poorly prioritised rollout strategies. Then, in 2013, the LNP slashed funding and gave us a multitechnology mix, a kind of Frankenstein's monster, a network of copper wires and outdated hybrid fibre coaxial, or HFC, completely inadequate for meeting modern internet demands. Here we are with unreliable, subpar internet in too many homes in Ryan and in so many places throughout Australia. Take The Gap or Mitchelton. Residents there are still stuck with the HFC, dealing with absolutely abysmal speeds. A recent survey I ran in Ryan showed that over 60 per cent of respondents are unhappy with their internet, with nearly 20 per cent saying it's very, very slow. To make matters worse, 40 per cent of respondents aren't even getting the speeds they're paying for, so they're stuck paying high prices for a subpar service in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. We're stuck relying on outdated technology that simply cannot deliver; half of Ryan is reporting unreliable internet with frequent dropouts. Australia is falling behind while other nations are embracing fibre to the premises, the gold standard we should have had right from the start.

It's not just speed and reliability; it's the cost. Over 74 per cent of the respondents to my survey said that their internet is just too expensive. That's a huge number of people in my community being ripped off while—to rub salt in those wounds—corporate executives line their pockets. Telstra CEO Vicki Brady made $5.25 million, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin made over $5 million and former NBN boss Stephen Rue made $3 million—all of this during a cost-of-living crisis while people in Kenmore and The Gap can't even just hold a simple Zoom call without the internet dropping out on them.

Internet access is essential infrastructure, just like roads or public transport. It should be affordable and accessible for everyone. That's why we fought to keep the NBN in public hands. It was the Greens who protected the NBN from being sold off. We secured the amendments to keep it public because we know that internet access is far too important to leave in the hands of for-profit corporate giants. The NBN should serve all Australians and not become a cash cow for a select few. The Greens will consider this bill and move for a Senate inquiry to make sure all Australians have access to an affordable and functioning NBN.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm so pleased to be speaking to the National Broadband Network Companies Amendment (Commitment to Public Ownership) Bill 2024, a bill that is all about making sure the NBN stays in public hands. We do not want to repeat the mistakes that were made with Telstra, which have led to my community really having to fight for what should be a right—that is, decent quality communications. It's the same with the NBN.

I want to take everybody back—a few decades, actually—to the 1990s and Paul Keating's Creative Nation, because Creative Nation turned out to be my awakening to why we need high-speed broadband. I'll tell you why. Creative Nation had one aspect to it which was all about encouraging people to create digital content. The language might have been slightly different—I think we called it multimedia—but it was all about creating things that would be delivered through the internet at a time when the internet was still a very new beast.

There were several multimedia enterprise centres, and one of those was in Eveleigh. I had the privilege of working with IT people for the first time. My business partner and I were the media training content, and we worked with artist and designers to create a multimedia program that would be delivered through the internet. It was a long process, and we all learnt a lot. The culmination of it was that my business was named as the creator of the best multimedia education product in the country, and I'm very proud of that.

It was the early 2000s by the time we got to this point, and it was not possible to commercialise the product that we'd spent several years creating because there was no way of delivering it to people through the internet. The speeds were not fast enough. We were still dialling up or had just switched across to ADSL. That was the first time as a businessperson that I hit a wall, which was a failure to have invested in high-speed broadband at that point. That was, for me, a real wake-up. I don't profess to be a savvy IT person, but I do know that when my business is constrained by something, I want to see solutions to it.

It took some time before a solution was presented, and when Kevin Rudd announced that there would be this national broadband network of high-speed broadband—with video and audio, where you could have interactivity and animations could be accommodated—and he was talking about it benefiting people, I knew exactly the sort of people who would benefit. They were people with businesses like mine with great IP and no method of delivering it effectively through the internet. So I have been a convert to the NBN from those very early days, and I knew very strongly what it was to be able to turn that NBN on. I was lucky enough that, though I had lost an election, my community was one of the early beneficiaries. I remember with the now Prime Minister pushing the button in Windsor to turn on, metaphorically, the NBN in the Hawkesbury, one of the first places that it was rolled out—to parts of the Hawkesbury. So I have followed really closely the rolling out of the NBN. I have despaired at some of the pace of it.

When the Liberal government came to power and they turned a 21st century technology into a historic copper lead technology, I was really concerned about the economic and social impacts that would have on people. I was also horrified to hear the Liberal government declare that the NBN was done. The rollout was done. It was completed. It was finished. To hear it declared complete was to hear them signal, 'Our job is done, and there's no need for us to try and continue to improve the NBN that's available for people.' I know that, in spite of a significant number of people having fibre, many people only had it to the curb, or they only had it to a node, or, even worse, they had satellite or wireless. The Liberal government said that it was complete, but it was certainly not my experience in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury that this thing had been finished. And it's not finished yet. There is still more to do. What that decision by those opposite did was really signal their intent that it was ready to sell off—that this essential infrastructure, sometimes the only infrastructure still standing when natural disasters hit, could be sold off to the highest bidder.

Let's just think about how essential the National Broadband Network is. If you didn't realise beforehand how essential it was, you certainly realised during COVID. What we all recognised then was that we needed this, whether we were a child studying with a bunch of 10-year-olds, whether we were a teenager or in our early 20s at university or whether we were adults working from home and trying to keep connected with our colleagues. For every demographic—and that includes people like my mum who really rely on access to data, not just, as Prime Minister Turnbull once said, to watch lots of movies. She certainly doesn't have five movies playing in her house at the one time. We were told that the only reason you'd need high-speed broadband is if that were happening. She needs secure, reliable, trustworthy technology that's not going to go out in a storm.

For people in the lower Blue Mountains in particular, we faced the issue of having boxes that, when there was a storm, would just self-combust, essentially. Sometimes they literally left little burn trails; other times they just died. It took a long time for the previous government to acknowledge that this was a problem, partly because the lower Blue Mountains community is one of the most storm prone in the country when you look at the geology that explains it, I'm told. To have systems for people to be told, 'That's good enough. That is all you deserve. That'll do you,' my community very clearly said, 'No, it is not good enough.' From there, we've seen the benefits of high-speed broadband for health and telehealth, and those benefits will continue to be experienced as we go forward. As for small business, I think small business now would wonder how it would survive without a decent broadband service.

The gold star is obviously fibre to the home. In the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury and even a lot of other parts of Western Sydney, there are still places where we're having to fix up the mess of fibre to the curb and fibre to the node.

I recently was up in Blackheath. It has been a really long, slow wait for Blackheath and other areas. Back in 2017, before we were in government, the then shadow minister for communications was up there with me and we heard why they were felt they were being shortchanged by the Liberals fibre-to-the-node rollout, which relied on old copper to do the connection into your home from a box somewhere down your street. But finally there is a rollout happening that is shifting that fibre to the node to fibre to the curb, and I have never been so delighted to see streets being dug up as I was in Blackheath, watching that rollout happen.

What I also noticed, having followed the rollout from its very first days around Bligh Park, is the degree of skill that's involved. We've learnt so much and our operators have learnt so much about how to do this neatly, how to do it effectively and how to do it quickly. That was a real delight to see.

We're upgrading the NBN because we believe people should continue to see improvements in their service, if they don't have a gold-plated service. This will mean that around 3,000 people living in homes in the Hawkesbury region—everywhere from McGraths Hill, Kurrajong Heights, North Richmond, Pitt Town, Vineyard to Freemans Reach—will shift from fibre to the node to fibre to the premises. They'll have fibre coming all the way into their homes. In the Blue Mountains about 14,000 more households will have access to what they should have had in the first place—quality fibre. That's everywhere from Hazelbrook right up the mountains to Mount Victoria.

But there is still work to be done, and that's why it's so important that the NBN is kept in public hands. There's more to do to make sure it stays affordable for people in the future. The consequence of privatisation, as we know, is that shareholders needs are put ahead of everybody else's, and that has terrible consequences for us as a society, as a community and as an economy.

In an electorate like mine—we have areas that are not just peri-urban but the equivalent of regional, the equivalent of rural and even the equivalent of remote—there are ongoing challenges in getting the very best standard of NBN. I've got people on satellite and wireless. My view is that we should continue to be looking to deliver a higher quality of service to those people, and that will only happen if the NBN stays in public hands. From my perspective it is not over for those people. I am never one to shy away from advocating for my community, and I absolutely understand the needs that people have in those areas, particularly where fibre comes down a street but stops halfway down just because someone drew a line on the map in the original design. So there are lots of areas where I will continue fighting and advocating for an expansion of fibre for my community.

Labor founded the National Broadband Network. We founded it to provide fast, reliable, affordable broadband to all Australians—not just to some, not just to the lucky ones who live in a densely populated area, but to all Australians. We are delivering our vision for a world-class fibre network, and the difference between a couple of years ago and now is stark in my community. For a start, I get to have fibre to my premises. My entire street, the entire suburb of Winmalee, the entire lower Blue Mountains can now say, 'Yes, I'd like to get that fibre to the curb to come all the way into my home.' It only happens when you have a government that has a commitment to genuinely trying to level the playing field for every Australian business and for every Australian no matter where they live. Only by keeping the NBN in government ownership can we continue to deliver on that vision. That's why this legislation is here. That's why we're here, on our side, arguing that we need to secure, in legislation, the future of the NBN and make sure it remains in public ownership.

This is a critical infrastructure. It reaches over 12.4 million premises across Australia. Currently, more than 8.6 million homes and businesses are connected; that is a lot of people whose lives are affected. Keeping NBN in public hands will ensure that the company itself has the certainty necessary for its investment planning and for all that operational decision-making needed to maximise the economic and social benefits of the NBN, and ongoing government ownership of the NBN will help keep the those wholesale broadband prices more affordable for consumers than if the company was in private ownership.

What we should have going forward is the opposite of what happened to my business in the early 2000s. We should not have business owners say, 'I cannot do my business because I am constrained by the NBN,' or, 'I am constrained by lack of capacity to be able to send things through this magic thing of the internet.' Every business, every home, every older person, every child should have the same access and the same ability to use this infrastructure. It is crucial public infrastructure and should never be sold off. Just as telephones should never have been sold off, particularly when we did not know how technology was going to evolve—and we ended up with a situation where there is inequity in that system now—nor should the NBN. The NBN should stay in public hands now and forever.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Broadband Network Companies Amendment (Commitment to Public Ownership) Bill 2024. I was in the House for most of the member for Macquarie's speech and, I must say, large parts of her speech I really agree with—the NBN: the importance of it, it is very important for infrastructure, its importance in emergencies, the fact that we need to 'secure reliable technology, particularly in storm-prone communities'. I am really glad the Minister for Communications and the member for Macquarie have been able to get fibre to the premises within the member for Macquarie's electorate. Perhaps the member for Macquarie would be able to explain to me why the Minister for Communications will not assist me in my electorate of Hughes to get fibre to the premises in the suburb of Bundeena. This is a suburb which is far more isolated than the Blue Mountains

I note the interjections over there. Could it be that assistance was given from the minister to those on that side of the chamber but the same assistance has not been provided on this side of the chamber?

As I hear more interjections, I will read directly from a letter the minister wrote back to me refusing my community, but she has obviously been very helpful for communities on your side of the chamber. I will return to the issue of Bundeena. I am appreciating these interjections because I will be very interested to hear whether or not other members on that side have been given the NBN upgrades that have not been afforded to those in my electorate.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hughes has the call.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The stated purpose from the Minister of Communications when this bill was introduced was that this bill will amend the original Labor legislation to remove conditions enabling a future government to privatise NBN. She said:

The bill provides certainty to stakeholders, including broadband consumers, the wider telecommunications industry, broadband retailers, and NBN Co, that the Commonwealth will continue to retain ownership of NBN Co.

Unless I have missed something over the last few weeks, there has been no conversation about NBN, about changing the public ownership, except from those on that side of the chamber. Why is this? This is legislation that is, in fact, amending the government's previous legislation.

Just by way of background, the Rudd Labor government—we all remember that Labor government—announced the establishment of a new NBN Co to build and operate a new fast national broadband network. When the legislation was introduced, it was anticipated that the government would be the NBN Co's major shareholder but there would also be significant private investment in the company. It was said:

The Government will make an initial investment in this company but intends to sell down its interest in the company within 5 years after the network is built and fully operational, consistent with market conditions, and national and identity security considerations.

Then we had the introduction of the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2011. It was passed in March 2011. In the second reading speech, the then Minister for Infrastructure and Transport—who is, I believe, the current Prime Minister, Mr Albanese—stated:

The first bill in the package, the NBN companies bill … also sets out—

and this is important—

arrangements for the eventual sale of the Commonwealth's stake in the company once the NBN rollout is complete, including provisions for independent and parliamentary reviews prior to any privatisation, and for the parliament to have the final say on the sale.

…   …   …

As such, the bill deals with arrangements for both today and into the future.

That is a direct quote from the then Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, who now holds the highest political office in the land.

Then, if we come to the actual nature of NBN Co, it is an unlisted public company, limited by shares incorporated under the Corporations Act, and is a Commonwealth company for the purposes of various other acts. It was established in 2009 as a government business enterprise by the federal government, which is its sole shareholder.

We now come to 2022. As I've said before, this bill is nothing but a sad stunt. This is designed to create confected debate that somehow those on our side or perhaps their friends in the Greens—somewhere, somebody—has some intention to sell off the NBN. There is no intention on our side. Nobody's talking about changing the ownership of the NBN—not the coalition and not anyone else I've heard in this place. This is just a shambolic attempt by a government that is really frightened to address the real issue affecting Australians, which is cost of living. Also, in my electorate, there are plenty of Australians very upset with the NBN service that is being delivered under this communications minister and under this government and even more upset—

A government member interjecting

I would say to the honourable member that you are very welcome to go to Bundeena, as I have done, and see the sort of internet coverage they have down there. I've made representations to the minister. I will quote that in a minute.

Labor have done this before. They are the party of 'Mediscare'. Now it is nothing but 'NBN-scare'. This is done to simply distract from the issues that they know about. Those on that side have been back in their electorates for weeks. Their constituents are telling them exactly the same thing that our constituents are telling us. They are not happy with this government. This government is not addressing their cost-of-living issues. They are a party known for making up fake election campaigns.

So, when we see a government that is getting hammered on all fronts, what happens? They go, 'Let's quickly do something.' I wonder how this transpired in the party room. Did someone say, 'I have a really good idea today; let's pretend that the coalition are going to sell off the NBN'? And everyone said: 'Oh, yes. That sounds like a really good idea.' At a time when Australians are desperate for help with a cost-of-living crisis, this Labor Party is more focused on political games than fixing the problems facing everyday families. We on our side know it, my electorate knows it and their electorates know it as well. They are now seeing it. They are seeing what we have seen sitting here for 2½ years. It's probably a government that will go down as the worst government in history. My parents, who are old enough to remember Whitlam, always said to me, 'We will never see a government worse than Whitlam's.' Then we had Rudd. They said, 'We will never see a government worse than Rudd's.' But we are now seeing a government far worse than either of those two former failed Labor governments.

I want to touch on what has happened with the NBN under this minister and under the watch of this Prime Minister. There's been a major decline in the NBN. They have essentially hammered Australians with massive NBN price increases. We've seen six million families smashed by NBN price increases of up to 14 per cent since October last year. Over the same time period, the NBN's brownfields business, meaning existing homes, has lost almost 100,000 customers. So how on earth can this be lauded as some great success of the Prime Minister and the Minister for Communications? It's not. This is just a lame stunt from a lame government.

Instead, they—the Minister for Communications, particularly, and the Prime Minister—could be talking about an issue that is of concern in the community, which is the need for gambling advertising reform. I asked the question three weeks ago to the Minister for Communications, and she couldn't answer it. My friend the member for Menzies also asked the question. We were the two from this side that were on that inquiry. It was chaired by the former member for Dunkley, Peta Murphy. After Ms Murphy passed away, there were commitments made by a whole lot of us that we would continue with the work that was done on that inquiry. What has happened since? It was presented to the minister in June 2023. Where is it? She still can't answer questions. The minister cannot answer questions in question time as to whether she's going to adopt the recommendations and when.

In 1996, John Howard had been admitted for a couple of weeks, and we had the tragic massacre down in Port Arthur. John Howard at the time had to stare down members of his own party—members of his coalition party and a lot of the Liberal Party's base—because he knew in his heart that Australia needed gun reform. That changed the nature of Australia. Why is it then that—

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He got full bipartisan support from Kim Beazley.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Full bipartisan support—thank you, Minister. He had full bipartisan support, and that report that was given to the minister had bipartisan support. It was unanimous. So I would suggest that the Prime Minister could take something from the John Howard playbook and think, 'I'm going to act in the nation's interests here'—act in the nation's interests and not in the interests of some of his friends and allies. He has missed an opportunity to demonstrate strong leadership, moral courage and political conviction on a national, social and health epidemic.

Ms Murphy's husband has asked: 'What is going on? Labor, what are you doing about this report?' Reverend Tim Costello has been asking about it. Anna Bardsley contacted the Prime Minister three weeks ago and said, 'I am coming to Canberra this week because I need to speak to the Prime Minister about gambling reform and about gambling harm.' She couldn't get an audience with the Prime Minister, but she got an audience with me, and the stories from her and her colleagues about the devastation of gambling harm on them and on their families were heartbreaking. There are women who have served time in prison for theft simply to feed their gambling habits. Another spoke about first gambling at the age of seven as well as the social impacts online gambling has had on his Asian Australian community.

Australians love a punt. Today is Melbourne Cup Day. Most Australians gamble responsibly. They do it with friends. They do it as a social activity. They gamble with money they know that they can afford to lose. That is fine. But, for a number of Australians, gambling harm causes a massive problem for them.

I've been asked about Bundeena by somebody over on that side. I went to the minister after April and said: 'Can you please assist this community of mine? They need fibre to the premises or fibre to the curb.' The minister wrote back to me: 'NBN Co has advised that there have never been any plans to provide fibre-to-the-curb services to Bundeena. However, parts of Bundeena have been included in the project to eventually deliver fibre-to-the-premises upgrades.' That was supposed to have occurred in 2023. The minister has now changed the date to 2025. He indicated at the end of the letter, 'Unfortunately, this process is lengthy and has significantly delayed the delivery of upgrades to the Bundeena area.'

Nobody on this side is talking about privatising or selling off NBN—

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

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate will be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have permission to continue when the debate's resumed.