Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I begin my contribution, I would like to remind Senator Birmingham that the back of the envelope processed that he described are the same processes that Mr Turnbull employs. I am sure Senator Birmingham would remember Mr Turnbull’s $10 billion water plan. But regardless of the opposition’s desire to tear down the NBN, the Gillard Labor government is committed to bringing Australian broadband services into the 21st century. That is why during our last term we began the task of building the National Broadband Network.

The National Broadband Network and the proposed reforms to the telecommunications sector will revolutionise the communications market for Australian consumers. The rollout of the NBN is putting communities and businesses such as those in my home state of Tasmania on the map and ensuring that Australia remains a player on the international stage. All Australian homes, businesses, schools and hospitals—no matter where they are located in Australia—will be able to benefit from affordable, high-speed broadband services. This access will be at a rate which is 1,000 times faster than that which many people have experienced today.

As well as improved services, the construction of the NBN is supporting 25,000 jobs every year on average for the eight-year lifespan of the project. And on the subject of jobs, let us not forget that the Australian Local Government Association estimated in its 2007-08 State of the regions report that $3.2 billion and 33,000 jobs were lost to Australian businesses in that 12-month period due to inadequate broadband infrastructure. The NBN will fix this.

Perhaps most significantly, the point must be made that the NBN is already being built. Notwithstanding the progress that has been made, the opposition seem determined to demolish the NBN. The question is why? Why go backwards? Why put Australia further behind the rest of the OECD? The only argument that those opposite seem to be able to pedal is that we need to wait: wait for more reports, more parliamentary scrutiny. They want us to sit on our hands. It is the same strategy they had to combat the global financial crisis—that is, do nothing!

We know that no Australian city is in the top 100 cities for average internet connection speed and Australia is last in the OECD for fibre penetration for broadband. So Australia waits while the opposition have not even settled on their own policy. Mr Turnbull said they would review their policy but Mr Abbott said they would not. The opposition is grasping at every opportunity to prevent Australians from having a world-class, affordable broadband service. That is what this call for a joint committee-Productivity Commission review is really about. It is about delay.

When we introduced our competition and consumer safeguards legislation in 2009 they did not want to debate it until we produced an ACCC report on the original NBN tender process. We did that. Then they would not debate the bill until the implementation study was released. We did that. Then they said their patchwork policy was better. But their policy was universally rejected. Now they oppose the NBN, calling for a cost-benefit analysis. And guess what? Even if the cost-benefit analysis gets a big tick, they still will not commit to support the NBN. This call is a big con.

I want to remind those opposite of the landmark study conducted by McKinsey and KPMG. This study confirmed that a high-speed broadband network can be built on a financially viable basis with affordable prices for consumers. That is why we are delivering the NBN—because under the watch of those opposite Australia’s broadband speeds lagged behind the rest of the developed world.

This government, however, is committed to building the $43 billion National Broadband Network over eight years. This is a large-scale infrastructure project which will deliver growth and stimulus to the Australian economy. We know that the NBN is critical for small business, crucial for our future healthcare delivery and vital to ensure the quality of education of our young people, and that it will connect communities, promote jobs growth and ensure that we are able to work cleaner, smarter and faster. Most fundamentally, we know that this critical infrastructure is being rolled out as we speak. In my home state of Tasmania three towns, Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point, are already receiving high-speed broadband services for the first time. In fact, the Prime Minister came to Midway Point, just outside Hobart, to switch on the first customer to the NBN. We now have a take-up rate for fibre connection that exceeds 50 per cent, after only a few months. The take-up of these services already exceeds the annual rate that the McKinsey-KPMG implementation study concluded would be needed to make the NBN viable with affordable prices for consumers.

NBN services are delivering previously unseen levels of competition and choice in Tasmania. Among the first retail service providers who are working with NBN Tasmania to deliver broadband services are Primus, Internode and iiNet. Telstra has now also signed on to test its services over the NBN and a fifth provider, Exetel, has also signed up to provide services. One of the first NBN customers, IT technician Mr Robert Pettman, from Midway Point, said:

It’s awesome. It’s a major speed increase on what I had before, which was a 1.5 megabit per second ADSL service. Since it went live … I’ve done speed tests and have seen a few peaks of 80 megabits per second, although it mostly hovers around 50Mb/s, which is what I ordered.

In Tasmania we are already undergoing planning for the stage 2 rollout. On the mainland, construction work has begun on the first five release sites in Armidale in New South Wales, Townsville in Queensland, Willunga in South Australia, Minnamurra-Kiama Downs in New South Wales and Brunswick in Victoria. The government’s plan is for 19 second release sites to have fibre deployed in 2011 in areas such as Coffs Harbour, Toowoomba, Bacchus Marsh, Casuarina and Geraldton. After all this progress and all this planning, what is the rationale for stopping the NBN and backtracking over the same issues that we have already dealt with?

The government welcomes transparency, but the continued analysis and scrutiny of one of the most scrutinised projects ever funded by government is without benefit and just a cover-up for the opposition because they want to tear down this project. They want to destroy it because it is popular out in the community. I repeat: Mr Turnbull says that, even if a cost-benefit analysis came back unequivocally positive, he could not guarantee the opposition’s support. This beggars belief. He cannot offer that guarantee because the opposition are not interested in what the Productivity Commission has to say; they just want to delay the NBN and deprive Australians of better broadband services.

Earlier in the year we also saw Telstra and NBN Co. announce that they have entered into a financial heads of agreement. This is indeed good news for consumers, who stand to benefit from cheaper and faster broadband. The agreement with Telstra will also mean that the NBN can be rolled out more efficiently as it will avoid infrastructure duplication. I know those opposite will start mud-slinging, but need I remind the opposition that they were the ones who presided over a decade of failed broadband plans? The National Broadband Network will rectify Australia’s lack of world-class broadband infrastructure, which is the result of a long series of patched up initiatives by those opposite which have delivered only short-term solutions. The opposition left Australia with a legacy of 18 failed broadband plans in 11 years. They took their 19th plan to the electorate only a few months ago—a plan to deliver broadband to Australians with a patchwork of old technologies that would have seen Australia fall even further behind. However, the Labor government is committed to turning Australia’s broadband performance around. We need to build infrastructure that will put Australia back in the fast lane of the information superhighway, and the National Broadband Network will deliver this.

The government is determined to increase effective use of the internet by consumers and all businesses to drive higher productivity, growth and community participation in the digital economy. We believe that the National Broadband Network will help drive Australia’s future in the global digital economy. We need to position Australia so it realises the full benefit of this network—(Time expired)