Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

You may not like to hear this, Minister. You may not like to hear this at all, but I genuinely believe that. While we are on that subject, the thing that is so sad about this whole NBN process—and it is really sad—is that regional Australia has missed out. We still have no improvement, apart from in a couple of tiny pockets. Minister, you might be able to enlighten me in your answer about how many people in Armidale have now switched onto the NBN. I could be wrong—I could be underestimating things and doing you a great disservice—but I think it might be 15 people in Armidale who are now connected to the NBN. I shall look forward to your updating that and letting me know if I am indeed incorrect. I may well be. It may be more than 15 people out of a population of—I am not sure about Armidale; maybe it is 20,000 or 30,000. Minister, I am sure that you, having done the work up in the area, will be able to inform the chamber of exactly how many tens of thousands of people there are in Armidale, a place where I think 15 people have connected to the NBN. I am sure you will be able to enlighten me on that. Just to reiterate my earlier remarks, what I find really sad is that regional Australia has been left behind again. All we are getting from this government is talk, rhetoric and a whole lot of never-never. As I said, I give the minister credit for the little tiny pockets where the NBN has been connected. But, by and large, we are absolutely missing out. I say this in the context of the fact that if we had been in government the improvements to regional Australia would have been delivered.