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

I thought that might wake you up, Minister! I rise to ask a question of the minister. I have not been closely involved in the debate over this for a while now, but I could not help but come and join my colleague Senator Birmingham down here this evening. Telecommunications certainly has been an interest of mine for a very, very long time—since long before I came into this place, as the minister would well know. What I find extraordinary is that we are still here, after years and years of this inept government, talking about NBN in various forms—first we had to fibre to the node and then we had fibre to the home. This whole process is extraordinarily inept.

The minister started with a certain principle that he had in mind that he wanted to deliver, and some aspects of that I have a small amount of sympathy with. But unfortunately what has happened is that it has morphed into this unwieldy beast that the minister may well have lost control of. When you look at the intent, years ago, of how this was supposed to work and how it was supposed to look, it really seems to have gone off the rails in a lot of ways. I do have a question, Minister. I will get to that in a moment and it relates to these amendments, but I want to take the opportunity to make a contribution about regional communities.