Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A recent analysis of the Abbott government's performance undertaken by the Australian Financial Review confirmed what we all suspected: this government has broken more promises than it has kept. The principles of honour, trust and keeping your word seem to mean very little to our Prime Minister and to many of his ministers.

Today, I would like to talk about just one of the most serious broken promises for the people of Tasmania—the Liberals pre-election promise to deliver full-fibre NBN. Tasmania is not like the rest of Australia. Our small population and geographic isolation are wonderful assets that support our clean, pristine environment and our incredible way of life. But they both pose challenges for economic growth and can impact on the services that can be delivered viably.

Labor's NBN offered Tasmanian businesses a real opportunity to bridge this tyranny of distance. It promised to create a real point of difference that would encourage investment in the state and see more jobs created. The NBN brought with it the tantalising possibility that Tasmania could stake out a profitable space for itself in the rapidly-growing digital economy. Under Labor, Tasmania was first cab off the rank for the NBN rollout. Under Labor, Tasmania had the fastest NBN rollout in the country. And under Labor, Tasmania was set to be the first state in the nation to be fully connected to the NBN, with the rollout to around 208,000 homes and businesses scheduled for completion by the end of 2015.

Before the election, the Liberals tried to convince Tasmanians that they were on a unity ticket with Labor on the NBN. Again and again, we heard that the Liberals would honour all Tasmanian NBN contracts, which of course included the master contract for the full-fibre rollout. Minister for Communications, Mr Turnbull, confirmed this on 16 August last year when he said:

This is not just a commitment to honour contracts where construction is under way, but all contracts which have been entered into.

He reiterated this by saying:

We intend to honour existing contracts. The alternative would be to breach them and that is a course we would not countenance.

Liberal Senator David Bushby, on behalf of the federal Liberal team, also went on the record the next day, saying:

We understand that those contracts are in place to roll out right across the state, and if that is the case, we will honour that.

Let us be clear. There was no wriggle room in these statements. Tasmanians were promised the full-fibre NBN as it was contracted by the previous government. The Liberals also told us that under their government the NBN would be delivered 'sooner'. Mr Turnbull proudly touted his plan, saying:

…every household and business to have access to broadband with a download data rate of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by late 2016.

Tasmanians understandably took Mr Turnbull and the Liberals on their word, and I have no doubt this played into their decisions on voting day.

In September 2013 we had a change of government. Since then, the Liberals' earnest promises have disintegrated into thin air, and Tasmania's NBN rollout has ground to a sickening halt. Mr Turnbull tried to pretend that everything was okay in February by assuring Tasmanians that our NBN rollout was 'back on track'.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. NBN Co's own data on the rollout tells the real story. At the end of first week of May this year, this summary showed that NBN cabling went past 38,338 premises in Tasmania. At the end of the first week of November, just 38,345 premises had been passed. Yes, that is right. A full six months later and the government only managed to extend Tasmania's NBN footprint by seven properties. Seven!

The hard reality is that the NBN rollout in Tasmania has ground to a screeching halt. Not only that, but promises to deliver Labor's superior, contracted full-fibre solution have also fallen by the wayside, just like so many pre-election promises of this government. Great swathes of the state were removed from NBN's rollout maps overnight, including around 40,000 premises that had rock-solid construction contracts in place.