Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Smith, for the question and for your deep interest in regional communications, in particular in Western Australia. I think all of us in this chamber would agree that the NBN is a very exciting project. We tend to talk an awful lot, though, in this place about the NBN as an end in itself rather than about what the NBN can achieve and is achieving for Australians—how it can improve job prospects for young people, how it can assist people in regional areas to stay in touch, how it can open businesses to the global marketplace and how it can make online transactions simpler for households. These are all good things that are happening now. It is because of what the NBN can deliver that, when we came into government, we decided that we would take a technology-agnostic approach, a multitechnology mix, letting NBN choose the technology that would see it rolled out fastest and at lowest cost, and that is exactly what is happening.

I am very pleased to be able to advise colleagues that the NBN hit a new milestone this week with fibre to the node connections overtaking brownfields fibre to the premise connections. We now have 1.1 million premises to fast broadband via fibre to the node. That has taken just over a year. Contrast that with Labor's technology—fibre to the premise—whereby it took more than five years to connect the same number of premises by fibre to the premise. So, the multitechnology mix is working—fibre to the node, fixed wireless, satellite, using the HFC pay TV cables. We are delivering the NBN. Australians want the NBN. They want it soon, and under this government, because of our approach, they will have the NBN six to eight years sooner than would have been the case under those opposite, and at $30 billion less cost.