Senate debates

Wednesday, 21 June 2017

Questions without Notice

Broadband

2:58 pm

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

Thank you, Senator Reynolds, for your ongoing interest in the remarkable turnaround that is the NBN. Colleagues will recall that nearly two years ago NBN set its sights on an incredibly ambitious target of scaling network construction to reach 5.4 million homes and businesses by the end of June 2017. It is fair to say that there were some colleagues opposite who were a little bit sceptical. Indeed, the former shadow minister said it was the ramp that Evel Knievel would not be able to jump. Good news: Evel Knievel can move over, because NBN have made the jump. When you add the 101,755 premises that were made ready for service last week, the current ready-for-service stands nationwide at 5.414 million premises across Australia.

I know all colleagues will be very pleased that the NBN rollout has now been on track, on time and on budget for the third financial year in a row. Mr President, I can hear the cogs whirling in your head. You are wondering: 'How many financial and rollout targets did Labor hit between 2009 and 2013? Was even one of the rollout or activation targets that they set ever hit?' Quelle surprise! The answer to that is no. They hit zero targets. It is fair to say that this is one of the great corporate turnarounds in Australian history. This is the type of rollout progress that our predecessors were unable to even dream about when they left us in 2013 with a failed project around the nation.

Comments

Charlie Schroeder
Posted on 22 Jun 2017 3:23 pm

The question is **not** how many households were connected to the NBN . But how well is the NBN working, how fast is the NBN speed, is it consistent and the same everywhere, is it reliable and is it working well?

These are the real, important questions.

I know for a fact that the speed leaves something to be desired, the dropouts happen often and the NBN is not the same in every location.