Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Listen to the last couple of words—'technical matters that you'll never read or understand'. If we wanted language to symbolise the smug superiority of this government with regard to this rollout of NBN, we just got it from Senator Macdonald. That's probably the only decent contribution that he's made because it reveals absolute contempt for the Australian people, for our businesses, for health, for education and for all those innovators around the country who are begging for the opportunity to grow businesses and jobs, to educate at distance and to absolutely transform our economy. They've been sold down the river by this government who thought that we were too stupid and were going to stay stupid long enough to be unable to figure out what a dud it's selling us.

The lemon NBN that the government are delivering us—fibre to the node—is breaking down all over this country. They thought they'd get away with it, but the Australian people are onto them. We want to know the facts about what the government are doing, and that's why we've put all of those questions on the record—because the government have attempted to hide every single possible thing they can about this disastrous rollout.

I want to make some comments about Senator Fifield's opening remarks. We have, from this senator, this constant positioning of: 'Be calm. Don't worry about it—everything is fine. You shouldn't be concerned. Yes, we are spending $29 billion.' He forgets to tell you about the additional $20 billion that they had to put in on top of that because the market was awake to the rollout and understood how bad the rollout was, so the market wouldn't come in with the last $20 billion. So we've got $49 billion in a government business enterprise of which Senator Fifield is our representative.

We have asked questions. Yes, we have certainly asked questions. This is a massive spend—it's $49 billion. What we've got is Senator Fifield saying: 'It was a lot of questions. It seems to be an unreasonable number of questions.' How many questions do you reckon the Australian people should get for $49 billion? I reckon we should get a lot of questions, and we should also get some decent answers. What we are calling the government's attention to—and thank you, Senator Macdonald, for letting us know it's broadcasting day—and what we are letting the Australian people know is that the government are hiding what they're doing from you with regard to the NBN.

I want to put on the record a number that you should ring if you are experiencing trouble with getting the NBN connected at your place. Let me tell you that, in my situation, my husband and I were able to build an entire house and move in the time that it took to get the NBN connected to our old house. That's how bad the delays have been. I want you to take this number down if you're listening, or if you're here in the chamber or the gallery today, and you're concerned. The number is for the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, and it is 1800062058. I will repeat it before I finish my remarks this afternoon. People are sick and tired of getting this nonsense, this rubbish run-around, from this government. They're getting it from the NBN, they're getting it from their retail providers like Telstra, Optus and all of those companies that are providing the NBN around the country. People are sick and tired of being caught up in a blame game that goes from one person to another. They are also sick of what the technology is not delivering. They're sick of the continuous dropouts that are hurting their businesses. They're sick and tired of the impact on their families of not being able to get the access they have been promised. This government said the NBN that they were going to deliver would be cheaper. That's wrong. They said it would be faster than what people had. We're hearing right across the country that people want their ADSL back because their NBN connection is slow and fragile. They said it would be cheaper and faster and they said we would get it sooner. That is absolutely not the case. They are way behind and they have a massive problem going on with one part of the system that they rolled out, another kind of technology that clearly Senator Macdonald thinks we're all too stupid to understand, the HFC cable, which is the equivalent of a Foxtel line into peoples' homes, which the government said would be good enough for us to get information down.

We want to know some important things about what's going on with the NBN. Let me go to the substance of some of the questions. The first thing I would like to go to is service class zero. I'm sure there will be people listening to this debate somewhere around the country who cannot figure out why they can't get an answer out of the NBN or out of their telecommunications company, their retail service provider, about why they can't get the NBN. These are people who are often in a community where everyone else in their street has finally got connected—they're not happy, but they've got connected. But they're sitting there on their own at the end of a street, or sometimes in the middle of a street, and they simply cannot get a connection. NBN, when they hit these in-the-too-hard-basket cases, have this Orwellian term for it. They call it 'service class zero'. I suppose there is some truth in it, because you get zero response from the NBN, you get zero delivery of the NBN and you get zero explanation about why you can't get that connection at your house.

We did ask questions about service class zero. We asked for a breakdown by the technology, because they are rolling out fibre to the node, HFC, and there is talk they are going to roll out fibre to the kerb. We wanted to know, by technology, how many premises were in service class zero. We wanted to know that for households and businesses. We wanted to figure out what was going on. That is one of the questions we wanted an answer to. This issue is affecting thousands of Australians who can't get an answer. But this minister didn't go to any of the substance of the matter. He simply made the argument that there have been a lot of questions asked and they are working really hard and there is nothing to see here.

The problem is that Australians need access to a service. They want the real NBN, they want the fibre NBN and they are going to want it more and more as our use of technology increases. Those who are caught in the service class zero spiral are in a desperate need. This is why this is so egregious and why it is so wrong that some of these questions are not being answered. We know that the NBN produces a weekly report which contains the aggregate number of the service class zero premises. It's not like they don't have the information. Why won't the minister have that handed over and put into the public domain? We know that the information is there. It's at their fingertips. Why should it be that the Senate, asking questions on behalf of the Australian people, should be kept in the dark about information that is actually available on a weekly basis to the minister if he should ask for it from NBN, which he is in charge of? He's not separate from NBN; we have to remember that. The minister is responsible for the NBN.

Other questions that we asked included about the commissioning of research. There's nothing extraordinary about this question. This is the sort of question that's asked of government agencies all the time. We asked it because we believe that taxpayers have the right to know what NBN Co is spending on research and what the purpose of that research is. We know that some of the pieces of research conducted by NBN Co include The nbn GranTechie report, the Future of sports report, the Gen nbn 2020 and beyond report and The nbn digital dream report. The Senate can be assured that the NBN has been anything but a digital dream in every possible way. But why has this government not been able to produce a response to this question on notice? Surely, having commissioned the research, the purpose of it must already be known. The cost of it must already be known. But it's not known in this chamber and it's not known to the Australian people, because this government is hiding as much as it possibly can about its failed delivery of the NBN.

We also asked for figures underpinning the 2016 corporate plan, which is the main document that gives us a sense of what is going on with the NBN. Often at those Senate estimates when Senator Urquhart and I are both there, with our colleague Senator Chisholm, asking these sorts of questions, we get referred: 'Just wait; the next corporate plan will be out.' It's as though all is going to be revealed—except it isn't; it never is, because strategic pieces of information are being kept from public view. We have a request in that the NBN provide the underlying ready-for-service assumptions that they've relied on in their 2019-20 financial year explanations or revelations in their corporate plan. We know that the government's tried to avoid answering this question and another question, question 176, from additional estimates. So, in the name of transparency, we've asked it again, and there's still no response.

This is a pretty important question to get an answer to: what are the figures that the NBN is relying on for ready for service? That's part of their business plan. And is this business sustainable? Is it working? What assumptions are embedded in it? If you run a business you have to have those basic assumptions to understand what's going on with your business. Surely NBN Co, with $49 billion invested in it—taxpayers' dollars—should be able to answer the sorts of basic questions that a year 11 business class could answer regarding the assumptions that underpin NBN Co's financial plan. There are other questions that concern me that we haven't got answers to, including question 313—again, figures underpinning the corporate plan for 2019-20. Again, why can't we have those?

Let me go then to fibre-to-the-node costs. I want to take the opportunity again, in case people who were listening didn't have a pen the last time I said it, to tell you the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's number again. If you're getting pushed from pillar to post, around and around, and you're sick of the NBN circle, you need to call the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and they will get on the case of your retail service provider. The number is 1800062058. Why am I giving you that instead of saying, 'Talk to the minister', as we heard from Senator Macdonald? It is because five million Australians can't all talk to the minister and, as we know, the minister doesn't answer questions anyway. Why aren't I telling you to go to your local member or senator? It is because our offices are already inundated with people calling on us, over and over, to try to help them solve problems. It has got to the scale now, with the rollout of this dodgy NBN, that even our offices can't keep pace with it. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman can force the companies to actually answer some of your questions and to do something within 10 days. So don't waste your time anymore. Don't let this government cost-shift its mismanagement of the NBN onto your business. Don't let that happen. Call the TIO on 1800062058 and get somebody to take some action on your behalf, because it's a pain for the retail service providers to actually be contacted by the TIO.

I know from people in the electorate who have spoken to me and from people who are working behind the scenes for telecom organisations, who are desperately worried about the practices they are being asked to enact, that they are being told: 'Do everything you can to prevent the complaint going to the TIO.' Why would that be the case? Because it costs them some money, it costs them pain and it puts a timetable on the responsible action. It also means this government can't continue to come in here and say, 'Everything is fine,' because they will actually have to report the TIO figures. The TIO is the only tool we have that is really effective right now to get a sense of how bad this NBN rollout is going. You should call the TIO and let them know so that this government can't continue to come in here and mild-manneredly say, 'Everything is okay,' because you know it's not okay, I know it's not okay and the government, deep down, know it's not okay. That is why they are hiding. That is why they're not answering these very important questions.

Question 357 is about NBN technology trials. The Turnbull government like to talk about how the NBN is trialling new technology. They do this in order to attempt, in Senator Macdonald's vein of 'They're too stupid to figure it out,' to distract Australians and the media from the fact that they are deploying a second-rate 19th century copper network. Senator Urquhart revealed the source of that comment, and that is Senator Nash. The government's own minister for regional affairs has indicated that she thinks the NBN technology that her government is rolling out is a 19th century technology. We don't always like the answers we get from Senator Nash, but, on that, she is telling the truth. We have asked the government to explain how much taxpayer money has been spent on trialling technologies that it hasn't deployed. How much has been spent on this grand experiment, cooked up by the now Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, when he was the communications minister? How much has been spent? We are still waiting. No answer.

One of the things that we asked about was the wholesale speed tier mix in the 2016 corporate plan. This is important, because we asked the NBN to provide the numerical data that was underlying an important graph contained in their own corporate plan. The government has tried to avoid this question by providing data from the 2017 corporate plan, instead of the 2016 corporate plan, but we will continue to pursue it. We have requested it again to get the facts and the details on the table. The response from the NBN Co is absolutely outrageous. The volume of detailed questions on notice and the limited time available to respond mean that the NBN must prioritise questions that are not answered in whole or in part in regular reporting vehicles such as weekly updates, the corporate plan, annual reports, quarterly financial reports or on their website. This is simply ridiculous. The NBN Co is a government business enterprise accountable to the minister, who should be acting on behalf of the Australian people. They should be called to account. They should be writing full and fearless answers, giving the facts, keeping proper scrutiny on this $49 billion spend that is underway. What type of a racket is this government trying to run? It is the equivalent of the NBN waving a white flag and saying, 'This is all just too hard.' The company that is tasked with the wholesale provision and rollout of the NBN right across this nation is saying to us that it is simply too hard to answer our questions.

We have asked a question about a simple breakdown of where they are going to do fibre-to-the-curb, which is a new technology that the government have decided that they are considering deploying. We simply asked: where are they going to do it? We can't get an answer from the NBN. They have got to have this information at their fingertips but they are arbitrarily determining that they have a right to the information but the Australian people, through the Senate, do not. That is absolutely unacceptable. It cannot continue to be the case.

In the last couple of minutes that remain, I would like to indicate that the folder that I have brought in here—which I could go through—is just of the first hundred people we have documented who have problems with the rollout of the NBN on the Central Coast. Recently we had a hearing on the Central Coast, and I was very disturbed by stories of the kind that I have told you here this afternoon of people waiting for service, people unable to get information and people whose service had fallen over. But I want to make some points about this government, which pretends to be the friend of small business. Let me tell you: in Gosford we have a perfect example, in a small part of the seat of Robertson, of where the real NBN has occurred. We took evidence from a company there that received multiple international awards, whose business is entirely in the cloud and is employing 20-plus employees in a great little office in Gosford and delivering world-class, award-winning technologies to councils and other major organisations all around the world. They've got the real NBN. That's what is happening for them. NIB, the insurance group, brought their call centre to the middle of Gosford, in Robertson, because it has the real NBN.

Around the edges of it, though, in the second part of the testimony that we heard, we heard from local small businesses who own gyms or who are art creators and sellers of their own art. One gentleman, whose NBN connection was delayed by four months, lost $70,000 because he could not get any internet connection to sell his artworks online in the lead-up to the Christmas period. That is just one small business. We heard about alarm calls in a 24-hour gym on the Central Coast, where for weeks and weeks and weeks on end the owner was there trying to resolve the problem. It took him months to get a response. We heard story after story of people who were getting the run-around. Labor is listening to the people of Australia. We know you're getting the run-around from the NBN and the RSPs, and this government is trying to give the Senate the run-around. We will not stand for it. That is why the government must answer these questions. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.