Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Accountability) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Bill 2019 and the Telecommunications (Regional Broadband Scheme) Charge Bill 2019. This is legislation the government could have passed in late 2017, it is legislation they could have passed in late 2018 and it is legislation they could have passed in March 2020. We are glad that, after three years of strange delays, it is being brought to a vote in the Senate here today.

In reports in The Australian this morning, we read that NBN Co will take on up to a further $4 billion in debt to fund the network. This curiously timed announcement comes on the same day the government seeks to progress a broadband tax in the Senate. These twin events are symptoms of a $51 billion multitechnology mix that has reduced the cash flows available to the NBN by $500 million per year. The reduction in long-term cash flows arises from a reliance on older technologies that cost much more to operate, generate less revenue and incur billions in upgrade costs that would not have been incurred under the original NBN plan. The fact that NBN are already saying that they need to take on more debt is a vindication of the view that doing it once with fibre and doing it right was economically superior all along. I will return to this point later.

In the previous term of parliament, Labor introduced several amendments that sought to reduce the impact of the levy on greenfield networks built before 1 July 2020; cap the levy charge so it could not rise to $10 a month; and make rollout data publicly available on the nationalmap.gov.au website. Those amendments lapsed because the government did not bring its bill to a vote. I want to thank the Senate crossbench for their in-principle support for these amendments at the time and acknowledge those ALP amendments that have been incorporated by the government into this bill.

Labor supports the establishment of a statutory infrastructure provider regime as outlined in this bill. The proposed framework will provide additional certainty that, as we move beyond the initial rollout, newly constructed premises can access high-speed broadband. This is, of course, a natural extension of the arrangements Labor put in place nearly 10 years ago through a statement of expectations issued to the NBN board. The statement of expectations required the NBN company to make high-speed broadband available to all Australians regardless of where they live or work. That has happened and will continue to happen, and this bill provides certainty that it will continue.

After more than a decade in power through the 1990s and 2000s, the Liberal Party left Australia with broadband infrastructure that was incompatible with our aspirations as a nation. It was Labor who carved out the principle that all Australians should have access to modern telecommunications infrastructure. It was Labor who stood up for the regions, not with rhetoric but with a considered policy to deliver universal access to high-speed broadband, universal pricing and investment to make that a reality. The Liberals opposed the NBN. The Liberals opposed the NBN satellite. They did not promote meaningful competition in the regions. They did nothing to promote broadband investment in the regions. It was the Liberals who privatised Telstra as a vertically integrated monopoly. So let us be clear: after more than 10 years, the legacy of those opposite when it came to regional communications was technological stagnation and higher prices. The Labor Party put an end to that mediocrity with its plan for the National Broadband Network.

Here today, the government is claiming it is putting in place a framework for regional broadband funding. Let's run through some of the facts and put this into context. At inception, Labor designed the NBN to provide universal access in the cities and the regions. This plan provided for seven per cent of Australian premises to be served through a combination of fixed wireless and satellite technology. Because these networks run at a financial loss, an internal cross-subsidy was implemented to fund these regional networks. As of today, the internal cross-subsidy implemented under Labor is already generating $580 million per annum. By 2022, it will generate $800 million per annum. The broadband tax devised by this government raises barely one-twentieth of the revenue from the regional funding mechanism Labor put in place a decade ago.

As I noted earlier, the multitechnology mix has reduced the cash flows of NBN by $500 million per annum compared to the original fibre plan. This means the capacity of NBN to invest or return dividends has been reduced by $500 million per annum. This is a consequence of the older technologies—namely, copper and HFC—that are costing hundreds of millions a year more to operate, generating less revenue over the medium term and requiring hundreds of millions more per annum in maintenance capital. These are not Labor's figures. This is based on NBN Co's own figures. The proposed levy recovers less than one-tenth of the cash flow that has been lost due to the change in technologies. To give one last example: the cost of the NBN rollout increased by $2 billion in the corporate plan before last.