Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by Senator Fifield to questions asked today by Senator McAllister relating to the National Broadband Network.

We know that recently there has been a change in the leadership of this country. We now have Malcolm Turnbull as the Prime Minister. He has said quite up-front that he believes his government is a government of the 21st century. Nothing could be further from the truth. I would respectfully suggest that he should revisit that statement. Quite clearly, some of the worst parts of the policies that were brought down by the Abbott government are still in place. You can change the leader, but you have not changed the policies. It is still the same terrible, out-of-touch, harsh policies that this government is carrying on with.

If you look at Mr Turnbull's own experience, we can see what he did about the rollout of the NBN when he was Minister for Communications. He has doubled the cost of the rollout of the NBN and given us less than half of the quality of service that the Australian community has demanded and deserves. He may have been a formidable opponent in the past, but what has overshadowed his performance has been the mistakes that he made in the communications portfolio.

We had a Labor government that initiated the rollout of the NBN. They set Tasmania up as the pilot state to have the first rollout. What has this government done? It has stopped or slowed down the rollout of the NBN, and is now saying to rural and regional Australia, 'You are only worthy of a second rate system that will cost more money and will take much longer to roll out.' That was the performance of the now Prime Minister when he was the Minister for Communications.

To top that off we have a failed assistant minister responsible for aged care now having the responsibility of the portfolio of communications. In his former responsibilities as assistant minister responsible for aged care we know that he did not have his eye on the ball for the last two years. He failed dismally in aged care. The sector knows that and the Australian community certainly knows that.

All I can say is that we on this side will continue to keep an eye on the new Minister for Communications, because this country cannot afford, and the economy cannot afford, to have another failure. We are expecting a greater performance when it comes to the rollout of the NBN. Quite seriously, the cost has blown out. From those on that side who harped and harped when they were in opposition, what have they delivered when it comes to the rollout of the NBN? A much slower service and a much, much more costly service.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't be silly.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, I will take that interjection—because no-one listens to you. No-one listens to you. But as somebody who continually bleats in this chamber about representing the great state of Queensland you should be appalled by your government's record when it comes to rolling out the NBN in your home state.

So that is what we are left with. That is the legacy of Mr Turnbull as communications minister.

Those on the other side who bleated and made all sorts of accusations about the time we changed our leadership when we were in government have done exactly the same thing. The only difference is that, on the other side, they have the same old policies and the same arrogance, believing that they know it all. They do not listen to the sectors. They do not take advice. The government might have changed leaders, but they certainly have not changed their policy priorities.

We know how important the NBN can be, will be and should be to the Australian economy. We know the benefit it will bring to the tourism industry. We heard the responses to Senator Bushby's question in, I would have to say, a very weak performance from the new minister for tourism, Senator Colbeck, when trying to promote the fantastic Tasmanian food and wine event tonight. He could not even sell that. We know the NBN has already delivered great outcomes for the Tasmanian economy, and Senator Bushby should be very much aware of that.

This is a government that is yet again failing the Australian people when it comes it to the rollout of the NBN. (Time expired)

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very difficult to follow Senator Polley in this chamber, particularly after that contribution, because it was like a random walk through an individual's thought bubbles. There were very few joining words or coherent linkages between one random thought bubble and another. They dealt with Senator Fifield, who of course was an outstanding minister for disability services, and no-one has disputed that in this place—

Senator Polley interjecting—

except for Senator Polley, of course, who was saying how terrible he was. But the whole disability network were full of praise for him. They were effusive in their praise for Senator Fifield in that capacity. Senator Fifield is now taking that same rigor, that same discipline, into the communications portfolio. That is what has those on the other side so upset. Senator Polley is mortified that someone is going to do a better job than her hero, Senator Conroy. We know that, for a long time, Senator Polley has been a great admirer of Senator Conroy, but he was an abject disaster in the portfolio of communications. We know he had a penchant, if you will, for skiing—we knew that—and for hobnobbing with the big end of town, but that is not what we do. We get down to doing the tough work, the hard yards. We do not do our costings on a coaster in a private jet flying to the ski fields of Aspen.

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

I don't ski!

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Fifield does not ski—but he would be an excellent skier if he chose to do so! All I would say is that Senator Fifield, unlike Senator Conroy, is absolutely committed to delivering value for money and to delivering on time. To this government, it is not suitable or appropriate to pursue a massive agenda that has been cobbled together, literally on the back of a napkin or coaster on a private jet, between Senator Conroy and then Prime Minister Rudd that and that was going to commit this nation to tens of billions of dollars in costs. Over the last two years, the costs have been detailed and the appropriate cost-benefit analysis has been done, and we are delivering to the people of Australia what Australia can afford in order to upgrade us into the internet century.

I am one of the beneficiaries of the NBN, I have to say—much to the chagrin of the other side! I am quite diligent in my communications via the internet, including setting up various appropriate organisations that will facilitate political discourse in this country. The NBN is a fantastic service. It is an extraordinary service that has been delivered to my house, to my neighbours, to my suburb and to my community by the Abbott and Turnbull governments. The beautiful thing about it is that it allows my family, like every other family in the street, to access content-rich media, the requirements of work practices and the new transmissions of digital content on demand and video on demand et cetera in a manner which was hitherto unavailable to us. Rolling out that sort of technology—developing it and delivering it on time in an efficient manner—has been a priority of this government, and I for one am absolutely delighted with it.

I regret that Senator Polley was not able to put aside politics and her personal and partisan attacks to celebrate the fact that we now have a minister in charge of communications who has applied himself so diligently to what has sometimes been a fraught area of policy concern in terms of how we were going to manage to deliver the maximum benefits to people with disabilities, those most in need. He has dealt with that in an exemplary manner. If we can do that in other areas of policy—and, in this regard, it is up to ministers like Senator Fifield to deliver—the nation will be much, much better off.

So, rather than petty point-scoring, using trumped-up numbers and expressing confected outrage, as Senator Polley just did, I urge the opposition to join the government in delivering for the people of Australia. I urge and encourage them to be positive about the opportunities that are before us, because our priorities for the country should be the same. They are about the economy. They are about delivering jobs. They are about delivering infrastructure. That is what is important to the people of Australia. It is a pity it is not important to the opposition. (Time expired)

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to also take note of Senator Fifield's answers to my questions about the NBN. Unhappily, those answers confirm what most concerns us on this side of the chamber, which is that the big promises that were made about the NBN, a very cheap NBN with a very high level of service and a very high level of penetration that could be delivered by the then Minister for Communications—who knew everything about the internet!—have absolutely failed to materialise.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He invented it!

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did invent the internet, as Senator Carr observes!

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

I thought that was Al Gore!

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unhappily for Senator Bernardi—and I enjoy Senator Bernardi's contributions—these are not trumped up numbers. These are numbers that are available in the public domain. These are numbers that were presented to all of us when nbn co released its corporate plan earlier this year. The particular numbers that interest us most, of course, are that, despite the promise that all homes will be connected by 2016, we now learn that that level of penetration of high-speed broadband will not occur until 2020. We also know that—despite the promise that this could be undertaken for $29½ billion dollars—it could now cost as much as $56 billion. The rollout that is projected in the corporate plan sees a very, very gentle start and then a very, very fast ramp up, coincidentally, just after the next election, when it seems that the nbn co intends to connect most of Australia within just a couple of years. I suggest to people here who are observing the progress of this project that those claims really do stretch credibility. I politely suggest to the new Minister for Communications that he examine very closely the assumptions that underpin that rollout, because my very great concern is that that will be yet another promise that is not able to be delivered to the Australian people.

The very great shame about all of this is that Australia's international competitiveness is absolutely dependent on us making this project work. Even in our region we see our closest neighbours, our trading partners, making very great investments and pursuing the very kind of project—the very kind of excellent NBN—that Labor envisaged. What are South Korea pursuing? They are pursuing fibre to the premises. What are Japan pursuing? Fibre to the premises. What are Singapore pursuing? Fibre to the premises. In New Zealand, where they have fibre to the node, they are working swiftly to replace it with fibre to the premises.

As our shadow minister for communications, Jason Clare, told the CommsDay conference just today, two years ago Australia ranked 30th for average peak connection speed. That was just two years ago. We are now ranked 47th. We are falling behind in our connection speed and, again, when we look around our region, we see that, for peak connection speed, the No. 1 spot is held by Singapore. The No. 3 spot is held by South Korea. The No. 4 spot is held by Japan. The US, Canada and most of Europe are ahead of us. We are falling behind, and it is my very great concern that—in a desperate attempt to justify the decisions that were made by the former communications minister—this government is not addressing a very significant problem that is coming towards us as a country.

We know that there is significant research that links internet penetration and internet speed to economic growth, economic productivity and innovation. Internet penetration and internet speed help in so many ways. They work by facilitating the adoption of more efficient business processes, by accelerating innovation and by introducing new consumer applications and services, and they lead to efficiencies by better linking different parts of the economy—different labour pools, raw materials and different businesses to one another.

But we are missing out. We are at risk of missing out, because the former communications minister—who is, of course, now the Prime Minister—thought that he knew best. He thought that he could change horses midstream and that, through his own understanding of the industry, he could deliver this. Of course, what we are seeing is that the project—based on old technology based on copper—is not proceeding at the speed that is required, and it is a very great shame for this country.

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the motion to take note of answers given by Senator Fifield to questions from Senator McAllister earlier. Before I move on to my comments I will suggest that Senator McAllister moves out of the densely populated area in which she lives and comes and has a look around the state in which I live and at places like Buckleboo, Cummins and Roxby Downs, where connecting fibre to the premises—under the plan that Mr Clare announced today—is simply fantasy. Fantasy is exactly what you have to consider in terms of how this opposition would seek to govern if it were ever entrusted to do so.

Does the shadow communications minister talk to the shadow Treasurer about how they are going to cost this fantasy? The published nbn co 2016 corporate plan forecast that an all-fibre-line build would require a peak funding of somewhere between $74 billion and $84 billion. Quite honestly, given the earlier musings of previous minister for communications Senator Conroy of $40 billion, that number is somewhat fanciful. Extra civil works required for fibre to the home would cost tens of billions of dollars more and take vastly more time to finish—Australians would wait some 10 years longer if these operations of the NBN were taken up.

Senator McAllister mentioned countries like Japan, South Korea and Singapore. I must remind Senator McAllister that those countries are highly populated with areas no bigger than the Wimmera in Victoria—the size of Gippsland in this country. We are an island nation sparsely populated all around the coastal regions, which is why it is so exciting that we have just seen the launch on 1 October of the new NBN satellite, Sky Muster.

Sky Muster is the first of two satellites built to deliver fast broadband to outback Queensland, outback New South Wales and outback Western Australia—all the remote areas in Australia. It was launched from French Guiana on the 1st and will be in place tomorrow. From there on out—they call it 'parking the satellite'—it will be tested from the 15th until March next year. They will ensure that all the retail services—all the services which are going to be so important to education and to ensuring that we have medical services delivered to those regional areas—will be in place. The entire Australian mainland, Tasmania and five other islands—Christmas, Cocos, Lord Howe, Norfolk and Macquarie—will be covered by this satellite.

This is what this coalition government does: it gets things done. It does not talk about it. It does not put fanciful operational plans in place that are unfunded and unlikely to ever be part of what this country will see. It is a bit like now when you see the shadow minister for defence—the minister for communications in a previous government—talking about submarines and shipbuilding and all that. It is gay abandon, no corporate responsibility and corporate welfare everywhere. It is just the unfunded recklessness that we have come to understand about the way in which the Labor Party operate. They are, frighteningly, the alternative government in this country. The NBN's uniform national approach is a good system. It will roll out on time. It will deliver to 10 million customers in gig time, and I am surprised it was question No. 1 today. (Time expired)

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

The Prime Minister has again broken a promise, and here I want to talk about Tasmania and the NBN. His solemn promise to Tasmania was that existing NBN contracts would be honoured. That includes the master contract that would deliver a fibre-to-the-premises network across the state.

On the 17 August 2013 in The Examiner,Mr Turnbull confirmed a previous pledge to honour all existing contracts signed by NBN Co to roll out fibre to the premises in Tasmania. He said:

…the alternative would be to breach them and that is a course we would not countenance …

I want to talk specifically about the West Coast of Tasmania. The West Coast of Tasmania faces twin challenges of geographic isolation and the need to build a diverse economic base. To achieve this, they need the fibre-to-the-premises broadband that was planned by the Labor government. When we were in government, we planned to have fibre to the premises to Queenstown, Zion and Roseberry. Those are the three major centres on the West Coast of Tasmania. What this government has now promised them is satellite. Satellite is fine. It is great for small remote areas—it operates quite well—but not for vital regional hubs, which these communities are. In fact, not only is it vital for the West Coast to have a proper NBN service of fibre to the premises, which is what was promised; it is economically sensible to do that. This is a region that has gone through a very difficult time over the past 12 or so months, with two mine closures, hundreds of jobs going out of that town and the town crying out for economic diversity to look beyond the mining industry to what other opportunities they can provide to the people who not only live in their region but also who want to come and live in their region or visit their region. But, more importantly, it is for businesses to build their base and for business coming out of that region.

One of the things that the West Coast Council has done is develop a West Coast Community Plan up to 2025. They did that in consultation with the entire community. It features a number of broad aspects, but there is one particular section in it that talks about our economy. In that section it talks about a sustainable, dynamic and resilient business sector. In that section it also talks about identifying opportunities to improve access to broadband and wireless technologies for business. The West Coast needs these sorts of things. They need it for e-health. They need it to diversify their economy and to grow business and jobs.

There are also emerging businesses on the West Coast. Last week, I attended an industry conference on the West Coast. There were about 10 speakers at that industry conference, and most of those speakers again focused on a proper NBN service for the West Coast to be able to deal with the business needs within that community. There is a lot that could be offered in that community. Mayor Phil Vickers and the general manager, Dirk Dowling, thought the best thing that they could do was to go up and talk to the local member, Mr Brett Whiteley. So off they went up the coast—about a 3½ hour drive—to visit Mr Whiteley on a Monday morning. They had a reasonable discussion, I understand, about NBN. But what he said to them was: 'Try the satellite. If, after six months, it is no good then come back to me.' That is no security for business. There is no future in that for this region to try and diversify. It is just simply not good enough that a member of parliament who represents a region that is going through a specifically difficult time could contemplate not even trying to fight for that region in providing them with a proper NBN service.

The service that is being offered to them via the satellite will not work on the West Coast. It simply will not work there, because it is a vital regional hub. Also, satellite broadband in that area is prone to failure and service disruption in heavy rain conditions. The West Coast averages 2,450 millimetres of rain a year. So it is just not acceptable. I wrote to the new Minister for Communications, Senator Fifield, on 23 September— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.