Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to speak about the National Broadband Network, a world-class infrastructure project under Labor but which has fallen victim to Mr Turnbull's habit of talking bit and failing to deliver. In fact, the Prime Minister's management of the NBN has become nothing other than a cruel joke. We know that in April 2013, the now Prime Minister promised his second-rate NBN would cost $25.9 billion. In December 2013, the Prime Minister said that his second-rate NBN would cost $41 billion. In August this year, the now Prime Minister indicated his second-rate NBN would cost up to $56 billion and told us we can all have real confidence in those numbers. We have also had recent revelations that NBN is considering replacing the Optus HFC network, which was supposed to make up a key part of the second-rate NBN. This means that the cost is going to blow out again.

Recently I spoke about the NBN and the impact which the government's mismanagement has had on a couple of regions of Queensland, in particular the experience of the Diamantina and Barcoo shire councils. To remind the Senate, I spoke with Ms Julie Groves, mayor of Barcoo, about the fact that they thought they had secured the agreement of the then Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, to future-proof their drought-affected regions. They believed they had a commitment from the Prime Minister to $7 million for their broadband project which was, among other things, going to lay fibre optic cable to the towns in the two shires including Birdsville, Bedourie, Windorah, Stonehenge and Jundah. As I advised the Senate on the last occasion, they were absolutely devastated that the Prime Minister reneged on that commitment, which was given personally as a handshake.

Only Labor understands that access to the National Broadband Network is essential to all Australians, at no matter what location. In communities without access to the NBN, an imminent concern is that overseas trained GPs in those communities may leave rural locations due to their substandard internet access—that is, according to advice from the rural doctors. This mismanagement of the NBN is a matter that Australians are becoming more and more concerned about. This prompted me a couple of weeks ago to hold a forum in the Queensland federal electorate of Dickson on the matter of the NBN. It was a very well attended forum and almost 120 residents of the electorate of Dickson came along. Most of the residents of Dickson do not know when they are going to be able to access high-speed broadband. For some it is even worse, because they do not have internet connectivity at any speed—fast or slow. This unfortunate group in the electorate, and I am sure there are many such groups around the country, has fallen into a black hole of telecommunications that has been created by this government with its redesign of the NBN, which is a redesign that we know will deliver poorer broadband at a high price over a longer period.

One of the problems that has become apparent to me as a result of our recent NBN forum is that there are regions in Queensland that are, not only without an NBN, but at the same time not receiving any alternative slower speed service from their local telcos. The reason is quite simple: the telcos will not upgrade existing network capacity because it will be replaced by the NBN, but there is no prospect of NBN coming to them any time soon. When Labor was in government more than 40,000 homes and businesses in Dickson were scheduled to get superfast fibre-to-the-premises NBN connections by the end of 2016. Fortunately, work had already started on Labor's NBN such that residents and businesses in parts of Petrie and Murrumba Downs are enjoying world-class fibre-to-the-premises connections. These are the few lucky ones. However, suburbs like Brendale, Lawnton, Warner, Bray Park and many others are being left to wait for a second-rate version of the NBN that will have to be upgraded down the track. In essence, Prime Minister Turnbull has created three classes of people in Australia: those who are lucky enough to have fibre all the way to the home; those who have pre-NBN broadband and are condemned to receiving this government's inferior NBN at some time in the future; and those who have no broadband whatsoever and no clear prospect of getting it.

Let me paint the picture of broadband in Queensland by telling you the stories of a few of my constituents. Deb has been trying to get access to ADSL internet at her house in Cashmere since July. She has contacted all of the major telcos and none is able to provide her with a service—not now, nor at any time in the future. The local exchange will not be upgraded because NBN is on its way. NBN was due to arrive in Deb's area in September but it has now been postponed until March 2016. The area she moved into has many new houses under construction and more and more land releases, but no broadband connection is being provided to any of these homes.

Then there is Andrew, a software developer who works in Brisbane for a transport modelling consultancy. Six months ago Andrew moved with his fiancee to Bunya, which is an hour's drive to the north of Brisbane. Given that Andrew's work involves sitting at a computer most of the time, he was planning on working from home some days each week to save on the long commute and to spend more time with his fiancee. Andrew did not think that getting an internet connection would be a problem. Sadly, Andrew's assumption could not be further from the truth. Over the last five months he has applied to iiNet for ADSL; Telstra for cable internet; TPG for ADSL; Optus for a home 4G connection and Telstra for ADSL. None of these inquiries has resulted in Andrew getting a solution that will allow him to work from home. One possibility he explored with Telstra was to get an HFC connection to his home from the HFC cable running down his street. Telstra took two months to provide a quote for this work, and that quote to run a cable 200 metres to his house was for $16,500.

Finally. there is Cath. Two years ago Cath moved to a suburb of Brisbane called Eatons Hill. Cath and her husband each run a home-based business and they also have teenage children. You can imagine their surprise when they discovered that in their new home they could not get a home phone, fax or internet connection. It was the same story: the Albany Creek exchange that would serve her suburb was not being upgraded because the NBN was coming. Telstra was unable to advise when that would be and, two years later, Cath is desperate. To satisfy the needs of her business and her family, Cath is now paying over $400 each month for a toggle that provides her with 55 gigabytes of data. Despite paying this amount for internet, Cath still does not have a home phone or fax line. The coalition's three-year plan expects to have a fibre-to-the-node service in Eatons Hill by 2017 at the earliest, and some areas are not due to connect until sometime in 2018. That means that Cath, who has already waited for two years, will have to wait another two to three years to get internet access and a total of five years just to get a phone line.

I wonder if the Prime Minister would be so tolerant of his NBN if he had recently purchased a house, only to discover that it has no internet access and that no telco is willing to provide it. Under the former Labor government, the fibre-to-the-premises rollout of broadband was scheduled to connect around 42,000 homes in Dickson by June 2016. By the time of the election in 2013 Labor had begun construction to connect approximately 7,500 homes and businesses in Dickson. As a result, this group of residents has surged ahead of other Australians, receiving the world-class fibre-to-the-premises network that Labor promised. Most will be connected by March 2016. Before the last election Mr Turnbull promised that those areas that needed broadband would get it first, but instead we have a total failure in the delivery of this inferior broadband network. Instead of expediting its rollout at lower cost as promised, the government has actually taken some of our regions backwards to the point where having a simple telephone line has become a privilege.

Labor believes that Australians deserve better than the second-rate version of the NBN that Prime Minister Turnbull has promised. The horror stories that we are hearing today are only the beginning of a travesty that is unfolding before our eyes.