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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Communications (Senator Fifield) to a question without notice asked by Senator O'Neill today.

It's a long time now since we heard the answer to the question, because we had some very important questions that were raised by you, Senator Lines, and by those who participated in the recent debate. In that ensuing period of time, the minister's absolutely forgettable answer is another example of how detached this government is from the real and pressing problem that is confronting Australians, who are getting sold an absolute dud of an NBN.

The first part of my question was about complaints that were put on record by TPG who said: 'With fibre to the node'—which sadly has been now inflicted on 4.5 million Australians and delivered the inferior technology decided for them by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull—'we're not allowed to lodge a fault with the NBN, unless the line performs at less than 12 megabits per second'. In response to that concern, which is of such significance to Australians right across this country, we got the equivalent of buffering from Minister Fifield—the wait for a proper answer while it just goes around and around in a circle. We keep hearing the same thing over and over again. That's the experience that people are having across the country. It's not just that circle of watching the buffering going on; it's the dance where you get sent from NBN to the retail service provider. Now let's add the fact that it could be your modem, so you get sent to the shop to spend a few hundred dollars on a modem that you don't need, because the problem isn't your modem. The problem is that your government is inflicting this disaster on you, and your experience as a business is absolutely devastatingly bad.

We've heard evidence in the last several weeks, in the north of Tasmania and also on the Central Coast, where I come from, which reveals how taxing this experience is. The minister's says in his most reasonable voice: 'Look, if you're having a problem, just talk to your retail service provider. They'll fix it up. Or, if that isn't good, talk to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. In all sincerity, I'm sure you'll have your problem fixed.' The problem isn't getting fixed. The minister is not on the job. He doesn't give a damn. He doesn't care about the fact that we're getting evidence like this from Belinda Mabbott, who runs a fantastic small landscape supply business on the Central Coast, who says: 'Over 12 months nearly to the day, we managed to rack up 17 case managers; at least eight technicians' appointments—only two came into our yard—a full folder of emails with thickness of two centimetres; countless phone calls and messages to my mobile; paperwork; submissions to the ombudsman; and finally a call to our local member, Emma McBride, who subsequently got us the assistance that we needed.'

That's what's happening across this country. The Liberal members are like the minister; denying the problem, ignoring the reality, cruelling people's businesses and cruelling people's access to essential services. There's a wonderful gentleman by the name of Mr Barry Egan, who gave me an absolute wad of paperwork in which he had documented his experience. He's really concerned that older people, who haven't got as much energy and capacity as he has, are actually suffering in silence. They are being rejected by the TIO, rejected by their retail service provider. They are spending money on modems that don't work and, all the while, this minister ignores the reality.

We heard evidence in Tasmania—and Senator Urquhart is whipping here for us on the opposition benches. She was absolutely on a unity ticket with the CEO of the copper mine in north-west Tasmania. A copper mine—remember, we're getting our telecoms down the copper, the technology from last century. The CEO, Mr Peter Walker, said and agreed with Senator Urquhart, that copper won't cut it. Everyone knows it. Even the man who is an advocate for the copper mine knows it. He knows he has to have fibre to do the job that he needs to do to get the efficiencies in and create jobs for people in north-west Tasmania.

We heard from Virginia Bower, a podiatrist from the St Johns Foot Clinic. This is how she described her experience of trying to get the NBN on, and the cuts to services that she's experienced in her business: 'Effectively, we were electronically handcuffed.' I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard: 'Oh my God. I just wish I had my ADSL back.'

The NBN has been a wasteful rollout of $49 billion by people who should have known better. Instead of listening to the experts, they delivered and inflicted Malcolm Turnbull's mess on us. Thank you.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Senator O'Neill's interesting contribution, there was one fairly major omission—one major fact in this debate that went unremarked upon—that I think is worth repeating and placing on the record as a matter of history.

How did we get to where we are today with the NBN? We didn't get here because the coalition proposed and suggested that it was a good idea for the government to build a national network of communications. We didn't get here because we commenced during our time in government a multibillion-dollar scheme to push aside the private sector and institute a government intervention on a national scale. We didn't get here even because the private sector embarked on this and were not successful. We got to where we are today because a government which she was part of, the Rudd government, decided that it knew best. The Rudd government knew best. The Rudd government would be able to build a national broadband network, it would be able to build it better than the private sector and it would be able to build it with no costs, no consequences, no faults and no issues.

Well, look what's happened. Look what's happened, first on their watch, and then look at the effort that we've gone to to fix up the mess that they left us. On their watch, by 2013 Labor fell short of 83 per cent of their rollout targets—83 per cent! It was a dismal failure on their watch. What has this government had to do? This government has had to make the tough decisions necessary to deliver this program, to deliver it on time, to deliver it on budget and to deliver it in a meaningful way for the Australian people.

It was the Labor Party which was dismally failing to achieve these targets when they were in office. By contrast, in just a few short years upon coming to government and by making some tough decisions about the best way to roll out this program, the Turnbull government has delivered. The Turnbull government has ensured that the NBN is in fact being rolled out, that it is in fact being connected to people's homes in a way that it never would have been under the previous government. We could have had no guarantees that it would have been done under the previous Prime Minister.

We know that, because when it was on their watch, when it was under their stewardship, they failed time and time again. They met none of their financial targets and they met none of their rollout targets. It was a failure that had to be fixed. That's the contrast. This government, upon taking over this program, took it over with a pretty dismal statistic in place: 51,000 fixed and wireless premises had been rolled out by the previous government—51,000! By contrast, each week under this government 32,000 connections are rolled out for a total of 5.8 million addresses that are today NBN ready and 2.6 million customers that are connected.

Senator O'Neill described it as being 'inflicted' upon these people. I doubt that's how they feel about the NBN service that they are now able to access, and are able to access in a more affordable way than they would have been able to under the previous government. They have it all, when there was no promise that it would ever actually get there under the previous government and under their method of delivery. More than 11,000 premises have been made ready for service on the NBN every working day in the past year. We achieve in a week what the Rudd government was not able to achieve in years under their program.

The Turnbull government takes very seriously the complaints and concerns that some consumers have raised about their transition to the NBN, and we have a number of initiatives in place to respond to those concerns. In April, the government announced funding for the ACCC to conduct a broadband performance monitoring and reporting program. The ACCC is currently seeking 4,000 volunteer customers of retail service providers across the country to participate in the monitoring program. The BPMR program will enable consumers to compare speeds delivered in peak periods by independent reporting of broadband speeds. Performance information is a key factor for consumers when purchasing their plans from their retailer.

As the minister outlined in his answer to the senator's questions in question time, there are a number of factors that can lead to slower-than-expected performance, and many of those factors are of course in the hands of retail service providers, not the NBN. In addition to the ACCC program that I mentioned, the Turnbull government is empowering ACMA to conduct research and collect data on the NBN customer experience. ACMA is commissioning this research to obtain information directly from customers about their experience before, during and also after migration to the NBN. The research will span the range of technologies that are used to connect households and businesses to the network. ACMA will be using its formal powers under the Telecommunications Act to collect information from businesses across the NBN supply chain.

This is a government which is fixing Labor's mess on the NBN. This is a government which is delivering the NBN in a way they never could.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again, Senator Paterson is just putting government spin on something that is completely untrue. The minister's answer has revealed just another chapter in the saga of the delays, the cost blowouts and the broken promises in the rollout of Malcolm Turnbull's second-rate copper NBN.

When Mr Turnbull changed the method of delivery for fixed line premises, he called it the 'multitechnology mix'. My constituents in Tasmania are calling it 'Malcolm Turnbull's mess'. They're blatantly calling it that. They have no regard for what the government has done to what the Labor Party initially started as a great process. We all remember, before the 2013 election, when 'Mr Broadband' himself stood before the then Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, hoping to be the leader once again—we know that—and promised that the NBN would be delivered by the end of 2016. Well, can I tell you he missed that target by 7 million homes.

Mr Turnbull also promised that the NBN would cost $29.5 billion. That cost has now blown out to $49 billion. And, because private investors don't want to go anywhere near Mr Turnbull's second-rate copper network, the government has had to bail out the project with a $19.5 billion loan. In 2013, Mr Turnbull promised NBN users of his second-rate copper network that they could upgrade to full fibre for $2,250. Well, the average cost to date is $15,800, and some individuals have been quoted as much as $149,000. It's no wonder that NBN customers on the second-rate copper network want to upgrade to full fibre, because the copper network is a mess. A recent Choice survey found that NBN users are experiencing slow speeds and dropouts 76 per cent of the time.

The NBN Co's chief, Bill Morrow, might like to blame customers or the retail service provider—in fact, anyone but his own company—but Australians aren't buying it. They know that under the instructions of Mr Turnbull, Senator Cormann and Senator Fifield, that NBN Co are rolling out an outdated network using last century's technology. And we know on this side that the overwhelming majority of complaints about service dropouts and slow speeds relate to the second-rate, copper based NBN. Figures from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman show that an NBN user is five times more likely to complain than users of other telecommunications services. And seven out of 10 of the postcodes that the TIO receives complaints from are served by fibre to the node.

I know personally about these complaints, as do my Tasmanian colleagues in the House—Julie Collins, the member for Franklin, and Brian Mitchell, the member for Lyons—because, along with Michelle Rowlands, our shadow communications minister, we held a public meeting. We had over 100 southern Tasmanian residents in a room that was packed. We held this meeting a few weeks ago. We heard those residents talk about the delays, the dropouts, the multivisits by technicians and being sent two or three modems. Almost all of these related to Mr Turnbull's outdated copper network.

And, just while we're talking about Tasmania, I still have to remind people—I've talked about it a few times—that there's a little area about 17 minutes south of Hobart called Howden, with 600-odd households. They were completely left off the map continually until I started asking questions in estimates about why they kept being left off the map. They couldn't get anything. They are 17 minutes from a capital city and they couldn't get access to anything. As I've said before in this place, a full fibre rollout for fixed-line connections is inevitable, because it's the technology that Australians not only need but they're actually demanding for today.

Fibre to the premises is the technology we need if we are to compete in the global digital economy. It's the technology, let me remind people, that is being rolled out by competing nations overseas, including in the UK, where British Telecom is considering building a full fibre network. That's right. That is the same British Telecom that Mr Turnbull pointed to as an example of the success of his flawed copper based approach. They're now considering plans to deliver— (Time expired)

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to contribute to this debate. It's quite amazing: where's Senator Conroy? Senator Conroy ran in the 2 July election last year. He was elected for six years, I believe, but he's done a runner; we can't find him. Let's go back to Senator Conroy. What did he do? He hopped into the plane with then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and pulled out an envelope with the original plan of the Labor NBN. What a way to plan to spend billions and billions of dollars—riding around with an envelope in a VIP jet with the then Prime Minister, Mr Rudd. So, away went the Conroy plan for the NBN!

I remember when they came into Armidale. I was there about to catch a plane from Sydney to Canberra—I believe Senator Conroy was actually on the plane back with me—when the VIP jet came. There was a big stage, a chart and an electronic board. They were there, with the cameras, to pull the switch to turn on the NBN in Armidale. There it was: the flashy political show put on by the then Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, and former senator Stephen Conroy. They pulled the switch down and said, 'It's on. Now Armidale has the NBN.' There was only one problem: there was nothing hooked to the back of the switch. There were no wires there. It was a big show piece. How proud they were about the NBN going into Armidale! But then the problems started. That's what happened: we inherited a mess from Senator Conroy and former Prime Minister Rudd's back-of-the-envelope planning of the NBN

I would remind the Senate that the NBN has met its milestones over the last three financial years, as we've tried to clean this mess up. It remains on track and on budget, with more than half of all households now being able to access an NBN service. Let's look back a bit. Let's not forget that Labor's NBN fell 83 per cent short of its 2013 rollout targets. That means just 17 per cent of the targets were met. That's not a very good record. So much for serving the interests of broadband consumers! Only 51,000 fixed and wireless premises were ever connected to the NBN under Labor, whereas under the coalition government the rollout has now reached a new peak of more than 32,000 connections in a single week.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are now 32,000 connections in a single week, and you had 51,000 over how many years? It's a big difference. The peak funding target of $49 billion announced almost two years ago has stayed the same, as has the completion date of 2020. Sure, it's taking longer to roll out the NBN. It's a big country.

I'm very pleased to see so many of the wireless NBN towers being constructed in rural and regional areas. I was talking to my wife, who runs a small newspaper, just recently. She told me that previously, when another of the few independent newspapers left in northern New South Wales had finished putting their paper together and sent it off to the printers, it would take 1½ hours to email a 12-page newspaper to the printer. Now, with the NBN, it takes them 45 seconds. That's a big difference—1½ hours to 45 seconds. That's the improvement.

Sure there are some gremlins. I'm aware of that. I've had people ring me and say: 'We've established a new business. We've notified Telstra and other carriers, who'll be hooking us up, and we'll be starting the business next week.' They've given a month's notice to Telstra, but, when they open their business, there's no phone and no NBN. We've got a bit of a blame game going on. Some of the telcos are blaming NBN Co, while NBN Co are saying: 'It's not our fault. We've hooked it up. The telcos are not doing their job.' I hope that blame game stops, and we get it rolled out and completed as soon as possible. But it is a big country, and I commend Minister Fifield for the work he's done with the NBN after inheriting a mess from Senator Conroy. I wonder why he left? Never mind. He packed up and did the bolt.

NBN Co has hit every rollout target in every quarter for more than three years, and the company is now transitioning from building the network to also being an operator of critical national infrastructure that is serving millions of homes and businesses across the nation. Over the past year the number of premises able to access the NBN has doubled, so it's getting there. It's rolling the NBN out quicker than it ever did under Labor, and I think it's very cheeky for Labor, through Senator O'Neill, to even raise this topic, given the mess they made of this organisation. (Time expired)

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the problem for those opposite that they fail to grasp here is that they've now been in power for four years. Yes, more people are connecting to the NBN. And that is effectively the problem: more people are connecting and realising what a dud this NBN is. And there are many customers out there disappointed with the lacklustre response they get from the NBN. Today, I think what we saw from Senator Fifield was a lacklustre response to our question that was put to him. Every day, you see another disappointed NBN customer, whether it be through the work that the NBN committee has been doing or whether through the series of NBN crisis forums that have been held throughout Australia over recent months. I know that there was one, as Senator Bilyk mentioned, in Tasmania. I hosted one in the northern suburbs of Mackay. The member for Oxley hosted one as well. I know that they've also been happening in South Australia. I commend the work that Michelle Rowland, as the shadow minister, and Stephen Jones, as the shadow minister for regional communications, have been putting in, listening to the concerns of people particularly in regional Queensland.

There is a consistent message coming through from people: they're disappointed with the NBN. It's causing frustrations, it's costing jobs and it's denying Australians opportunities, particularly for those in regional Queensland. For many years, regional Queenslanders and regional Australians looked upon the NBN as a great opportunity. They thought that it would provide economic opportunity. They thought that it would provide educational opportunity. And they thought it would provide health opportunities, particularly for those in regional and remote areas. But the reality is hitting home, and the people of regional areas, in particular, are very disappointed.

As I mentioned, every day there is another media report about how inferior this product is and the frustrations that it is causing. I mentioned the NBN crisis forums that have been held across Australia in recent months. And there was a consistency of views that came through. One was around NBN technicians not turning up for appointments when they were scheduled, or failure to match advertised speed once they had been connected. More than half Australians have had disconnections or dropouts and speed slowdowns in the last six months. The service is notoriously unreliable. And I think those opposite are believing the constant spin from the NBN Co themselves and their ever-growing number of PR officers to believe that this is actually functioning effectively for them. But the problem is: no-one is willing to take ownership of the problem. Even though they've been in government for four years, they're continuing to blame Labor. But the punters are working them out. They're connecting, they're the ones who are frustrated and they're the ones who will hold this government to account.

As I mentioned, I was in my duty electorate of Dawson a couple of weeks ago and we held an NBN crisis forum. It was interesting that the member for Dawson, George Christensen, ordered a couple of NBN staff to go along to hear the complaints firsthand. I think it shows you how concerned they are about the impact this is having on the community. We heard a number of reports from businesspeople in the community about the negative impact that the NBN is having. This was consistent. We heard from Lyn, who had to extend her eight-hour work day to 16 hours so that she could operate at speed outside of normal working hours. We heard from Mark, a small business owner. His business is redoing floorboards. You could imagine that in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie it was a really important business. The phone number he got given six months ago was still not connected. Although he was advertising his services, when you actually rang to repair your floor after the damage of Cyclone Debbie you couldn't actually get through. So this was costing jobs and economic opportunity but also the ability of people to rebuild in those cyclone-affected communities.

We also heard from a family who said that their daughter, to use the internet, had to go to the local Macca's to use the wi-fi to do her homework because it was more reliable than the service offered from the NBN. I heard numerous stories throughout regional Queensland. When I was at Annandale State School I heard about the failure to connect with the School of Distance Education to do coding training. There was a series of problems in regional Queensland that were identified with the NBN that is being delivered by this government. They have had a lame duck as minister—the previous minister responsible, who is the current PM. They've seen the same under Minister Fifield as well. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.