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

I rise tonight to speak on behalf of the constituents in the electorate of Dickson, one of my duty electorates. I was very pleased to accept a petition signed by 1,600 residents and have tabled the Samford Valley Districts NBN petition in this place. I've spoken recently in this place about the difficulties experienced by the Samford Valley Districts residents with the NBN. I'm pleased to say that the residents are taking action. Local residents from the Samford Valley Districts area, postcode 4520, are represented by two advocacy groups: Samford & Districts Progress & Protection Association, and the Samford NBN Advocacy Group, led by local resident Mr Sean Ferguson. The suburbs affected at the 4520 postcode include Wights Mountain, Yugar, Samford Village, Samsonvale, Samford, Samford Valley, Mount Glorious, Kobble Creek, Mount Samson, Mount Nebo, Enoggera Reservoir, Draper, Jollys Lookout, Highvale, Camp Mountain, Armstrong Creek, Closeburn and Cedar Creek.

The group has met with me; Michelle Rowland, the shadow minister for communications; and Ms Ali France, the Labor candidate for Dickson, to talk about the fact that it's affecting the residential and business access to the NBN. The residents of Dickson want action. In my capacity as duty senator for the Dickson electorate and committee member on the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network, the advocacy group has asked me to table their petition with 1,600 signatures and to speak in the Senate to represent their concerns—primarily, their opposition to the current allocation of fixed wireless and satellite across 65 per cent of the 4520 area.

We've all heard the painful stories from residents and businesses that suffer appalling NBN services. The negative impact is devastating to many businesses, particularly small businesses. Problems faced by the residents and businesses in the Samford Valley district are different in the sense that the area has a higher-than-the-national-average percentage of small businesses and entrepreneurs, all requiring reliable broadband services, and the area constitutes the largest national rollout of NBN fixed wireless and satellite technologies within a metropolitan area.

Originally scheduled for rollout in 2016, many 4520 suburbs are soon to receive a multitechnology mix, where 65 per cent of residents are destined to be allocated fixed wireless and satellite NBN due to oversubscription of the fixed wireless towers and the unique topographical issues in the area—mountains, valleys, rainforest, trees and vegetation, acreage and farms, urban and semirural mix—which impact on reliability, with residents experiencing frequent dropouts and outages. In addition, it's interesting to note that NBN Co categorises the Samford and district 4520 area as semirural, whereas telecommunications companies classify the area as metropolitan.

Like many areas in Australia, the Samford Valley district is another casualty of the multitechnology mix, effectively creating a digital divide of inequality across the suburbs. Due to poor planning or a lack of understanding, a number of properties on Samford Road, the main road into Samford Village, have been allocated to NBN satellite—all less than one kilometre from the Samford Telstra exchange. The absurdity is that some ready-for-satellite-service properties are within 200 metres of the Samford exchange. Understandably concerned that their area will continue to be a digital backwater for decades to come if the current NBN plan for the 4520 district is allowed to continue unchanged or unchallenged, some consumers are reverting to their ADSL service. This is unfair and unequal.

It's not just the Samford Valley that feels let down by their local member, Mr Dutton. My office regularly receives calls for help with the NBN. Just this week we received another two calls from upset Dickson residents—an elderly couple who were quoted hundreds of dollars to organise their own electrician to enable an NBN connection, and a single elderly lady who watched properties around her having NBN-enabling technology installed from late 2017 while repeatedly being told that it wouldn't occur on her property because she had Foxtel and Optus cables. Well, she doesn't have Foxtel or Optus cables. Now that the NBN switchover is imminent, she's been told she has to outlay hundreds of dollars. In both of these cases, the residents have been buck-passed from the telecommunication providers to NBN and back again in a classic case of NBN ping-pong. It's astonishing that, despite a $21.4 billion cost blowout and a rollout delay of four years, the Liberals can't meet their own local mandate in Queensland.

Labor will continue to work with local communities like Samford. While Mr Dutton has let his community down, Labor has a strong voice in Ali France, the federal Labor candidate for Dickson. Together we call on the government to stop rushing this inferior technology across the Samford Valley district area. We call on the government to ensure that NBN Co delivers fair and equitable broadband services across this community—to the homes, the schools and the businesses—by providing residents with the necessary and appropriate technology to meet their needs and expectations now and into the future.