Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The delusions of Turnbullistan continue to the detriment of Western Australia. Recently, Turnbullistani Senator Dean Smith claimed credit for the 5,000 premises passed by the NBN in the beautiful coastal city of Geraldton between September 2013 and January 2014. They were contracts met and advanced before the Emperor of Turnbullistan had the chance to halt the introduction of 21st century infrastructure. What has happened, however, since Geraldton has been annexed into Turnbullistan, is that their NBN map has been radically changed. Like the Ukraine, the people of Geraldton awoke to find that their map had been chopped up, with four FSAM areas deleted from the fibre-to-the-node plan and placed into the land of copper wire. Thousands of households in Geraldton will now not be able to take part in the digital future that the city of Geraldton has worked so hard to carve out. Geraldton is one of only two cities in Australia that has qualified for the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge. The city has done an extraordinary job. The needs of the world have changed. Unfortunately that seems to have escaped the Emperor of Turnbullistan.