Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfair critics of the Prime Minister say he can never be taken at his word. However, when he described himself as 'a wavering weathervane', he was indeed accurate. It was not only about the way in which he was dragged by his backbench in regard to our refugee intake this week; on an issue that is more serious to my electorate, the NBN, he was similarly a weathervane moving with the winds. Asking a rhetorical question in December 2010 he said: 'Do we really want to invest $50 billion of hard-earned taxpayers' money in what is essentially a video entertainment system?' I guess he answered that question for himself when he said in 2013: 'I want our NBN rolled out within three years and Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to make this happen.'

This inconsistency on the importance of the NBN has persisted in the government's implementation of it. Claiming that the coalition model would be cheaper to roll out and would be connected faster, Mr Abbott proposed a fibre to the node system which would leave most homes and businesses without an NBN connection unless they paid a large fee to connect their home to the node. The cost of the second-rate NBN commenced at $29.5 billion—half the cost he was complaining about back in 2010. It moved to $41 billion in December 2013 and increased again, to $42 billion, in August 2014. And only last month the latest estimate was that it will now be $56 million.

Where Labor's plan was costed at $44.1 billion and was due to be rolled out by 2021, the coalition's 'faster' model saw Mr Turnbull promise that all Australians would have access to the NBN by the end of 2016. We are a year out from that date. In south-west Sydney, in my electorate and in the Macarthur electorate, people just want an internet connection. In 2009 Australia's broadband systems download speed was estimated at 39th in the world. Since then, under this minister and this wavering Prime Minister, our international ranking has slipped to 59th place this year. Rod Tucker, Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne, has estimated that the shift to fibre to the node technology will cement Australia as an internet backwater and predicts Australia's world ranking to be as low as 100th by 2020.

Many countries that have installed FTTN are now shifting to fibre to the premises as the original NBN rollout was being installed. This change will inevitably occur. Any short-term cost savings will pale against the long-term additional costs of reinstallation. This is a crucial issue in my electorate. I do not exaggerate figures. I do not say hundreds of people are ringing me about refugees. I say hundreds of people have rung me, within Werriwa, about the performance of this government with regard to the NBN, the costs they are incurring and the undermining of their children's education.