Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the electorate of Lalor there has been an ongoing conversation about a lack of access to high-speed broadband. Of course, being in a growth corridor, we are in a unique circumstance, with up to 5,000 and 6,000 people a year moving into the electorate. It gives us an extraordinary mix of greenfield, brownfield and those who are stuck in the middle. What it means is that there are large areas in Lalor with no access to the NBN. There are large areas stuck using wireless only—a very expensive option—as well as those who can only access ADSL1 and lots with ADSL2. There are very few, comparatively, with access to the NBN.

You can imagine what is going to happen in the electorate today when they read the newspapers and find out that the Prime Minister, in organising his second-rate version of the NBN, is now having to come clean on the fact that the cost is going to blow out again. It was already more expensive, taking longer and not providing what was originally planned. We now find out that in this process we have bought a dud. We have bought the dud Optus HFC network that is not going to be able to do what the Prime Minister, when he was Minister for Communications, said it would. A key component of Prime Minister Turnbull's second-rate NBN is likely to have to be replaced at cost, of course, to the taxpayer. We have purchased a dud and now we are going to have to pay more to get it fixed. Meanwhile, in homes in the electorate, people are still being locked out. They cannot be agile and innovative if they are locked out of 21st-century technology. People in my electorate are being left behind. They will be shocked. They will be disappointed. They will be angry when they find out today, when they open their newspapers, about the waste already and the waste to come.

The serious part of this is that our micro, our small and our large businesses are being stifled. They are being stifled by being locked out of 21st century technology. They are angry because the NBN was going to be a world-class infrastructure project and now it feels like a compromise. I know that this government wants to rule a line under the Abbott years and pretend that these last two years did not happen. People in my electorate will remember, Prime Minister, that you were the Minister for Communications and this is your mess.