Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today on behalf of Kerry Collison of Glen Waverley in complete exasperation regarding his ongoing disasters with the NBN. His business is now at risk of going broke as NBN Co and Telstra will not fix his phone and internet connections. Kerry is a 73-year-old veteran who runs Sid Harta Publishers, a publishing business. He employs over 25 editors located around Australia. He has edited books for over 550 Australian authors. It's a niche business that publishes almost exclusively Australian authors and titles. As you would imagine, a reliable telephone and internet connection is absolutely critical for his business. It would be impossible to overstate the importance of having a working phone when you're trying to connect to 25 staff around the country and to customers. Six months on since connecting to the NBN in February 2017 he continues to experience appalling problems. He has constant landline drop-outs. If he's lucky enough to got a connection, it will almost certainly cut out eventually. Clients think he has just hung on them, so they give up and go elsewhere. His business is losing opportunities, and these jobs are now under threat. The statistics are shocking; he has given us the data. Prior to the NBN he received at least four projects every month. He has now had four in six months. He is clear that it's his phone line that's wrecking his business. He has escalated these problems with NBN Co and Telstra. Guess what? He gets the same old refrain: they blame each other. It has gone on for months.

Kerry contacted me last week and said he has had enough. He's stuck in groundhog day. I spoke to him this morning and I was stunned with his update. He was on the phone to NBN Co at lunchtime. He said it was like the first conversation—he was back in the loop, back in the black hole. And then came the killer. He'd gone to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, they'd recommended compensation, he'd applied for that and, effectively, NBN Co said, 'We're not going to process compensation until we fix the problem.' As he said, 'They're willing to let my business go broke and lose 25 jobs,' upsetting 300 to 400 authors who are dependent on him, 'and they can't fix the problem.' This is a terrible new twist in the saga of the Liberal's NBN. You wouldn't have thought it could get worse than the rollout, but, as it turns out, it could—actually getting connected to the NBN and it doesn't work. What's the point of compensation if a business can't access it until it goes broke?

It is known internationally that copper produces two to three times the faults as fibre. It's time to admit that this is a stuff-up, stop the copper and, in the meantime, fix Kerry's connection. I had planned to ask the Prime Minister a question in question time this week. Given the circus of the government falling to bits in front of it, I will ask it now. My question to the Prime Minister and the minister is: what does the government say to Kerry, his 25 employees and all the other businesses around Australia that are suffering because of the government's incompetence? When will his phone line be fixed?