Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What is it? Four thousand people, so that is actually four connections for every person that works; that is not a good return. What is important tonight to my constituents is that the NBN will not be completed until at least the early 2020s. Technology will have made some amazing advances in that period. I would suspect, and I have been informed on very good authority, that we will actually be getting very high speed even through wireless. We have seen that in the last 12 months. Some areas with poor services will be waiting over a decade for a solution and they are not guaranteed that solution.

I point this out because currently there are no plans even in the next 12 months to roll out Labor's so-called superfast broadband in Barker. There are areas in Barker, being a country electorate, with some very rural parts. They have battled with telecommunication issues for some time. Originally it was phones, then it was faxes. Now they are having real problems and they are getting left behind. I have constituents who hear about this so-called superfast NBN and they quite rightly want to know when they will have that service at their door. The very simple answer is: not for a long time ever in the seat of Barker.

Ms O'Neill interjecting—

It is a pity that the member could not be a bit more humorous; it was not very funny. In many regional areas and parts of our major cities the quality of broadband is poor. Performance and reliability do not meet the basic needs of most residential and business users. But with our plan it would have been already in place and the rural areas would have already been serviced. Broadband should cost the same in regional and remote areas as in the city, but this government wants to hide the cost of it all. The coalition wants to prioritise broadband black spots in both metropolitan and regional areas in allocating that funding. We have had success with that in the past. Broadband must first be improved in areas where this is most urgently needed, not where it suits NBN Co to roll out its network or to make a certain Independent happy. The coalition would provide subsidies to ensure high-quality services are extended to parts of regional Australia where they would otherwise be uncommercial.

I want to call on the minister once again to provide answers to the people of Barker. Can the minister please tell people living in Angaston, Barmera, Berri, Bordertown, Kapunda, Keith, Kingston, Loxton, Lyndoch, Mannum, and the list goes on, when construction will start on the optical fibre service they have been promised on the NBN Co website? Then can the minister please let the people of Beachport, Kalangadoo, Mount Burr, Nangwarry, Port MacDonnell, Tantanoola and Tarpeena why they are missing out on the same services as those in towns situated just 20 kilometres away? The minister should tell the people how much they will have to pay on top of the $50 billion taxpayers are already paying to have internet access and what standard internet that will be.

Finally, I would like to point out that there are 94 places in my electorate that carry a postcode and have some sort of concentration of people living there. Yet on the NBN Co website only 29 of those 94 areas have been noted. What about the other 65? What can the minister tell the people living at Glencoe, Cape Jaffa, or even Coonalpyn, on the busiest road in South Australia, on the Dukes Highway, the main road from Adelaide to Melbourne? What can he tell those people? What costs will these people have to pay and what service will they be paying $50 billion for?

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