Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We heard earlier in the week about some NBN issues in my electorate when, in question time, I put a question to the minister. I remind the minister that back in 2010, in the lead-up to the election, there were promises made to the people of Swan that the roll-out of NBN in Victoria Park that would commence in June 2011. That actually took a fair time to come to fruition. They started the roll-out in October 2012. That was just another poor performance by the NBN in their process of rolling things out.

The minister can probably enlighten me on the processes for the selection of the NBN projects. Many people in the electorate at that time thought that it was a purely political allocation to Victoria Park, because there were plenty of areas that had more need. The candidate for the Labor Party at that time was obviously focusing on Victoria Park as that was the area where he thought he could get the most bang for his buck from the NBN. At that particular time, in the lead-up to the election, the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council had made a fantastic submission on behalf of the area of Belmont to the minister. The minister had come out and said that it was a fantastic submission and he thought it definitely merited looking at. But it never got a mention. All of a sudden the allocation of the NBN project roll-out went to Victoria Park. Victoria Park had not even put a submission in.

How does the process work? Belmont Park is an area where there is enormous need for improvement in broadband facilities—it has a fantastic industrial area, near the airport and near the road and rail freight hub—but the minister overlooked a fantastic submission by the EMRC and allocated the roll-out to an area from which no submission had been made. The minister at some stage might enlighten me on the process of the allocation of the NBN in Western Australia.

You have been to my electorate, Minister, and we went looking for the NBN in Victoria Park, and we struggled to find it. We saw plenty of signs that they had been there but it was a bit like the hunt for the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel. But there was plenty of action. Syntheo were saying they were doing things. I know there were plenty of subcontractors who were saying that they were not getting paid by Syntheo.

We also had the issue in Teague Street. Teague Street was dug up six times by the NBN contractor and enormous damage was done to property and areas within the town of Victoria Park. The Syntheo contractors left that. Can the minister advise us what steps you have taken in the process to ensure that these things do not happen again during the NBN process and that good people, like those in Teague Street in my electorate, do not have to suffer enormous damage by the contractors when the process was overseen by the previous government.

There was also an asbestos issue in the electorate, where a pit was dug up. There was some left on the ground. The people who came to clean up did not have the right protective gear. There was no oversight by the NBN, nor any concern for the safety of the workers who had to do that. There were no regulations in place. Syntheo took about 10 months to reply on that. So could the minister also advise what steps you have taken to make sure that the workers doing the NBN contract and other people are not subjected to those sorts of dangers again, such as dealing with asbestos? If the minister could enlighten me on those issues, that would be fantastic.

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