Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

The NBN rollout has become a personal embarrassment for the member for Wentworth, now the Prime Minister, as the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015 highlights.

When Labor were elected in 2007, Australia lagged behind the rest of the world with respect to internet connections. It was affecting Australia's competitiveness and ability to operate in a global 21st-century economy and social world. Labor understood that and commenced a plan to roll out a high-speed broadband network across the country. We did that because we understood that connection to a reliable high-speed network was no longer a luxury but in fact a necessity in today's life. Labor committed to the largest infrastructure project in memory with a plan to roll out a fibre network to around 93 per cent of all Australian homes and connect the other seven per cent to wireless or satellite. The planning was underway. Relevant negotiations took place. There were many, many impediments to overcome at the time, and those impediments included opposition from the then opposition, but the rollout was well underway when Labor left office. I can say that with confidence because in my own electorate I could physically see the rollout taking place. The network had already been rolled out past several hundred homes in my electorate.

We then had a change of government. The member for Wentworth, now the Prime Minister, became Minister for Communications. The NBN rollout became his personal responsibility. His promise at the time was a faster, less costly and better serviced NBN rollout. Two and a half years later what we have is the complete opposite and a national embarrassment, not just for the Prime Minister but for this country. The Prime Minister's incompetence is there for all to judge, as the member for Newcastle said a moment ago when she referred to the many people in her electorate who have contacted her about the current rollout. People are continually contacting MPs because of the poor service. I am sure the member for Wakefield, who is here in the chamber, would attest to my comment that hardly a week goes by when we are not contacted by a business or homeowner with respect to the difficulty they are having with connection to the NBN.

What is even worse is that this is the Prime Minister who claimed that there would be absolute transparency with respect to his plan. What we now have is the opposite. Not only are we seeing information about the current plan withheld; we also saw a panel, the Vertigan panel, hand-picked to supposedly provide advice to the government of the day. That advice, as we now know, was based on grossly inaccurate information and costings, and I want to go through some of those costings.

Firstly, the advice was based on the NBN rollout costing $41 billion. As we now know, the cost is $56 billion. It was based on a fibre-to-the-node cost of about $600 per home. Again, as we now see, the cost has gone up to $1,600. It was also based on expenditure of $55 billion to fix up the copper. We now see that that figure has blown out to $641 million. And we were told by the panel that there would be 2.6 million homes connected to the NBN or pay TV by December 2016. We now know that the figure is somewhere between 10,000 and 875,000 homes that will be connected by the end of this year. Lastly, there was $2.5 billion in revenue tagged for 2016 and 2017, which has fallen to $1.1 billion. Those figures speak for themselves. The Prime Minister does not come into the House and deny those figures; he is simply not prepared to provide the relevant information.

The critical matter with this legislation is the government's intent to axe Labor's policy of universal national wholesale pricing, which would have meant that people in regional and rural Australia would pay the same wholesale price for equivalent services as people in the city. In other words, they would not be disadvantaged. This is the government that wants to reverse that policy and yet it is the government that also claims to represent country Australians. Why are the National Party MPs and the country government MPs in this place not standing up for their regional communities?

With respect to that, I want to quote from a letter that I received from the West Coast Council in South Australia. The letter is addressed to Minister Fifield. 'I refer to the recent briefing by nbn co to the new council on 7 September 2015 at which your representative confirmed that five towns and several villages of the West Coast municipality are not being considered for a fibre or even fixed wireless service and are instead being limited to a satellite service only. By not being considered for a higher level of service, the West Coast will be left behind. That is, while the desperately needed NBN infrastructure program has the potential to deliver improved communication capability that will see some disadvantaged areas increase their competitiveness and ability to attract investment, I strongly believe that the West Coast will likely see further declines should we not be able to keep pace and to build our capability with a modern, competitive communication platform that has the potential to create more jobs in the region that has been hard hit in recent times with changes to the mining sector and the consequent loss of jobs in locations such as Queenstown.'

It goes on to say: 'The default option of satellite-only flies in the face of the federal government's own priority criteria for the NBN rollout. The West Coast population centres were slated for a fibre rollout under the previous government. Therefore, the argument that the infrastructure does not exist to underpin the business case for the higher upgrade services that fibre or even fixed wireless will bring would appear to be a poor excuse and not true. Higher grade NBN services will provide critical improvements not only to general residents but can improve our health service such as e-health and education services such as e-learning and should provide a solid platform for the region to attract new investment, population and business development.'

The letter further goes on to say, 'Real-time high-bandwidth services cannot be guaranteed with a satellite-only option due to latency issues, and nbn co itself has admitted that NBN satellite broadband may be prone to rain fade and service disruption in heavy rain conditions.' There are other sections of the letter. I seek leave to table the letter.

Leave granted.

The West Coast Council is not alone as a remote community in understanding the importance of a reliable NBN fibre-to-the-home service. Jackson County and Owsley County in the Appalachian Kentucky region of the USA have a combined population of 18,000, with the largest community a town of 900, and last year completed their fibre rollout to every homeowner through some of the toughest terrain one could imagine. These are some of the most economically disadvantaged parts of America, with low income and high unemployment, yet such was their appreciation of the benefits modern high-speed internet could bring that they relied on mules—an old Kentuckian tradition—to haul the fibre through the rough terrain where it was too difficult to use modern machinery.

Rural workers in those counties now have work-from-home employment opportunities that previously did not exist. They can participate in the global economy without relocating. In fact, it also took less than a year for the Teleworks USA program to place more than 100 trainees from those communities into jobs, which further added US$2 million to the local economy. Here is a community that was prepared to do whatever it took to ensure that everyone had access to a fibre connection.

It is also evident that the Turnbull government and the so-called small business advocates on the government benches do not really understand the benefits of the nbn to business. An analysis by North American firm Strategic Networks Group showed that broadband enabled 39.7 per cent of all new jobs from 2013-15, a dramatic increase from an already large 25.5 per cent over 2010-2012. When job losses were subtracted—that is, quantifying the net new jobs created—the figure rose to 51 per cent. It is therefore obvious that, if we want to tackle unemployment and ensure jobs growth, we must embrace the use of reliable broadband and make it available to all. Logically, broadband which is faster and more reliable would enable greater job creation opportunities.

The Prime Minister talks up an agile economy, small business and start-ups, but the mess he has presided over with the NBN is doing the most damage and creating the greatest barriers in those very sectors. We know that the greatest potential for jobs growth is with small business and we also know that small business employs about 4.7 million people. However, the digital divide is affecting and limiting small business around the country. The SNG research also shows that, the smaller the business by number of employees, the lower the internet utilisation rate. The same research shows that a business that increases utilisation by 10 per cent is likely to increase revenues by 24 per cent and decrease costs by seven per cent. The reliability, expense and connection speeds are all factors which can prevent small business from making greater utilisation of the internet.

Indeed, I am frequently contacted by businesses in my local area—especially by small businesses—which are being held back by poor internet speeds. Whilst most home users will be more concerned with their download speed, many business are finding upload speeds are their main frustration, with one or two megabits per second or less being insufficient for their needs. Some of the businesses that I am contacted by are moving out of the area in order to expand their business and employ more people, because they cannot access reliable, high-speed internet.

It is clear that this government's management of the NBN service has become chaotic. It is clear from all the figures that have been presented both in my own contribution tonight and by others. We also see that this is a government that is spending millions of dollars on thousands and thousands of metres of additional copper wire. Labor was prepared to roll out an NBN plan that ensured that we could meet the needs of the 21st century right through to the end of the century, yet this is a government that has gone backwards by relying on a copper system that we all know is fraught with faults, a copper system that we were trying to move away from and which every other smart country in the world is moving away from but which this government persists with. It should be condemned for that—and will be by the voters of this country. I believe this legislation highlights the ineptitude of this government with respect to the NBN rollout.

Debate interrupted.

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