Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to deliver this summing up speech. I thank all members for their contribution to this debate. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Access Regime and NBN Companies) Bill 2015 sought to enhance the telecommunications access regime and nbn co's line of business restrictions.

The government has amended the bill to include only the measures that are accepted by Labor and the Greens, or to be precise the government will shortly move amendments which will have the effect, if accepted, of amending the bill to include only the measures that are accepted by Labor and the Greens in the dissenting Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee report, to ensure that uncontested measures proceed.

There are now, or there will be should those amendments be accepted, four measures remaining in the bill which will take effect should the bill be passed in that form. Firstly, there are changes to the Telecommunications Act and the Competition and Consumer Act to clarify the regulation of facilities access. Secondly, there are changes to the standard access obligations, which will ensure that a service provide who controls or owns in-building cabling must provide access to that cabling as part of providing access to a declared service. This removes scope for restricting access to competitors and ensures end users can get faster access to broadband and telephone services. Thirdly, there are changes to the treatment of fixed principles in access determinations and special access undertakings, which will improve regulatory consistency and provide for more-effective regulation. Fourthly, changes to nbn co's line of business restrictions will ensure that nbn co can dispose of surplus assets to any person, whereas currently under the existing law it can only sell those assets to another carrier or service provider.

Some of the reasons which have been levelled against the measures that have been removed from the bill warrant a response. It is necessary to put on the record why the government considers that those proposed measures were important and worth pursuing. Some have argued that the bill was moving away from the NBN model highlighting proposed changes to non-discrimination obligations, to nbn co's line of business restrictions and to the law governing authorisations for nbn co's conduct. This was an ill-informed argument which did not reflect the reality that the government was proposing to fine tune the framework to provide some additional flexibility. The government sought to make some modest changes to non-discrimination obligations facing nbn co with a view to promoting innovation through pilots or trials.

In its review, the Vertigan panel recognised that that current obligations do not promote innovation. Other measures that the government proposed in the bill sought to improve the consistency of regulatory decision making, and to cement procedural fairness requirements, by clarifying the point at which the ACCC would be required to consult.

The government sought to introduce a regulation-making power that could be used to amend nbn co's line of business restrictions. This proposal responded to experience which has shown that the current restrictions are so sweeping that nbn co is being prevented from operating on an optimal basis. This power, however, could not have been used to allow nbn co to supply content or to supply retail communication services, and the exercise of this power would have taken the form of a disallowable instrument. This would have meant that the parliament would have been able to oversee any regulation made by the minister.

Finally, under the bill as originally put forward, the bill would have amended existing authorisations for the purposes of competition law, which allow nbn co to limit the number of points of interconnection to the national broadband network and require its customers to purchase bundled services.

Some have erroneously sought to conflate the government's change in pricing policy already in place with the proposed change in legislation. The government went to the last election stating that it would remove uniform national pricing and it would require nbn co instead to operate under price caps.

This policy was reaffirmed in 2014 through the government's response to the Vertigan review, so this is nothing new. The measure contained in the bill as put before the House simply sought to continue the existing authorisations—introduced by the former government—without reference to the former government's pricing policy. The object of the government's authorisation provision was to ensure that superfast carriage services are reasonably accessible to all people in Australia, wherever they reside or carry on business.

Under this government the NBN rollout is finally back on track. The NBN plans to expand its footprint by 15,000 premises per week, rising to 25,000 per week by the middle of the year. The NBN is on track to meet its target to have 500,000 premises able to order a broadband service via fibre to the node by the end of June.

The facts speak for themselves. NBN has met its rollout and revenue targets for the past six quarters in a row and is on course to meet its financial year 2016 targets, published in the corporate plan. Under the Turnbull government the number of connected households and businesses using the NBN has increased more than tenfold since 2013. One in four premises will have access to the National Broadband Network by the end of this year, and around three-quarters of all premises will be in the footprint by 2018. nbn co reported strong revenues and activations for the half year to 31 December, just a few weeks ago, and it will continue to report quarterly, so the Australian community can judge for themselves.

We said we would make the rollout faster, and it is very clear from the weekly reports published on NBN's website that that is exactly what is happening. For example, the published weekly progress report shows that connections have been tracking above 14,000 per week since the start of February—connections above 14,000 since the start of February. This is in stark contrast to the rollout under Labor when the company managed to connect only 51,000 users to the built network in three years. We have 14,000 per week under the Turnbull government and 51,000 over three years under the previous government. The contrast is very stark indeed. The published corporate plans over the years from 2010 make it plain for all to see that the NBN under Labor was one of the most poorly-managed infrastructure projects in the history of the Commonwealth.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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