Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly. I'm glad to see that the government will be putting the principle that all Australians should have access to a high-speed broadband connection into legislation, for what it's worth—as they say on the internet. It is a sensible extension of the reform that Labor started while in government, with the statement of expectations that we provided for the NBN Co. That statement required NBN Co to ensure that the network was available to all Australians, and the bill before us means that this principle will continue beyond the completion of work. It is a sensible reform, and I think the least we could expect. Given that we've got the NBN so badly wrong, we should at least have regulation that allows people to have that sense of certainty. It is a bit disappointing to see how long it took the government to get to this position and to realise that this was an important principle, but we've been campaigning for this for some time and it is great to see the government join us on that and we can have a bipartisan approach on at least this small element of the scheme. Perhaps it might be wishful thinking on my part, but if the government had moved ahead on this principle a little bit earlier then maybe we would have also seen them admit their mistake in trying to use old technologies for the NBN rollout, because that's the issue of controversy between the two big political parties in this country that needs us to get to a bipartisan position. We simply can't continue under the current constraints. It is not good enough for a First World economy, and we need to do better.

The Prime Minister and his government told us that they were scrapping the rollout of Labor's fibre-to-the home technology because it cost too much. That probably sounded like a good political exercise at the time, but I have to say today that I think most Australians would agree it would have been much more sensible, much more beneficial, to pay a bit more at the time and get internet that was going to last us beyond this current iteration of technologies. What we've also seen is that the cost of the Prime Minister's NBN has blown out to $4 billion more than the cost of Labor's fibre NBN. So we are back again at this incredible frustration—and I'm just reflecting what I hear from my constituents—of having thrown billions of dollars at this problem, but, because we've done it in this cobbled-together way, because we've had this irritating policy change between Labor and Liberal, we've ended up with an internet that is slower, more expensive and less reliable than it otherwise would have been. Indeed, a lot of my constituents are having slower, less reliable and more expensive internet than they had before their NBN was connected. You just can't believe how frustrated people are about this, Deputy Speaker.

I've spent a lot of time talking to my constituents about the issues that they are having, because my goal is that an incoming Labor government will try to do something to help fix some of these issues. I've got large parts of my electorate which have not been connected at all to the NBN and in the parts which have been connected there are huge complaints about what's going on. We have received so many complaints about the NBN that we have actually had to set up a survey to collect them all. I want to talk about some of the comments that I've received from my constituents. The first is from Debra in Moorabbin. She said:

We've gone backwards in this house for speed and connectivity. NBN often drops out and speeds are sometimes like old dial up. It's so frustrating. We rarely do work at home as a result.

Tracey in Dingley Village describes Turnbull's NBN as 'an exorbitant waste of money invested in backward technology'. I couldn't agree with you more, Tracey. Andrew from Oakleigh South, like many, has had problems with the installation process. He said:

NBN have damaged my house … and they also managed to stuff up the installation in my elderly neighbour's property at well … All this hassle for obsolete technology.

Stephen in Hughesdale said:

This is the worst and slowest internet I have had in a long time.

Paul in Keysborough said:

The NBN is no better than what I had before, in some ways it is worse.

Joanne in Clayton South said:

Australia is so far behind when it comes to the internet. This is outdated technology. If the government wants to spend tax payers money, give us something to be proud of and that is useful. Not this crap.

Excuse my French, Deputy Speaker. That was a direct quote, telling it like Aussies do. I'll end with Matthew in Cheltenham, who said:

I can't say anything nice so I won't say anything at all.

I can assure you that these comments go on and on and on. Among the many people who responded to our survey and those I have talked to about their NBN, I would say there is almost universal frustration and dissatisfaction with the service that is being provided. In the survey work that we did in my electorate, we found that 77 per cent of those connected to the NBN in Hotham are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the network. Of those not yet connected to the NBN, 84 per cent don't want the old copper and cable technology that's planned for them; they want Labor's fibre connection straight to their home. In Hotham—and no surprise here—the vast majority of people connected to the NBN who are unsatisfied have HFC or FTTN. Those are the Prime Minister's old technologies that he cobbled together. It's meant to be called 'broadband'; they call it 'fraudband', and this is why.

But it's not just people in my electorate who are upset and frustrated by this. Poll after poll and survey after survey show us that Australians are fed up with the inferior NBN. They're fed up with the customer service that they're receiving from the organisations. They are fed up and frustrated with the poor speeds. They are fed up with poor reliability.

The Prime Minister's NBN is a failure. He should have done it once and done it with fibre. He could have done that. As a country we are paying a colossal price for the mistake that was made in choosing to cobble together technologies instead of doing it properly with fibre. We don't want a second-rate NBN that costs more and does less. I think it's time that the Prime Minister listened to the public and started to make a concerted effort to try to actually fix the mess that he's created, rather than going ahead as he had planned. Broadband isn't a luxury; it's a critical public service that needs to be done right. It's essential for the people in my electorate, it's essential for our local economy, and it's the least we could do as a government to provide them with this basic service. Many countries that have a much lower GDP per capita are finding parts to give their constituents much better services than we've been able to do. So I regard it as a failure of the government in a most profound way.

We are now having to deal with the consequences of these actions. One of the concerns I have is with the implementation of an internet tax on 400,000 residential and business services on non-NBN networks. These are the same networks that the Prime Minister, when he was in the Communications portfolio, encouraged. It is the constant failures with the NBN that have led us to this debate in this place. You are going to have member of parliament after member of parliament getting up and telling you the same thing, Deputy Speaker. We have the same message for the Prime Minister: the technology that you have chosen and the way that you have decided to do this are wrong. It is not taking us in the right direction; it is taking us backwards.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, every year I get sick of having to look at survey after survey telling us that Australia, instead of leaping forward as we rightly should be doing with all of the incredible assets that we have in this country, is slipping further backwards on this fundamental technology. We had a so-called 'infrastructure budget' announced by the government a couple of days ago. What do you think matters more? Is it building a road or is it giving us a highway that is going to provide a foundation for the future growth of our economy? They can't get that right. I don't think that anyone looking at their record on the NBN would trust them to do any of the other things that are in that budget. It's good to have the opportunity to express the frustration of my constituents, and I've been pleased to do that today on behalf of the people of Hotham. Thank you.

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