Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to bring to the attention of the House what could only be described as a deliberate con. Unfortunately, it has been perpetrated by Telstra on one of my constituents in Central Queensland. Neither my constituent nor I am prepared to put up with this sort of behaviour. Mr Kevin Donovan of Rose Street in North Rockhampton tells me that, several years ago, he had what he thought was a second line installed by Telstra because he needed to run his computer as well his phone. He continued to pay the charges for a second line. However, after experiencing continual problems with the service, Mr Donovan contacted an independent technician to look at his service. To Mr Donovan’s amazement, he was told that he had not a second line but what might be called a double adaptor on his only line. Mr Donovan quite rightly refused to continue to pay for the second service, which in fact did not exist. Telstra has continued to pursue Mr Donovan for this small, outstanding account and has now had Mr Donovan listed with a credit agency as a non-payer. This has resulted in Mr Donovan being refused credit by another business.

What Telstra has done is to use pair-gain technology. When a customer orders a second telephone line, Telstra, instead of supplying a dedicated second line, simply splits into two halves the single phone line going into the customer’s house but charges for a completely new service. This has the effect of splitting the available bandwidth in two. So, if the customer wants to use the second line to access the internet, they can never get better than 28 kilobytes per second, even if they have the fastest modem on the market. Notwithstanding that, Telstra charges the customer for a second line. Such behaviour is not only unconscionable, it is simply crooked. But just as bad is the fact that this process acts as a broadband blocker, reducing the availability of broadband and its usefulness to the customer.

As I have mentioned in this House before, for 10 long years the Howard government has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on pork barrelling in telecommunications. As a result, Australia’s antiquated telecommunications infrastructure has left us a broadband backwater. The OECD has Australia ranked 17th for take-up of broadband of up to 256 kilobytes per second. The World Economic Forum ranks Australia 25th in the world in terms of available internet bandwidth. A recent World Bank study also confirms that Australia has access to some of the slowest broadband in the developed world. Our performance in true broadband is amongst the worst in the world. This is why even some of our great Australian banks, as well as many other businesses, are sending their IT jobs offshore. Our telecommunications network simply cannot compete, it cannot do the job, so the work goes overseas.

What passes for broadband in Australia is a national disgrace. While our international peers are delivering access to broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, Australia is languishing behind, with a broadband standard of just 256 kilobytes per second. In the industry, this is generally referred to as ‘fraudband’; in other words, Australia does not have real broadband.

People in my electorate are asking me all the time when they are going to be able to get proper broadband—or, from quite a few of them, when they are going to get any broadband at all. I can tell them that Labor is committed to ending this second-rate system that the Howard government has given Australia. Labor will draw on the Broadband Connect program to deliver the public funding of a partnership which will leverage private funds from the telecommunications sector to build a genuine broadband network across Australia. Labor’s broadband plan brings Australia into line with the rest of the world and creates a platform for future upgrades. Labor will give Australians like Mr Donovan true broadband and Labor will put an end to the outrageous rorts inflicted on Mr Donovan and others by Telstra.

I have written to the ACCC asking them to investigate the rort that Telstra has perpetrated on Mr Donovan, and I will be asking other residents who have sought a second line from Telstra but have only had their existing line split to contact me so that I may also take their cases up with both Telstra and the ACCC on their behalf. It is bad enough that the Howard government delivers only second-rate broadband to the residents of Central Queensland, but it is inexcusable that Telstra should then try to rip off the people of Central Queensland when they sign up to that second-rate broadband. Mr Donovan will not put up with it and neither will I.