Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Saturday I met with a group of concerned residents from Tullimbar in my electorate. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about the absence of reliable broadband services in their area. The residents are not without a sense of irony because they have set up a Facebook page called NBN Action for Tullimbar Residents. Unfortunately, a lot of them cannot access the Facebook page because of the absence of decent broadband. There are two problems. There is a significant shortage of broadband ports in the greenfield development estate of Ridgeview. This has forced many residents to have to access their broadband via wireless services, which provide a very weak signal at the best of times.

Mr Fletcher interjecting—

I am hearing a lot from the parliamentary secretary, but they had 11 plans and were not able to implement a single one of them. What is most galling is that on top of this residents are watching NBN trucks pull cable through the suburbs without an internet service to the new suburbs up the road. It is not a luxury. At the meeting there were small business people, kids who could not do their homework and grandparents hoping to keep in contact with their kids from the other side of the world. What they want is a real NBN solution, not this second-rate hologram that is on offer from those opposite.