Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week I received correspondence from Google that included new research from PricewaterhouseCoopers entitled 'Small business digital growth: the potential for internet and mobile technologies to transform small business'. PwC's research found that there is an additional $49.2 billion in untapped economic potential over 10 years from small business in this country making use of the internet and mobile technologies. The research also found that 53 per cent of this benefit could be realised outside metropolitan areas, including regional and rural Australia. Small businesses in my electorate of Macarthur contribute an estimated $1.562 billion to the Australian economy. PwC states that internet technology can potentially unlock an additional $187 million in economic output over 10 years. This is equivalent to $38,000 for each of the approximately 4,900 small businesses in Macarthur.

Why is this support not here? Last month Senator Deborah O'Neill, on a fly-by-night visit to Macarthur, claimed: 'The NBN in Ruse, Kentlyn and Ambarvale will have superfast broadband to the street corner. Then service will crawl to old speeds when it gets to the 100-year-old copper network at their homes.' Senator O'Neill, with all her wisdom and expertise in cutting-edge internet technology, described the NBN as being like 'a 20-lane freeway having to merge into a one-lane goat track'. I am not questioning Senator O'Neill's ability to herd goats or drive down from Newcastle at the behest of the unions. However, I do contest the rubbish and lies she is propagating about the NBN in Macarthur.

Firstly, the coalition's NBN is designed to provide a minimum of 25 megabits per second to all homes and businesses and at least 50 megabits per second to 90 per cent of premises in the fixed line footprint. To put this in perspective, a 25 megabit per second service will allow five people on the same connection to each be watching a high-definition video stream simultaneously. Does this sound like a goat track to you? Secondly, if parts of the copper wiring are found not to be capable of delivering adequate services to end users, the NBN is committed to remediation works to bring it to the required speeds. Therefore, Senator O'Neill's claim that the 100-year-old copper network will slow the NBN to current speeds is simply not true. I would urge the people of Macarthur to see it for what it is: a downright lie.

Importantly, more than 40,000 homes in Macarthur will receive superfast broadband in the 2016 rollout thanks to the government, 10 years sooner than Labor's failed NBN strategy. If Labor was in power, residents of Macarthur would have to wait another decade for fast internet. Senator O'Neill, and Labor for that matter, wilfully ignore the fact that currently 50 per cent of premises in Macarthur can only get nine megabits per second or less. Labor believe that all these people can wait a decade for the NBN. Apparently they do not care that this would be unimaginably frustrating for people in Macarthur. Labor do not care that local businesses would not be able to innovate and compete and the local economy would miss out on $187 million of additional economic output over the next 10 years. I would like to repeat that Labor's NBN would not have been delivered for another 10 years and, in that time, Macarthur would lose out on $187 million of economic output. Labor promised the world on the back of a drink coaster and delivered nothing in relation to the NBN.