Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the minister representing the Minister for Communications. With the two koala corridor suburbs of Mount Cotton and Redland Bay due to be connected to fibre-to-the-node by year's end, attention has turned to HFC rollout that will serve eight of the other 12 mainland Bowman suburbs. Could you update us please on the technology that is being considered, on the rollout timetables and on the prospects for HFC in Queensland?

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

I am very pleased to get this question from the member for Bowman, who is a fine advocate for his electorate. Of course, I am very pleased that we have so many assiduous advocates on this side of the House who are asking questions about the services that are being delivered over the National Broadband Network, because what has changed is that under the previous government if you asked that question you did not get a very satisfactory answer. When you called the NBN they had one of those interactive voice response systems. Press one for media releases. Press two for photo opportunities. Press three for electorate visits. Press four for Stephen Conroy rolling out fibre. Press five for other election campaign stunts. Press six for Julia Gillard in a high vis vest.

That is what NBN was doing under the previous government but under this government NBN is delivering. The NBN is rolling out and NBN is rolling out in the electorate of Bowman. As the member rightly asks, not only are we rolling out fibre to the node, but we are also rolling out HFC, hybrid fibre coax. These were the networks that Labor was proposing to trash. They were going to completely destroy these networks that passed over $3 million premises around Australia that are perfectly capable of delivering 100 megabits per second. In fact, there is an upgrade path to one gigabit per second, but Labor's plan was to trash these networks. We are taking advantage of them. Indeed, in the electorate of Bowman, there are 61,000 premises now in the three-year rollout plan, including both fibre to the node and HFC. In the member's electorate, construction has already commenced on fibre to the node—over 6,200 premises in the Redland Bay and Carbrook areas—and there are 61,000 premises included in the three-year rollout plan.

So under the previous government, NBN was essentially driven by political considerations, very little actually done. When we came to government, only just over 300,000 premises around the country could connect. It is now over 1.4 million and increasing every week because the Turnbull government is about delivering and the member for Bowman is a very strong advocate for delivering in his electorate.