Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Honourable members: He's the speaker!

My question is to the Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects.

Honourable members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will start his question again.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects, representing the Minister for Communications. I have received at least 100 letters from my constituents about the poor broadband service in the Ascot exchange. In 2007 the then Labor member wrote to the constituents of Swan and said that they would solve this. They said they would fix it, but in six years they did nothing. They were absolutely useless. What action is the coalition government taking to reverse Labor's inaction and pathetic uselessness, and to help my constituents in the Ascot exchange?

Opposition members: Argument!

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the minister—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Go down the other end, Paul!

Ms Henderson interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Grayndler is delaying the member for Watson! The member for Corangamite will cease interjecting!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am just trying to—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Grayndler will cease interjecting!

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, there might be a bit of argument in that question.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, the member for Watson. Is this a point of order?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On what point of order?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under the rules for questions—under the standing orders—questions are not allowed to contain argument. That was full of it!

Government members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Gilmore and the Leader of the House will cease interjecting! I would like to respond to the point of order.

A government member interjecting—

And whoever that was can cease interjecting too! I will say to the member for Watson that if I enforced that particular subsection of the standing orders strictly, almost none of the opposition's questions would be in order.

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can't be serious!

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am deadly serious. If you would like me to start, I will.

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

I do want to thank the member for Swan for this question, which really reflects a campaign that he has been assiduously pursuing in the totality of his time here in the parliament in relation to the delivery of broadband in Ascot.

There is, as the member informed the House, a letter on the record from Kim Wilkie MP, the then Labor member for Swan, from September 2007 which says:

Labor's National Broadband Network will solve Ascot's broadband problems.

There it was. There was the promise in 2007. And so, when the new member for Swan—as he then was in 2007—came to the parliament, he understandably pursued the delivery of that promise.

To his great surprise, when the city of Belmont and the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council put forward a proposal to prioritise the Ascot exchange, it was rejected by the then minister for broadband, Senator Conroy. He rejected out of hand the proposal, when there had been a promise only two years before by the then Labor member for Swan that Ascot would be sorted out.

It has fallen—as it always does—to the coalition to sort out Labor's mess. We are doing that with the NBN all around Australia. We are doing that in the electorate of Swan, where there are 28,000 premises ready for service today. I am sure there are many in the House who recollect that the total number of premises connected in all of Western Australia in 2013, when we came to government, was 34. Yet today—only slightly more than two years later—in just one electorate in Western Australia over 28,000 premises are ready for service. Indeed, when we came to government, Western Australia's NBN rollout was in such disarray that the primary contractor, Syntheo, had pulled out of that market. So we have turned that situation around in a short period of time. Thanks to the advocacy of the member for Swan on behalf of his constituents, some 15,500 homes and businesses in Ascot, Belmont, Cloverdale, Perth, Redcliffe and Rivervale will see construction begin in the first quarter of 2017, and there are 39,160 premises included in the rollout plan through to the third quarter of 2018.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Perth will cease interjecting.

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

The Turnbull government is delivering on the NBN rollout.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Perth is warned!

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

We are correcting for the chaotic and incompetent mess we inherited from the other side.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Perth will leave under 94(a).

The member for Perth then left the chamber.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be place on the Notice Paper. Twenty-two—we are doing well!

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been pointed out to me that the question from the member for Swan contained some terms that I may well have said are inappropriate in a question. I point out to the House that, if that is the case, it is because I did not hear them because of the level of interjections. So it does flow both ways when there are interjections from my left and there is a member asking a question further up the back.