Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The residents of Melbourne Ports and its businesses, big and small, were promised access to the NBN by the end of 2016 by the Turnbull government. Now that we are in the latter half of 2017, my constituents, as well as millions of others around the country, are still waiting for the government to deliver on that broken promise.

At the end of December 2016, when NBN access was promised by this government, of 70,000 homes in Melbourne Ports, only 17,355 had access. That left 75 per cent of our residents with no access—hardly a success story. In fact, according to the NBN's own website, many in my electorate will have quite a wait. Elwood, which is the suburb I live in, which has more than 10,000 people, has to wait until 2019. I don't know whether that's a particular punishment or not. Many in St Kilda and Balaclava have to wait until 2018, and many in Port Melbourne and Southbank have to wait until 2019 as well. Some in these areas have access, but they're a minority, and it's usually newer buildings where the wiring has been included with the premises that have just been built. My office receives complaints about poor performance and about people being forced outside the NBN all the time. Last night, Annabel Crabb in a tweet said:

When people complained about the NBN, I used to think privately "Surely it can't be that bad." I hereby apologise to those people.

It seems she's having the same experience as people in my electorate—that's for sure.

This government commenced the National Broadband Network. It was to bring our communications ability into this century with fibre to the home. The government ensured its poor performance by only delivering fibre to the node, a technology reliant on old, deteriorating copper that is unreliable or less reliable and slower than fibre. The residents of Melbourne Ports don't live in a node; they live in homes and apartments, and they expected something better, especially from people who talk about innovation.

After breaking the promise to deliver the NBN by the end of 2016—instead the government would deliver it by 2020—the Prime Minister's promised to pass 2.6 million hybrid fibre-coaxial premises by the end of 2016. He's only achieved 160,000. That is seven per cent of his target. He is Mr Seven Per Cent.

Delivery of the NBN to Melbourne Ports has been extremely unsatisfactory. Many people in our wider economy, particularly in my electorate, who are the very people who need fast broadband network, haven't got it.