Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take it from the previous member's speech that the Prime Minister has decided now to cut the amount of GST flowing to South Australia. It is an outrageous decision by this Prime Minister, and he will be held to account in the next federal election. But I don't rise to speak about that today. I rise to draw attention to the impact of the Liberal government's failed NBN plan. I feel like a broken record in this place. For 10 years now I have been raising the issue around broadband. When Labor was in government we had a proper plan to fix it. Indeed, we see that the suburbs that have fibre to the home are now enjoying the benefits of high-speed broadband. Unfortunately, there are many suburbs that missed out on Labor's plan and are now being saddled with the inferior, 100-year copper network. This is just a short-sighted solution to a massive problem.

I was not surprised to hear in the recent report that complaints about the National Broadband Network have increased significantly. In fact, we have seen a 65 per cent increase, according to reports, of problems with the internet. Well, what we hear from the Prime Minister in response to this is: 'It's not my problem. It's someone else's fault.' No, Prime Minister, it's your fault. It's your fault for failing to deliver a decent NBN.

I recently held a well-attended NBN forum in my electorate, and we heard a litany of complaints. It was disappointing that we didn't have anyone from NBN there. There was a litany of problems which highlighted the issues around NBN. Of course, most people were frustrated that they were seeing a fibre-to-the-node plan after years of struggling with ADSL2. For many, there isn't enough copper in the ground for them to even get an ADSL connection. The news that they got was that they were going to have more copper. This is an incredibly frustrating situation for so many who need to have decent internet. Now, we know those on the other side think the internet is, as the previous Prime Minister described it, 'an entertainment system'. They don't see it as a serious productivity infrastructure measure, and it is disappointing that we see no commitment from those on the other side.

I would like to highlight a number of common themes that were raised. One is that many people who were connected to the second-rate NBN were receiving terrible service, with worse speeds than their previous ADSL connection. How can that be? A lot of people were saying they were willing to pay more if they got decent broadband, but they just couldn't get it. It is completely unfair and unreasonable that the government expects Australians to pay more for the NBN but get an inferior service.

I'm regularly contacted by residents and businesses with story after story about being connected to the second-rate NBN. Tracey is a director at a local childcare centre. Since the centre has been connected to the NBN, the system fails weekly. Parents say that, if they call the childcare centre, often they can't get messages through because not only is the internet down but now the phone line is down, and that usually happens after there has been bad weather. This is the new, modern system that the Liberal Party brags about!

Of course, another common theme was the blame-shifting that is constantly going on between NBN Co and providers. It's no wonder that this is happening, because the Prime Minister models this every single day: 'It's your telco's fault.' You contact NBN Co and they blame the provider. You contact the provider and they blame NBN Co. Stephen was assured he would be connected to the NBN, but after three weeks of no phone or internet connection he has become desperate. Last week his service provider finally sent out a technician to connect him, but he couldn't get it to work because NBN hadn't made a link to the node.

This is an example of the incompetence that we are seeing around this failed experiment of the NBN under the Liberals. There is only one way to deliver superfast broadband to this country. The Liberal Party has ignored that pathway to success. Instead, we are seeing Australians right around this country suffer as a result.