Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network, I present the committee's report entitled The rollout of the NBN in rural and regional areas (2nd report of the 45th Parliament).

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—Only the coalition government is committed to completing the NBN effectively and efficiently to ensure all Australians have access to fast broadband as soon as possible at affordable prices and at the least cost to taxpayers.

In late 2017, prior to my appointment as chairman, the committee agreed to conduct an inquiry into the rollout of the NBN in rural and regional Australia.

Good communication is vital to the economic development and social participation of Australians living in rural and regional communities.

For those communities, the NBN provides a digital connectivity necessary to allow them to engage in those aspects of life that residents of metropolitan Australia take for granted—education, access to government and other services, and participation in the global marketplace.

There is no doubt that the rollout of the NBN to regional and remote Australia is challenging. We are the sixth largest country in the world, with a landmass of more than 7.6 million square kilometres. The population density in regional and rural Australia is less than one person per square kilometre. This is the most complex nation-building infrastructure project ever undertaken.

As a result of the approach from the coalition government, the NBN rollout is significantly more progressed in regional areas than in metropolitan Australia. At present, around 96 per cent of all homes and businesses outside major urban areas either can order an NBN service or have network construction underway.

There are a number of challenges inherent in delivering the NBN to rural and regional Australia. However, to put the challenges of connecting regional Australia into perspective, we need to look at the history of the NBN project to understand the design decisions that were made by our predecessors.

Back in 2010, under the former Labor government, the decision was taken to provision the network for a busy-hour minimum of three megabits per second.

Labor was completely clueless about the needs of rural and regional Australia, only factoring in a take-up rate of between 22 to 25 per cent across the entire satellite and fixed wireless footprint.

This means Labor expected more than 700,000 premises in regional Australia to not take up an NBN service.

In addition, the 2014 Fixed wireless and satellite review found the cost of providing improved services for satellite and fixed-wireless customers was $1.3 billion higher than projected in Labor's 2012 corporate plan.

The review also found that while Labor had planned for just 1,400 fixed-wireless towers, the rollout would require 2,900 towers to meet demand.

Only the responsible coalition government is investing more in regional telecommunications than any government before.

With regard to the Sky Muster satellite, NBN Co continues to examine ways that satellite capability can be further improved. On 12 November NBN Co announced it was consulting about a new satellite product called Sky Muster Plus, which will provide regional Australia access to more data and higher speeds.

Under the coalition government, the NBN will be completed nationwide by 2020—a full six years sooner than under Labor and at $30 billion less cost.

Our government is committed to delivering ubiquitous broadband.

Providing broadband access to areas that were previously deprived helps usher in new competition and reduce the tyranny of distance.

The coalition's rural prioritisation of the NBN rollout has helped unlock social, economic and entertainment possibilities through access to fast broadband. Last financial year, the NBN access network is estimated to have driven $450 million in GDP and the creation of an additional 1,750 jobs in the regions.

The opposition can harp on with inquiry after inquiry, but the fact remains that under the coalition government the NBN rollout is on track, is on budget and has more than 4.5 million premises connected and more than 7.6 million premises now able to order an NBN service.

In closing, I wish to thank all the committee members and the former chair, the member for Farrer, as well as those who made submissions and the witnesses who gave their time to appear at hearings. I also place on record the committee's appreciation and thanks for the secretariat's diligence and hard work.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I'm glad also to make some comments on the report of the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN, a report focused, as the chair has described, on the rollout of the NBN in rural and regional areas. It followed from the work that the committee did on that topic in our inquiry and first report, tabled in October last year. It was clear from that report that this broad question of fair and proper, and effective and sustainable, access to broadband in rural and regional areas of Australia really did require further examination.

Before I go to that, I will just note that some of the committee's work and recommendations from the first report on this topic did influence shifts by the government—most notably in the doubling of data limits from the Sky Muster service. That was one of the serious shortcomings we heard about in that first inquiry. But, sadly, a number of the sensible recommendations were ignored, and some of those things were revisited by this most recent inquiry. For example, the committee previously recommended that the Australian government set a benchmark for reasonable data allowance on the Sky Muster plans by reference to average data use across the fixed line network. That goes squarely to this question of how Australians in rural and regional communities should be able to expect that their needs are assessed and then met by reference to what people in cities are able to enjoy when it comes to broadband, and yet that recommendation was not accepted or followed by the government.

Equally, the committee recommended that the Australian government require the NBN to identify and disclose all areas that had been designated to be served by satellite connection that were previously set to receive the NBN by fibre to the node or fixed wireless. Fibre to the node and fixed wireless are higher quality technologies in terms of the service, and the committee thought it was really just a matter of basic transparency and good process for all of us, but particularly for Australians in rural and regional communities, to know when they had initially been set to receive those better-quality technologies—fibre to the node or fixed wireless—but were subsequently moved onto satellite. Again, the government didn't support that recommendation, which I think was a missed opportunity.

Finally, in the 2017 report the committee recommended that the Australian government ask NBN to establish a rural and regional reference group to enable NBN to consult on Sky Muster services and changes to policies and rollout. Again, the government didn't support those recommendations.

It really is important that we reflect on why broadband is so important outside our cities. On one level, it's really quite simple: it's important outside our cities for the same reason it's important inside our cities. Broadband is an essential kind of infrastructure. It is the best example of a genuinely 21st century infrastructure, and it's something that Australians, right across this continent, ought to be able to enjoy. It is basic infrastructure; it is critical to basic services and to channels of communication. If we think about the kinds of things that infrastructure supports, it goes right across all important areas of Australian life.

There's often too much of a focus, I would say, on the entertainment uses of broadband, whether that's video streaming, internet searching, email and so on. When you think that it is actually critical to the delivery of banking services, interaction with all forms of government support, small business services, education and e-health, it's clear that broadband is not an optional extra. It's not an added extra. It's essential. The potential and promise of high-quality broadband is to reduce the gap that exists as a result of physical distance. That's the technological magic of broadband, really—that a person could be able to have an e-health consultation in Port Hedland or in Marble Bar just as they might have one in South Fremantle or Applecross. Yet, on the whole, people in businesses in rural and regional Australia get slower speeds, they get less data, they experience less reliability and they face higher costs. And so, as we watch the rollout of the NBN, particularly in rural and regional Australia, we confront the very real risk that, rather than decreasing the existing inequality and the tyranny of distance, it will, in fact, increase it.

The committee, in our inquiry, heard from representatives from all corners of the continent about the importance of the NBN. The WA government described the way that:

Western Australian farmers are embracing technology advances to improve efficiencies. However, they are finding it increasingly difficult to contend in a global marketplace without connectivity comparable to that of their international competitors.

The New South Wales Farmers' Association emphasised that access to a reliable and competitive broadband network is essential for the Australian economy and society and said:

This is especially the case in regional, rural and remote Australia where an access will be essential to overcome the tyranny of distance and provide unparalleled opportunities. Such steps are vital to drive the projected growth of the agriculture sector to $100 billion by 2030.

Significantly, the government in Queensland made the point that:

The 2017 Australian Digital Inclusion Index report ranks Queensland fifth for access across all states and territories and fifth for affordability, with our most digitally excluded Queenslanders being elderly people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, rural and low-income people and people with a disability.

So that gives you a sense of how important broadband is to rural and regional communities.

We know through the evidence that was presented to this committee that there are some serious systemic issues. One of them is the growing congestion in fixed wireless service areas. That has occurred, at least partly, because people have been pushed off line broadband—fibre to the node, which I previously described—and pushed onto satellite and fixed wireless. That's why the committee has made two recommendations to government. Recommendation 13, again, goes to the provision of mapping for satellite services so that communities can understand the better options in relation to moving onto fixed wireless, if there's an adequate signal. Recommendation 14 recommends that:

… nbn undertakes an assessment of those premises mapped for satellite that are adjacent to fixed wireless services and reports on how many premises allocated to satellite are capable of receiving a fixed wireless service …

I think those would both be meaningful improvements. In relation to the question of sustainability of funding, the committee recommends that the government review the existing cross-subsidy arrangements.

In conclusion, I acknowledge the support we had from the secretariat and the input of all committee members. I particularly signal my colleague the member for Lyons, who was the deputy chair for a lot of this committee's work. He is an unstinting representative of his community. He represents a regional part of Tasmania. I thank him for his work. I obviously acknowledge the leadership of the chair and the input of all committee members.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Question agreed to.