Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Western Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am here to get the NBN fixed not for the whole country, not even for the entire state or my entire electorate, but for one constituent in my electorate. Hope contacted my office for assistance in getting her phone and internet connected. She is 82 years old. She had been unwell. She had been in hospital. Upon being discharged from hospital, she was moving from where she'd been living into an aged-care facility. Anyone who has helped someone make that change in their life knows it's a very big change and one that involves lots of administration. But she was very organised. Weeks before moving in, she had arranged with iiNet, her provider, to have her landline and internet transferred to what was going to be her new home in that aged-care facility. But it won't come as a surprise that, when she moved in, NBN Co still hadn't actioned her request. She was left in aged care and in a new home with no means of communication. She told my office that she was supposed to have a support person come to her home and take her out shopping for the afternoon. That person did not arrive. She had no means to contact her support worker. She was left alone, vulnerable and with no means of communication. So what did she do? Hope, a very resourceful person who is very active in the Perth community, contacted my office and many offices on all sides of politics. She knew what to do. She jumped in a taxi and got that very kind taxi driver to take her and her walking frame from her aged-care facility to my office to demand that her internet be fixed. We did all the right things. We contacted NBN Co. We said, 'This is quite a ridiculous situation,' hoping to get her phone service connected. That still has not occurred. Because Hope had no faith that NBN Co would connect her service, she went to Morley Galleria and purchased a prepaid mobile phone. Unfortunately, it's a good thing that she did purchase that mobile phone, because to this day she still has not been connected with her NBN service.

This is symptomatic of this government's incompetence in managing the NBN. If we can't get this right for older Australians, I have no faith for anyone. We will continue to fight for Hope to get her NBN service connected. Surely this federal government, the shareholder minister, NBN Co and iiNet can work together to do the very basic thing of the internet. She's not looking for lightning-fast speeds; she just wants to have a telephone so that she can communicate with the world while she settles into her new home in aged care. I call on the government to fix it today.