Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition, as you well know, Mr President, is committed to delivering fast broadband to all Australians sooner and at less cost to taxpayers. At the last election there were only 260,000 premises in fixed-line areas passed by the NBN. Today the figure is more than one million. A measly 51,000 users were on the network two years ago under Labor. Today there are more than 570,000 subscribers. The NBN corporate plan shows that by the end of June 2016 around one in four premises will have access to the NBN while at the end of June 2018 around three-quarters of homes and businesses will have access.

Under the coalition the NBN is moving its financial and deployment target, which is very different to Labor when it met only 17 per cent of its deployment forecasts. Labor's announcement yesterday that it would be reverting to its fibre-only policy, was quoted in The Australian Financial Review editorial today is 'an expensive joke'. The published NBN 2016 corporate plan forecasts that an all-fibre fixed-line build would require peak funding of between $74 billion and $84 billion, and the extra civil works required for fibre into the home not only cost tens of billions of dollars more but takes vastly more time to finish. Some Australians would have to wait until 2026 to get a connection. Mr Clare only has to answer three simple questions. They are: when is he going to do it; how is he going to do it; and how is he going to fund it? Other than those three questions, it is entirely clear that the AFR is right, Labor's plan is a joke.