Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note today of the appalling answers from Minister Fifield to the very serious question from Senator O'Neill on the parlous state of broadband communications under his watch and under the watch of Prime Minister Turnbull. Senator O'Neill sought a simple answer from Minister Fifield on the cost of the NBN Co CEO's thought bubble to potentially build a 5G network because the copper network is already not up to standard. Minister Fifield had no idea—just like Minister Fifield and Mr Turnbull have no idea about how much their multimedia technology mess is going to cost. Minister Fifield said that the NBN has a mandate to conduct the rollout under the multi-technology mix—or multi-technology mess, as it's currently known—which he says will see it rolled out fastest and at lowest cost but not best quality. The Liberals and Nationals are happy with quick and dirty broadband—definitely a direction from the top. The minister found it hard to mention 5G in his answer. One wonders why. Does he not support the CEO? Does he not want Australians to harness the immense opportunities that would be afforded by 5G? Does he not want NBN Co to invest? We just don't know—and he probably doesn't know either.

One thing the minister did say is that he believes that his broadband rollout will cost $30 billion less under a full fibre rollout. But the minister never presents the rationale behind his ridiculous argument. That's because the minister's argument just doesn't stack up. NBN Co's CEO, Bill Morrow, and CFO, Stephen Rue, said to a Senate committee that the $30 billion figure is not a continuation of Labor's full-fibre NBN but what it would have cost if it had been restarted in 2015. I repeat: stating that Labor's full-fibre NBN would cost $30 billion more than the multi-technology mess is just not true. It wasn't true when Malcolm Turnbull first said it, and it isn't true today. It's a bad political argument with no logical underpinnings. The minister should consult with his NBN Co executives—who, it has to be said, are doing the best they can with a very bad statement of expectations from Minister Fifield and Minister Cormann.

I want to share four simple facts about the NBN rollout that Minister Fifield should also address in the near future—four facts that tell the story of how the man who supposedly created the internet in Australia completely fell into a pit of rotten copper, dashed hopes and bungled deadlines. Fact No. 1 is that three-quarters of all fibre-to-the-node premises will not be able to reach 100 megabits per second. Fact No. 2 is that over 200,000 premises on copper will not be able to receive the minimum 25 megabits per second that was promised by Prime Minister Turnbull. Fact No. 3 is that there are around 80 million hours of network downtime per year across the multi-technology mix. Fact No. 4 is that about $100 million has been spent purchasing almost 17,000 kilometres of copper wire. They're not my numbers. These are numbers that were provided to the Senate committees by the government and NBN Co. These four facts are part of the reason that NBN Co's CEO is out in the press today saying he is considering his options: copper isn't working, it's not actually cheaper than fibre, it's not as effective as fibre and it can never be more effective than fibre. The overuse of copper is all about a bad political argument made by Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott almost a decade ago. They were so desperate to find a point of difference with an excellent Labor government policy—and the people of Australia are now suffering as a result of that political point of difference.

In Tasmania, the Turnbull government claims that the network is complete. But there are still thousands of premises that can't get connected. No matter how many phone calls people make, and despite NBN promising that the micronodes would be connected by October last year, it is not finished. And, worse still, for most on the north-west coast of Tasmania—where I live—which is one of the poorest parts of this country, there is no upgrade path from fibre to the node to full fibre. So while the big cities of Launceston and Hobart skate ahead with gigabyte connections, the north-west coast is left behind by this government. And then when the minister is asked about 5G as an alternative, all he can do is bleat incorrect facts and political spin. Thank goodness this government's time is almost up! (Time expired)