Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Chair of Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network, I present the fourth report of the committee entitled Review of the rollout of the National Broadband Network, covering the period from 1 January 2012 to 30 June 2012, as well as other current issues related to this report. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Under its terms of reference, the NBN committee is required to report to the parliament every six months on the rollout of the NBN, including on the achievement of NBN Co.'s take-up targets, its network rollout performance, the meeting of its obligations as set out in the stakeholder charter, its engagement with consumers, its risk management processes and any other matters pertaining to the NBN rollout. The committee's fourth report therefore covers a comprehensive range of matters.

Chapter 1 of the report provides important introductory information about the committee's fourth review inquiry process and a useful summary of major developments over this reporting period that are relevant to the NBN rollout.

Chapters 2 and 3 cover the core topics of performance reporting and regulatory issues. The section on performance reporting examines key performance indicators for the NBN, NBN rollout progress and NBN Co.'s financial results. The committee made three recommendations concerning these matters. These three recommendations are aimed at enhancing transparency and accountability of government and NBN Co. reporting on the NBN rollout. I should note that in this respect NBN Co. is already subject to greater levels of transparency and accountability than is normally applied to government business enterprises. Given that GBE corporate plans are not required to be publicly released, the release of NBN Co.'s corporate plan clearly demonstrates the government's commitment to ensuring that all Australians have as much detail as possible regarding the NBN. NBN Co. is also subject to the Freedom of Information Act and to scrutiny by the joint parliamentary committee. These measures are in addition to the normal accountability measures that apply to government business enterprises, including annual reporting and regular appearances before the Senate estimates committee.

Chapter 4 of the committee's report looks at the important issue of NBN rollout progress in regional and remote communities. A combination of the three NBN technologies—fibre, fixed wireless and satellite—will be rolled out to regional and remote areas of Australia. Over 70 per cent of regional homes and businesses will get access to optic fibre under this government. One important development that has occurred since the finalisation of this report is Minister Conroy's announcement that NBN Co.'s fixed wireless and satellite services will deliver speeds of 20 megabits down and five megabits up. This means that people living in regional and remote Australia will be able to access significantly faster speeds than are available now in the cities using ADSL services. They will be better than the current ADSL services. The committee also acknowledges progress to improve mobile coverage in regional Australia through shared use of NBN fixed wireless infrastructure in regional areas.

It recommends that the government support NBN Co. to continue to facilitate private providers and use of NBN Co. infrastructure and to provide and improve mobile telephone services and coverage across Australia, particularly in remote and regional areas.

Chapters 5 and 6 of the report considered a range of matters determined by the committee to be of significance at this stage of the NBN rollout. These are connecting multidwelling units, medical alarms, private equity engagement and workforce issues. The committee made recommendations concerning a number of these matters. In particular, on the matter of workforce issues, the committee will continue its monitoring of the Telstra Retraining Funding Deed. Under this deed the government has committed to provide $100 million to Telstra to support the availability of an appropriately trained workforce for the NBN and to retrain Telstra staff affected by the NBN rollout. The committee therefore recommended that the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy provide an annual statement to the committee on progress concerning a range of matters under the Telstra Retraining Funding Deed.

On a final note, the report also includes a detailed summary of the NBN committee's visit to New Zealand from 24 to 28 September 2012 under the Australia New Zealand Parliamentary Committee Exchange Program. The objectives of the committee's visit were to establish links with the Commerce Select Committee, selected private sector organisations and government agencies responsible for the delivery of New Zealand's high-speed broadband network and to gain a practical insight into the workings, policies and funding arrangements underpinning New Zealand's ultrafast broadband and rural broadband initiatives, in particular; the mix of technologies incorporated in New Zealand, associated telecommunications regulatory issues in relation to the demerger of Telecom New Zealand; wholesale pricing issues; community consultation and community education strategies; government, corporate and community readiness; and existing employment and skilling issues.

The committee welcomed the opportunity to learn about the New Zealand experience in developing its high-speed broadband network. I note that New Zealand was in the process of building a fibre-to-the-node network but recognised the inadequacies of this infrastructure to support their future economic needs. New Zealand is now building a fibre-to-the-home network to 75 per cent of homes and businesses. The committee saw the differences between these two infrastructure choices, including the significant challenges in providing electric power to a large number of nodes and the need to provide for continuity of power to nodes during power outages.

We visited a suburb called Churton Park in Wellington. This suburb had three different types of broadband to the home. It had fibre to the home, which was the NBN type build; it had the fibre-to-the-network approach; and it had cable TV movie channel types. The government had decided that, regardless of having fibre to the node and regardless of having the cable TV approach, it would overbuild fibre to the home because fibre to the home was far more appropriate for the future needs of the community and the economy in New Zealand.

Some of the issues relating to fibre to the node were the continued use of copper and, when there were natural disasters, the depressurisation of pressurised copper cables, which resulted in the breakdown of communications and the capacity to provide networks to the homes.

They had to build special cabinets for the fibre-to-the-node approach. In New Zealand one of the issues was cooling. Even in New Zealand cooling was a problem and the cabinets had to be specially built to deal with the issue of cooling. They had to be heated in the winter. They had to have an electricity supply to the cabinet and they had to have generator backup to make sure that the fibre to the node continued to work. On that basis the government in New Zealand decided that fibre to the node was the most efficient way to deal with a network within New Zealand and they decided to move directly to fibre to the home because of the issue of electricity supply, as such a supply to the cabinet would not be needed. So specialised cabinets would not be needed and generator backup would not be needed. Fibre to the home was far more efficient and effective—and that is what NBN Co. is building within Australia, a fibre-to-the-home network that means we will not be faced with the problems that New Zealand has recognised and has set about fixing. The NBN approach is the best approach. (Time expired)

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Birmingham, before you commence I remind you as a courtesy that the debate will be interrupted at 12.45 pm.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for that courtesy, Mr Acting Deputy President. I rise to speak on the fourth report of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network and in particular draw the Senate's attention to the dissenting report published by coalition members and senators. I note that Senator Cameron did, as the report does, touch on the committee's visit to New Zealand. Although I was unable to join that delegation, I would highlight to the Senate that particularly relevant information has come to light since that time, that relevant information being that Chorus, the company building the ultrafast broadband network in New Zealand, has this week had to concede and admit a far higher per-premises cost in relation to the delivery of broadband to each home. Remarkably, the government continues to claim that it will be able to build the NBN in Australia at a significantly lower per-premises cost than is the case in New Zealand. This is remarkable indeed because, of course, average wage rates in Australia are significantly higher than those in New Zealand. So, despite higher costs, somehow the government is going to build its NBN at a lower cost than the government of New Zealand. This is indeed remarkable and demonstrates that there is a financial disaster and calamity heading our way under the National Broadband Network as proposed by this government.

It is for these reasons that the dissenting report of coalition members and senators includes some specific recommendations, in particular recommendations that go very directly to issues around transparency about the cost per premises. We believe it is absolutely critical that what is clearly understood and clearly detailed is the cost per premises especially for the building of fibre in brownfield areas and equally for the building of fibre in greenfield areas and for the rollout of the fixed wireless network. NBN Co. and the government claim to have provided some information on this to date, but it is imprecise to say it is the absolute best. NBN Co. of course are pretty keen on imprecise information because we see that from what was given to Senate estimates by way of answers in the last round. NBN Co. in fact refused to provide answers to questions in any level of detail, claiming:

Now that NBN Co. has reached volume rollout it is impractical for NBN Co to provide ad hoc updates on financial and deployment metrics to a level of granularity not already provided for in public releases, parliamentary reporting processes and regular rollout information provided on our website for the use of access seekers.

Such basic information as the number of customers NBN Co. has on its fibre network in Tasmania was deemed to be too granular for NBN Co. to provide to the Senate estimates committee. It beggars belief that this government somehow is able to claim that it is on top of what NBN Co. is doing and yet cannot provide the most basic information to a committee when asked. Equally, since much of the evidence contained in this report was received we have learned that Syntheo, the NBN Co. contractor for South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, has, despite 19 months of so-called volume rollout activity, failed to finish connection as to a single area of broadband rollout in any of those jurisdictions.

South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia—19 months of construction activity and not one connection has materialised. Remarkable, and demonstrates once again the lie when this government says a 12-month average from construction to connection, and demonstrates again the very serious concerns this opposition has about the costs associated with the NBN.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for the debate has expired.