Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

():

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Communications (Senator Fifield) to a question without notice asked by Senator McLucas today relating to the National Broadband Network.

When Malcolm Turnbull released his strategic review in December 2013, he said it was 'the most thorough and objective analysis of the National Broadband Network ever provided to Australians'. He also said:

Importantly, all forecasts in the Strategic Review have been arrived at independently by NBN Co and, in the view of the company and its expert advisors, are both conservative and achievable.

This, as we have all come to understand, was simply empty waffle. Let us go through the highlights.

Mr Turnbull said his second-rate NBN would cost $29.5 billion. We know now that it will cost almost double that, up to $56 billion. He said he would get his second-rate NBN to all homes in Australia by this year, 2016. This time frame has now more than doubled, to 2020. And he said that his second-rate copper NBN would cost $600 per home. This cost has nearly tripled, to $1,600 a home. He said it would cost $55 million to patch up the old copper network. This cost has blown out by more than 1,000 per cent, to more than $640 million. He said that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the pay TV cables by 2016. nbn is now forecasting they will connect only 10,000 homes by June 2016. So they are only 2.6 million homes short of their target, but let's just ignore that! Mr Turnbull also said that his second-rate network would bring in $2.5 billion in revenue in 2016-17. This has crashed to only $1.1 billion. He has blown a $1.4 billion hole in nbn co's revenue forecasts. Just today, yet another leaked document from nbn co has revealed that Mr Turnbull's second-rate copper NBN is hopelessly delayed and over-budget. Internal documents reveal that nbn co has met less than a third of its internal rollout targets for Mr Turnbull's second-rate copper NBN. These delays are due mostly to problems with connecting mains power to Mr Turnbull's large street-side copper cabinets. These delays are entirely of Mr Turnbull's own making.

The great tragedy about this and the rest of the litany of failed targets which are revealed in this document is that every single one of them was forecast in the transition-to-government documents. It is not as though this has suddenly been discovered—all of these problems were identified clearly before Mr Turnbull undertook this path. But, no, he is magic: he is able to transform the real world into his own private moments of 'just believe everything I say and ignore everything I have said before'. What we see in this document is that Mr Turnbull's copper NBN is coming in over-budget, despite recent assurances from officials who sat at Senate estimates and told us all that it was on target.

It would be remiss not to mention directly Senator Fifield's answers to the questions, because Senator Fifield quite deliberately avoided answering any question that was asked of him today.(Time expired)

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must say it is quite extraordinary that we should be standing here today taking note of NBN again. Since we changed government in 2013, I cannot think how many times we have discussed the NBN. It always seems that, if Senator Conroy continues to bring these things up in question time and we take note of them, he can defend the legacy he left us, which was the NBN at the time. I notice that today's questions seem to be largely around a media story this morning about some leaked documentation that made its way into the media. Senator Conroy might well remember the Melton trial site leaked document. Once again we have exactly the same situation, where the documents are always the ones that have not been verified—they have not been peer reviewed.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Unfortunately, Senator Conroy seems to think that, if he can find a scrap piece of paper in the rubbish bin, it can be turned around to be a factual claim about what is going on. It is really quite distressing. Senator Fifield put on the record in question time today that the NBN is on track to meet its targets for the financial year—within budget as set out in the company's corporate plan—and any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong. Who is correct here—Senator Conroy who appears to think that scavenging through rubbish bins and finding pieces of information is more credible than the information that is put on the public record—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The truth!

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by the minister, as it was with the previous minister and now Prime Minister?

Senator Conroy interjecting—

I think the opposition is trying to defend the indefensible. There was so much money wasted under the previous administration. My understanding is that in excess of $6 billion was spent to deliver access the broadband to fewer than three per cent of premises in Australia. Mr Deputy President, you do not need to be a Rhodes scholar to extrapolate that out: if you have $6.5 billion to get to three per cent of premises, how much is it going to cost to get to all premises? Many of those premises with early access to the NBN rollout under the previous administration were those that were easier—the low-hanging fruit concept, which is often used in this place to describe taking the easy stuff first. This government is not going for the easy or the low-hanging fruit first. As well delivering the NBN as quickly as possible to the greatest number of people and as cheaply as possible, we are trying to deliver it first to those people who have very poor access or have no access. Instead of focusing on where you will get the quickest return for your money, we are trying to deliver this more equitably to all Australians.

The other thing we always seem to fail to mention in the narrative about the NBN is the fact that, unfortunately, we have to be able to afford to deliver everything. Senator Conroy and the gold-plated NBN he proposed rolling out—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Those gold-plated satellites are shocking!

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would not go on about satellites, Senator Conroy, because we know what happened with your interim satellites: all the people, who were supposed to get access to the satellites because they could not get NBN by other means, missed out because we oversold it to the providers and then they rolled it out to everybody. So we ended up with too many people on the satellites, but those on the satellites had a very poor service, while those people in remote areas of the country, who could not get access to the NBN by other means, were disadvantaged by the crazy way that those opposite dealt with the interim satellite. I find it very surprising that Senator Conroy would raise satellites as a point of contention here, when his track record on satellites has to be among the worst in the world.

In the last couple of seconds I have, let's go back quickly to the budget. The reality is that we have had delivered to us one of the worst budget positions you could ever imagine and we have tried to be responsible and manage our government within the constraints that the budget has given us.(Time expired)

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion that the Senate take note of answers given by Minister Fifield today on the NBN. The second-rate NBN of the now Prime Minister but former communications minister Mr Malcolm Turnbull had another sad chapter in its history today, with the leaking of yet another internal document that is full of damning data that shows that cost blow-outs and delays in the rollout of the NBN are certainly occurring out there in NBN land. Senator Ruston seem to think there is some scrap of paper that has been found in someone's rubbish bin. It is disappointing that a frontbencher from the government side would try to say that this is a document that can just be forgotten and not be taken any notice of. This is a comprehensive internal document that warrants proper scrutiny and warrants an understanding of how dire these problems actually are so that we can find out where we are up to with the rollout of this second rate NBN today.

That is the background to why I asked questions in question time today of Minister Fifield. My first question, the substantial question, was not answered at all. I pointed Senator Fifield to the fact that on 22 February this year the minister said in this chamber that the rollout of the Prime Minister's copper NBN—the second rate NBN—was 'accelerating'. This document that has been released today is dated 19 February 2016—some three days prior to Senator Fifield saying that the NBN rollout was accelerating. I asked a reasonable question: was the minister informed that the NBN rollout was behind schedule, as this document clearly shows—not a little bit behind schedule but desperately behind schedule—before or after he made his statement? When did he know that what he had said in this chamber was not accurate? Senator Fifield said that he did not accept the premise of my question. I now invite Senator Fifield to go back and look at the Hansard of both 22 February and of question time today and think about whether or not he needs to revisit the answer he gave to my question today. I also asked to Senator Fifield whether all other significant milestones of fibre to the node—FTTN—continued to remain behind target, as this document clearly states. He said no, he did not think that was a good thing, that was true, and then he spent a lot of time criticising Labor.

I have recently taken on the role of chair of the Senate Select Committee on the NBN. The NBN is not a policy area that I have spent a lot of time with in the past, so a lot of this is a new to me. I am now engaged in a level of policy detail and rollout detail that I was not as up to date with before. Frankly, this project is a disaster. After all of the criticism by the government of Labor's NBN rollout, it is frankly amazing that Mr Turnbull and now Minister Fifield can defend their record. When they came to government they had a coming-into-government document that predicted that if the policy approach taken by the now government was taken, saying this when they were in opposition, they would end up with this sort of mess. They knew. It was not surprising. But then Mr Turnbull released his strategic review in December 2013 and he said it was the most thorough and objective analysis of the NBN ever provided to Australians. My colleague Senator Conroy has gone through all of those empty promises that we have now realised—and it is double the cost. Minister Turnbull said then the NBN would cost $29.5 billion—it is now up to $56 billion. If you doubled the rollout cost of any project, you would be sacked. In fact, then Minister Turnbull was promoted.

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

I can perfectly understand how one could be lulled into a sense of deep slumber through Senator McLucas's defence of the NBN. It is wise for us to consider exactly how the NBN came about. The NBN may have been conceived through a determination to bring the benefits of high-speed internet to Australian consumers, but it was a program that was supposed to cost $4 billion—until the giant fingers, the passion fingers, of Senator Conroy and his colleague, his mentor, the man who he admired so much, former Prime Minister Rudd, got on a plane together and got a box of peanuts and a napkin and a pen and the rest is history—on a VIP jet it was determined, over some popcorn and peanuts and a napkin, that tens of billions of dollars would be spent. The NBN was drawn on the back of a napkin, and the Australian people have been paying the price for that lack of planning ever since.

Since that time Senator Conroy has been involved in what can only be politely termed legacy sandbagging, where he has sought to run interference and pile up case after case after case about why his napkin plan was suitable and appropriate for Australia. Let me tell you, right from the word go it has failed the public interest test. It has failed the public interest test not because having a fast broadband network across the country is not in the interest of Australians—it probably is; should the government be doing it, there is a matter of politics in that—but the fact is that it has gone from $4 billion to $8 billion to $16 billion to $32 billion to about $49 billion of taxpayer money being thrust into it. Senator Conroy likes to criticise the fixing that is being been done by this government, but the fixing being done by this government is because of the falsehoods spun out of the previous government. The 2010 corporate plan claimed that the NBN would pass one million premises with its fixed line network by 30 June 2013. We can understand there is a bit of hyperbole around that one million premises, but no-one really thought the then government would have overestimated their own abilities by nearly eightfold.

The fact is after three years, it managed to reach 165,000 premises—not the one million that Senator Conroy and his ilk said—and it cost so much more than was scheduled. That is because there was a complete lack of planning, a complete lack of consideration of the national interest, a complete lack of any prudence and any cost-benefit analysis, and that is because the people around it were not grounded in reality.

I know that Senator Conroy seeks to blame former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for the failings of this. Kevin Rudd has many failings on which we could expound for a long time in this chamber, but we are not going to, because Mr Rudd was driven to make these irrational and not sensible decisions by none other than Senator Conroy and his famous napkin. Senator Conroy could have retired and gone into the void of the Kevin Rudd legacy. He could have retired, got out of parliament and hidden away from the poor decisions. Senator Conroy did not want to do that. So he stayed in this place and has tried to monster and bully people into accepting his version of events. Unfortunately, the truth is somewhat departed from where Senator Conroy is locating himself, and this is the point about the NBN. Yes, it has some benefits—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, on a point of order: I think it is traditional when you have a conflict of interest that you declare your conflict of interest. I think it is very important that Senator Bernardi declares that he has fibre to the home at his home and loves it. I think that is a complete conflict of interest in this debate.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have had enough, Senator Conroy. Senator Brandis, on the point of order.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, on a point of order: I notice Senator Conroy never takes these standing orders or the procedures of this Senate seriously. Plainly, from the moment he opened his mouth, that was not a point of order and he should have been ruled out of order at once.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ultimately, that is a conclusion I have come to. I could have ruled him out of order, but I had to give him an opportunity to at least say what his point of order was. There is no point of order.

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

() (): The cavalier manner in which Senator Conroy regards the Senate's standing orders does resemble—with less catastrophic consequences, I must say—how he went about designing the NBN. What I think he did is that he drew a map of Australia on his coaster and pointed to Sydney and then drew a line to Adelaide, one to Melbourne and somewhere else and he said: 'There we go! That is $5 billion.' But it was not. It was nearly $50 billion, and he did not even get it to some of the regional centres. He could not maybe draw that many lines all at once, but the point is, Senator Conroy has spent his time in this place tearing down something that we are trying to build and fix. (Time expired.)

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of an answer from the Minister for Communications to a question from Senator McLucas in regard to the National Broadband Network. The minister's answers today were thoroughly disappointing as is the government's record so far on this whole sorry saga.

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They were pretty good.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bushby, I will get to you and your interest in NBN and how much you hope to pay for it in a minute. Ever since the government adopted its farcical multitechnology-mix policy, it has become clearer each day that the abbreviation MTM more appropriately stands for Malcolm Turnbull's mess, and we have heard it a number of times. The phrase 'fast, affordable, sooner' that underpinned his government's pre-election promise on the NBN, has to be one of the greatest frauds visited on the Australian people. It is an absolute joke. After 2½ years in government with the promise to deliver the NBN to every home and business, and all they have to show for it is a measly 29,000 fibre-to-the-node connections and not one HFC connection. That is absolutely incredible. And every time we think that Malcolm Turnbull's mess cannot possibly get worse, the problem deepens.

The latest results are detailed in a report leaked to Fairfax Media. I note that the minister did not deny that the report existed or that the figures were inaccurate. It was pretty interesting to watch what he did not actually say, as opposed to the rather disappointing answers that he gave. But we see this whole disaster about NBN deepening right before our very eyes. It is no wonder that the government has done everything it can to hide their mess, because it wants to cover up their bungles and cost blow-outs. Despite this government's promise for greater scrutiny and transparency, it has shrouded the NBN in a veil of secrecy that would make Kim Jong-un blush.

This leaked report that we have been talking about shows that nbn co has only reached one-third of its target for construction completions. While 1.4 million premises should have approved at the date of the 19 February report, only 660,000 premises, or less than half of the target, were approved. And there is a 23 per cent increase in the cost of construction per premise, up from $1,114 to $1,366. This is on top of the disaster that we already knew about. We already knew the cost to Mr Turnbull's second-rate NBN was supposed to be $29.5 billion. It has almost doubled under the current government to $56 billion. Mr Turnbull promised to complete the entire rollout by the end of this year, but it is now projected to be completed by the end of 2020. Only 14 per cent of Australian premises will have the NBN by the government's self-imposed deadline. The cost of fixing the old copper network—this is a doozy—has blown out by 1,000 per cent, with the government having to purchase 8.5 million metres of new copper.

I have spoken before on quite a few occasions in fact in this place on the local consequences of Malcolm Turnbull's mess. in response to a question I asked in Senate estimates, nbn co revealed that they had reached only eight per cent of under-served premises by the end of last financial year ,despite Mr Turnbull's promise to prioritise the rollout to the worst served areas. One of those areas—Senator Bushby, you might be interested in this—is the suburb of Howden. I know you know where Howden is. It is a suburb just south of Hobart, quite near my electorate office in Kingston. It is category E for broadband availability, and they are still waiting for NBN. So they are in the worst of the five categories for broadband availability and they are still waiting for NBN.

It was pretty disappointing to see them left off the list of the nbn co's latest rollout plan, the second time it has happened. We spoke to nbn co about Halden being left off the list previously and they made the same mistake again—they left them off again. This was not only after we had spoken to them but after nbn co had come to public meetings, where the 600 residents of Halden were so concerned they had a petition that I tabled in this place not that long a go in regards to the way they have been treated and the whole issue around lack of availability in Halden. As I said, Halden is not some far flung out reach of Australia— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.