My question is to the Minister for Communications, Senator Fifield. Can the minister update the Senate on the progress of the NBN rollout across Australia?

Can I acknowledge that this is Senator Duniam's first question in this place and how well qualified he is to serve the interests of the people of Tasmania. I know that Senator Duniam will be pleased to know that the great cities of Hobart and Launceston are very close to completion for the NBN.

Mr President, good news: the 2016 full-year results for the NBN show that NBN has hit its operational and financial targets for nine consecutive quarters. That is an unbroken two-year period of NBN hitting its marks. NBN did have financial year targets of 2.63 million homes ready for service. Mr President, I am very pleased to tell you that NBN beat those targets by over a quarter of a million premises. NBN also had financial year targets of 955,000 premises having active NBN services, and again there is good news: NBN beat that target by over 100,000 premises.

How many to the node?

Senator O'Neill interjecting—

Order on my left!

Today, NBN's weekly progress report shows that there are 3,052,000 homes in Australia that can now order an NBN service and that there are now 1.265 million paying customers on the NBN network. In just the last four weeks alone 90,000 customers have hooked up to the NBN. That represents 4½ thousand customers each and every working day. The NBN is on track, on target and on budget.