Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The NBN debate will always be one of great fascination. One side of this chamber delivered it, and the other side had that opportunity tragically torn away from them in 2013, just as they were getting beyond writing things on napkins and developing a national plan based on two nodal areas in the whole country. At the end of 2013, after six years of opportunity from the other side, we had the equivalent of three streets done in each electorate in Australia. That's right: just a couple of hundred households per electorate would have been where they got to after six years.

While I appreciate that the previous speaker has the rhetoric we've heard since 2013, the true reality here is that there simply is no counterfactual. We'll never know how badly Labor would have delivered their 2013 guesswork. We don't know what blowouts they would have had or what speed bumps they would have hit. But we're quite happy to stand by our challenges. In the great steeplechase of rolling out the NBN there were a few hurdles and a few water jumps, but it got delivered. And I'll tell you what: steeplechases are 7½-lap athletic events, and I was prepared to say, by 2025, 'Let's judge the two approaches.' There was the coalition, which obviously has a bit more business nuance and rolled this out as people were economically prepared to pay for it and to have NBN Co reporting EBIT profits by about 2020. And within a few years it will be a highly valuable government owned entity and increasing in value.

But no: what we had instead was estimates about where Labor would have got to by 2026. But in that great steeplechase they actually shortened the race by a lap. When COVID hit, that's all that mattered. Where would our great NBN have been under Labor had we let them do their snail-like rollout, house by house, whatever the cost? I don't care what the cost was in 2013. I care about the rolled out cost when it's delivered. There was actually no indication that you understood what it would be like to have millions of Australians relying on two megabits per second through COVID. And this opposition mounts their argument based on 'one person I met at a UNICEF breakfast'. That'll help! One person at a UNICEF breakfast who found it a little hard to connect—well, thanks very much, but I'll go on the Ombudsman's figures of a one per cent complaint rate, which includes servicing, connection, fees and cost structures. One per cent is what most networks around the world experience.

The true measure of our network was how it performed during COVID. Labor would never have been there, and Australians would have been left thoroughly exposed. Now of course what we can do, as the market demands it, is move to these better arrangements for the NBN rollout. This is about doing it as it's needed. It's fine to say that New Zealand was rolling a bit of cable down the street five years ago, but what Australia did—with a completely different population density—was to do it with the appropriate speed that users were prepared to pay for. And we now move to that important step, rolling it out for neighbourhoods that are prepared to pay for the extra speed.

I suspect that by 2025 Australia will have a new fibre network than one that started degrading in 2013, and we'll have technology rolled out as it is needed. That's the subtle difference between us and those on the other side, because you're trapped with your napkin modelling from 2013 that dilutes each time you go to an election. So you started with fibre to the premises everywhere. Then you slowly jettisoned that and you came back to it when you thought you could afford it, but you've never ever had to roll out anything except a few little trial sites in the most impossible place to try it, and that was Tasmania. So, at the end of your time, you had done a great trial, rolling up and down Tasmania. You didn't care who connected or who didn't. You were just trying to roll out some fibre.

What we've done is work on those percentages—those eight million who are connected and the 11.8 who are ready to connect. These are numbers you could never have achieved without dropping a node in the middle of a suburb and, for the investment of $25,000, connecting 200 households to those speeds of five to 25 or better. The reality now is that, if you had any sense on the other side that you didn't like the NBN, you would see the complaints rolling in to the Ombudsman. I ask you: present the report. We've had two speakers from the opposition and not a single reference to the Ombudsman's report. They're the umpire. I know that ALP members aren't happy, but I don't see a lot of Australians in my electorate, his electorate or even your electorate standing up. You're happy to go around and foster the little complaint sessions at ALP NBN forums. You get all your members along, hopping out of one Tarago, and a few unsuspecting people turn up, and I say to them, 'If you've got a problem, take it up with the NBN Co,' and they have nothing to show us. (Time expired)

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