Page 81 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
broadband. Twenty years ago this place recognised that Telstra was not going to build the broadband infrastructure our city and our people needed. As a city we decided we could be world leaders, and the TransACT network, which now services around 55,000 premises across Canberra, was the most advanced consumer broadband network in Australia when we began rolling it out. It is still competitive by global standards today.
I am sure that all members in this place were as hopeful as I was that the rollout of high-speed broadband in the ACT would be completed when the commonwealth established NBN Co in 2009. Canberra was one of the 19 designated early rollout sites. The initial rollout by NBN in Gungahlin under the former Labor federal government was one of the smoothest in Australia, and the take-up rate amongst the highest in the country.
Many of Canberra’s housing developers understood the value of the NBN, and the NBN rollout in greenfield sites across Canberra has been among the most successful in the country. That initial rollout was not just about fibre in the ground. Both the federal and ACT governments delivered training and awareness raising programs for businesses and households to help them grasp what the NBN fibre rollout meant and how they would be able to take advantage of this new advanced network.
Sadly, the backward-looking federal Liberals decided that all this progress should be stopped in its tracks. Since the Liberals decided to turn their backs from Australia’s future, virtually no new connections to the NBN have been made in the ACT, except for the completion of work already underway in Gungahlin. Disgracefully, despite the overwhelming need, virtually no connections to businesses have been made in Civic even though the rollout of NBN cable was completed years ago.
Almost incredibly, NBN’s latest rollout plans for the ACT show that it plans to duplicate TransACT’s network in suburbs like Campbell, while places like Fyshwick, which do not have access to anything like the speeds in Campbell, do not appear on NBN’s rollout schedules at all. Not only is NBN duplicating TransACT’s network; it is doing it with technology which will be slower than what already exists.
This is madness, Madam Speaker. It is the sort of madness you get from the Liberal Party, because they do not understand business and they do not have any vision for the future.
On 23 September 2015, the Assembly passed a resolution expressing its concern about the delayed, unequal and unclear access to NBN both within Canberra suburbs and across the Canberra region. The Chief Minister then wrote to the federal Minister for Communications to seek clarity about the future status of the NBN rollout in the ACT. I understand that, four months later, the Chief Minister is yet to receive a reply.
However, the ACT government has not stood still and waited for the federal Liberals to come to their senses. We are building the CBRfree wi-fi network, which will be one of the largest high quality and, most importantly, free public networks in Australia. In January this year, CBRfree was used by over 48,000 Canberrans and visitors. Madam Speaker, you can see schoolchildren working on their homework in
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video