Senator O'NEILL (New South Wales) ( 20:09 ): I rise tonight to put some remarks on the record with regard to the appalling rollout of the NBN on the Central Coast. I have spoken on this matter on a number of occasions, yet the current member for Robertson continues to claim that this is a successful rollout. I think the facts that I will put on record tonight reveal that it is far from successful—in fact, it is a disaster. My office on the New South Wales Central Coast is bracing for a perfect storm as the cut-off date for connection to the National Broadband Network looms in July-August next year. If last week's report by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman is any guide, my office will have its work cut out helping local residents battle through the connection process and the subsequent litany of problems that people are experiencing with the NBN on the Central Coast. The ombudsman's annual report revealed four of the Central Coast suburb postcodes are featured in the nation's top 10 complaints about the National Broadband Network rollout. I know that we are proud of being in the top 10 at the Surf Life Saving Championships for Australia. I know that we are proud of being in that top 10 and overrepresented for success in sport. But I know we are not happy to be overrepresented—four out of 10—for a failure to be able to rollout the NBN across the Central Coast. Complaints about the internet and NBN service almost doubled in the past financial year, with the Toukley, Wyong, Central Coast and Gosford postcodes coming fourth, fifth, eighth and tenth for the number of complaints lodged—and that is the people who still had enough energy to complain after the process that they have been through. Slow data speeds were cited as consumers' pet peeve—rising 48 per cent nationally. This is in a time when the government claims it is helping with innovation, yet speeds are declining for people on the coast. Since January last year, about 100 Central Coast residents have formally lodged complaints with my office over complications with their NBN services. Imagine what that figure will be when everyone on the Central Coast, all residents and businesses, have to—and I want to emphasise that 'have to—sign-up to a service provider in August 2017. That is a speech for another occasion. There is a whole 10 minutes I could give you about the really aggressive sales processes that are being inflicted on the people of the Central Coast—particularly the exploitation of the elderly, who fear the technology and fear losing their phone line. They are being grossly exploited. The member for Robertson shrugs off the problem with claims that she has received just a dozen or so complaints and boasts of 27,000 residences and businesses that can now connect to the broadband network. The reality is that an estimated one-third of those connections have been taken up so far. People are hearing in their own community and experiencing amongst their friends, the sharing of their awful experiences of just getting the NBN connected, let alone what happens when you do get it connected. During the election campaign Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rejected reports of bad customer service, citing high levels of customer satisfaction as the reality when visiting the Central Coast and Ms Wicks. I will read into the record just a tiny sample of the cases brought to my staff's attention for mediation and resolution. In one instance a business owner from The Entrance, Michael Bennet, was sleeping under his desk after his landline connection was cut, which meant the security system at his business premises was offline. The best he could do was guard his livelihood himself. A Kangy Angy business owner, who asked not to be identified, said the rollout of the NBN had caused a headache for his local business and left his household without reliable internet for more than a month, and that is not a bad case. There are some people who have had eight to 12 weeks waiting—I will not talk about my own experience, because it was even longer than that. An elderly man on the peninsula lost his landline by connecting to the network. He relies on fortnightly calls to the John Hunter Hospital so that he can place the phone handset on a heart monitor that can be read by his medical specialist—a great leap in medical technology and innovation for this elderly gentleman, which saves a very long trip to the hospital. But without a reliable phone connection, that service that he used to have is now totally useless and impossible to achieve. Michelle Lonie, a mother of three from Tascott, says that the internet is important for her whole family, but especially for her son's homework. But after the NBN rollout along the Point Clare, Tascott and Koolewong stretch of Brisbane Water her family was left without a phone connection for almost a month. To use Michelle's own words: The internet means my son ... can do his homework on a school night, it means my daughter Sarah can look up University placement opportunities or my husband can do our shopping online. The NBN on the Central Coast has been a diabolical sham. Then just recently, in the last week or so, we had the New South Wales Fair Trading Commissioner on ABC radio in Sydney, vowing to take complaints about Malcolm Turnbull's shambolic National Broadband Network to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. Commissioner Rod Stowe said that complaints he had received about the network did not fall within his department's ambit. But he said he would collect consumer grievances and refer them to the ombudsman for action. There is such a level of complaints on the New South Wales Central Coast—the government's so-called 'testing' ground. It is a live experiment with an entire regional economy that Mr Turnbull directed. It is his choice of a multitechnology mix, which can only now be described as Malcolm Turnbull's mess, and it is all over the Central Coast, apart from one sweet spot in the middle where Labor delivered the real NBN—fibre to the premises—for every business and for every family. The government's testing ground for this rollout has resulted in a less-than-second-rate fibre-to-the-node network and complaints are at an all-time high. The member for Robertson in the Liberal government can crow all she likes about the number of connections that are possible, but the reality is that the complaints in my office about appalling quality arrive consistently. There is no point in having a number of houses that you pass and possible connections when the connections just are not working. Labor's fibre network would have delivered consumers an internet superhighway with high speeds, greater data volumes and reliability. That is very important, particularly for that gentleman I was talking about who needs that health capacity—to have that reliable data transfer. That is a standard that is operating around the world, but not on the Central Coast—not thanks to Mr Turnbull and his Liberal government. In August, a Roy Morgan research report found that Gosford had the lowest-ranked score for internet access affordability of all the main regional communities in Australia. The digital divide, effectively the gap between those who have access to the internet and those who cannot afford to pay for that access to have the ability to use a network, is quite simply a gaping chasm on the Central Coast. The review, entitled Measuring Australia's digital divide: the AustralianDigital Inclusion Index 2016, recorded the Australian Digital Inclusion Index for regions across Australia. The ADII measures include internet access, frequency and data allowance. It measures affordability, including share of household income spent on internet resources, and ability in the basic skills, confidence, attitudes and activities that are undertaken. Another source also ranked the Central Coast a disappointing seventh, behind the Gold Coast, Wollongong, Newcastle, Geelong, Townsville and Cairns. Labor began rolling out the real NBN on the Central Coast at Gosford, East Gosford and West Gosford. When Tony Abbott and the Liberal's Lucy Wicks and Karen McNamara were elected they immediately stopped construction of this superhighway—Labor's fibre-to-the-premises model—and instead proposed what is now being revealed as what we always said it would be: a goat track to the fibre, a box in a node not too far from people's houses. When you have the distance between the node and the house in copper it is a goat track. It is a superhighway to the node and a goat track from the node to house! Everybody on the Central Coast is alive to this reality. Fibre to the network uses the existing copper wire phone system. Copper wire is a century-old technology, and this is the showpiece for a government that describes itself as a leader in innovation! It has gone backwards in time to inflict this terrible old technology on the Central Coast. Fibre to the node is an absolute disaster. We were given the promise that the NBN under Malcolm Turnbull would be faster, sooner and cheaper. Well, it has been slow in delivery, it is costing an absolute bomb and it is doing so badly that it cannot even go to the open market. It has had a $20 billion prop up from the government; it is a mess! Malcolm Turnbull's mess. (Time expired)