A Shorten Labor Government will rollout Fibre-to-the-Premises to up to two million additional Australian homes and businesses.
The Liberals have doubled the cost of their second rate NBN up to $56 billion.
A Shorten Labor Government will cap the total funding for the NBN at $57 billion.
Labor will spend exactly the same amount of public funding on the NBN as the Liberals. There will be no impact on the budget from this announcement.
The public equity contribution will be the same regardless of who wins the election. The difference is that up to two million more Australians will get a Fibre-to-the-Premises NBN under Labor.
The rollout of Malcolm Turnbull’s second rate copper NBN—Fibre-to-the-Node—will be phased out. Construction of Fibre-to-the-Node will cease when the current pipeline of construction work is completed and design and construction of Fibre-to-the-Premises is scaled back up.
Labor will also commission Infrastructure Australia, with input from relevant experts, to manage the development of a plan that outlines how and when the parts of Australia left with Mr Turnbull’s second rate NBN should be transitioned to Fibre-to-the-Premises. This plan will be commissioned in the first term of a Shorten Labor Government.
A Shorten Labor Government will complete the initial rollout of the NBN by 30 June 2022, the same time the Liberals’ second rate NBN is likely to be complete.
Malcolm Turnbull has made a mess of the NBN. In the last three years:
- The cost of his second rate NBN has nearly doubled.
- The time it will take to build has more than doubled.
- Australia has dropped from 30th in the world for internet speeds to 60th.
Malcolm Turnbull promised he could build a second rate copper NBN for $29.5 billion. This has now blown out to up to $56 billion.
He also promised everyone in Australia would have access to the NBN this year. Currently less than 20 per cent of Australians have access to the NBN—a long way short of the 100 per cent he promised.
Worst of all, many Australians are getting a slower, second rate copper NBN that will not meet their needs into the future.
Fast broadband creates jobs. But you can’t have an innovation boom while you are still buffering.
Australia’s global competitiveness will suffer as Malcolm Turnbull continues to roll out his second rate copper NBN, and opportunities for Australian enterprise and innovation will be lost to overseas markets—and the jobs will follow.
Malcolm Turnbull’s second rate NBN is holding Australia back.
A Labor Government will fix Malcolm Turnbull’s mess and build the NBN we need to meet the needs of the future and create the jobs of the future.
For more information on Labor’s plan to build the NBN Australia needs please visit http://www.100positivepolicies.org.au/build_the_national_broadband_network_australia_needs
MONDAY, 13 JUNE 2016
