23/09/2020
In a remarkable about face, the Morrison Coalition Government has announced they will, in fact, be putting $3.5 billion towards fibre upgrades for the NBN despite years of investment into a substandard copper network.
In Government, Labor planned to rollout fibre-to-the-premises to 93 percent of Australian households however Malcolm Turnbull abandoned this approach.
Having wasted seven years and $51 billion taxpayer dollars the Liberals are now incredibly reverting to Labor’s original plans and overbuilding the existing copper network with fibre.
Federal Labor Member for Wills, Peter Khalil MP, said it is better late than never.
“The shambolic NBN roll out only completed in my electorate of Wills at the start of 2020, years late and millions over budget. What is worse it delivered an unacceptable divide of service quality within our community.
“With fibre to the home already delivered by the Labor government prior to 2013 south of Stewart Street in Brunswick, all my constituents to the north were then saddled from 2013 onwards with the alternative Coalition Government rollout of a substandard copper based network”, Mr Khalil said.
The NBN is the largest and most important infrastructure project in Australia, envisioned by Labor in Government and essential to Australia’s prosperity in the modern economy. Yet the Coalition in Government has mangled it.
“Every big call, they get wrong. My constituents deserve better than this and should feel rightly aggrieved by this poor use of their hard earned tax dollars in return for a substandard internet.
“It’s ridiculous it took a global pandemic for the Liberals to realise the huge importance of fast, reliable internet and work out that fibre was better all along,” Mr Khalil said.
ENDS