Question Time - NBN and the Ascot exchange

Mr IRONS:  Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects, representing the Minister for Communications. I have received at least 100 letters from my constituents about the poor broadband service in the Ascot exchange. 

In 2007 the then Labor member wrote to the constituents of Swan and said that they would solve this. They said they would fix it, but in six years they did nothing. They were absolutely useless. What action is the coalition government taking to reverse Labor's inaction and pathetic uselessness, and to help my constituents in the Ascot exchange?

Opposition members:  Argument!

The SPEAKER:  Before I call the minister—

Mr Albanese:  Go down the other end, Paul!

Ms Henderson interjecting—

The SPEAKER:  The member for Grayndler is delaying the member for Watson! The member for Corangamite will cease interjecting!

Mr Albanese:  I am just trying to—

The SPEAKER:  The member for Grayndler will cease interjecting!

Mr Burke:  Mr Speaker, there might be a bit of argument in that question.

The SPEAKER:  No, the member for Watson. Is this a point of order?

Mr Burke:  Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

The SPEAKER:  On what point of order?

Mr Burke:  Under the rules for questions—under the standing orders—questions are not allowed to contain argument. That was full of it!

Government members interjecting—

The SPEAKER:  The member for Gilmore and the Leader of the House will cease interjecting! I would like to respond to the point of order.

A government member interjecting—

The SPEAKER:  And whoever that was can cease interjecting too! I will say to the member for Watson that if I enforced that particular subsection of the standing orders strictly, almost none of the opposition's questions would be in order.

Ms Kate Ellis:  You can't be serious!

The SPEAKER:  I am deadly serious. If you would like me to start, I will.

Mr FLETCHER (Bradfield—Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects) (15:05):  I do want to thank the member for Swan for this question, which really reflects a campaign that he has been assiduously pursuing in the totality of his time here in the parliament in relation to the delivery of broadband in Ascot.

There is, as the member informed the House, a letter on the record from Kim Wilkie MP, the then Labor member for Swan, from September 2007 which says:

Labor's National Broadband Network will solve Ascot's broadband problems.

There it was. There was the promise in 2007. And so, when the new member for Swan—as he then was in 2007—came to the parliament, he understandably pursued the delivery of that promise.

To his great surprise, when the city of Belmont and the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council put forward a proposal to prioritise the Ascot exchange, it was rejected by the then minister for broadband, Senator Conroy. He rejected out of hand the proposal, when there had been a promise only two years before by the then Labor member for Swan that Ascot would be sorted out.

It has fallen—as it always does—to the coalition to sort out Labor's mess. We are doing that with the NBN all around Australia. We are doing that in the electorate of Swan, where there are 28,000 premises ready for service today. I am sure there are many in the House who recollect that the total number of premises connected in all of Western Australia in 2013, when we came to government, was 34. Yet today—only slightly more than two years later—in just one electorate in Western Australia over 28,000 premises are ready for service.

Indeed, when we came to government, Western Australia's NBN rollout was in such disarray that the primary contractor, Syntheo, had pulled out of that market. So we have turned that situation around in a short period of time. Thanks to the advocacy of the member for Swan on behalf of his constituents, some 15,500 homes and businesses in Ascot, Belmont, Cloverdale, Perth, Redcliffe and Rivervale will see construction begin in the first quarter of 2017, and there are 39,160 premises included in the rollout plan through to the third quarter of 2018.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

The SPEAKER:  The member for Perth will cease interjecting.

Mr FLETCHER:  The Turnbull government is delivering on the NBN rollout.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

The SPEAKER:  The member for Perth is warned!

Mr FLETCHER:  We are correcting for the chaotic and incompetent mess we inherited from the other side.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

The SPEAKER:  The member for Perth will leave under 94(a).

The member for Perth then left the chamber.

Mr Truss:  I ask that further questions be place on the Notice Paper. Twenty-two—we are doing well!