Federal Member for Greenway, Michelle Rowland, has told the Parliament that the latest revelations about the Turnbull Government’s second-rate National Broadband Network are the clearest example of a Prime Minister being all talk and no action.

“It is probably the single biggest issue on which I receive unsolicited representations from residents in all parts of the electorate”, Ms Rowland told the Parliament.

“As I warned prior to the last election, the electorate of Greenway has been divided into an electorate of NBN haves and have-nots. We have those fortunate people who managed to obtain the real NBN - Labor's fibre-to-the-home network - prior to the last election, and we have other areas of the electorate where people literally look across the road and see people who do not have broadband and certainly do not have the NBN”.

Ms Rowland said the latest media headlines reflect the frustration and lived experiences of residents and small businesses in our local area.  There is also extreme disillusionment with a Prime Minister who talked a big game on delivering the NBN, but after two and a half years has completely failed to deliver in Greenway.

“I am not surprised that in this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald we see the headline ‘Turnbull's NBN plan in crisis’.  There has never been a clearer example of this Prime Minister and this government being all talk and no action”, Ms Rowland said yesterday.

“His mantra was that it was going to be ‘Fast. Affordable. Sooner.’  Fail, fail and fail by this Prime Minister”.

Ms Rowland cited real life examples of Greenway residents whose lives are adversely impacted by a lack of affordable high-speed broadband including for small businesses, residents working from home and their children’s education.

Ms RoWland said Greenway residents know they are being ripped off by the Turnbull Government’s failure to deliver a real National Broadband Network.

“Residents understand why broadband is important. They understand many of the technical issues that we probably think are beyond them. They are savvy people, and I can tell you as well that they know they are not getting the promise made by this Prime Minister when he was Minister for Communications. They know they were promised to have minimum speeds delivered by the end of 2016”, Ms Rowland said.

This latest leaked report about the NBN reveals the extent to which the project has doubled in cost and drifted off course, mainly during the time when Mr Turnbull was in direct control as Communications Minister.

A full copy of Ms Rowland’s speech can be found here.

TUESDAY, 1 MARCH 2016
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