Labor now wants to keep the national broadband network (NBN Co, a government Enterprise Business) in public ownership, tabling a bill to that effect on October 9.
According to telecommunications minister Michele Rowland, the National Broadband Network Companies Amendment (Commitment to Public Ownership) Bill 2024 “reaffirms” the government’s commitment to ongoing public ownership of the National Broadband Network (NBN) and removes clauses that create a pathway to its privatisation.
Rowland said the bill ensured that the NBN was considered a piece of “critical infrastructure”. She said, “in a time of rising risks of cybersecurity, we will ensure that the NBN stays in the ownership of the Australian people”.
The bill is a win for the Communications Workers Union (CWU) which has been campaigning against the sell-off. National president Shane Murphy said on October 9 that only a public NBN would remain universally accessible and affordable.
The CWU covers communications workers in the NBN, as well as those in Telstra and Optus.
“More than 8.5 million homes and businesses rely on the NBN to stay connected,” Murphy said. “If passed, this bill will ensure that Australians will not be threatened with massive price hikes and service quality deterioration that would inevitably occur” if the NBN was privatised he said,
Murphy said that NBN workers and their families are also breathing a sigh of relief “knowing their jobs won’t be on the chopping block”.
For years, both the Coalition and Labor had been committed to eventually selling off the NBN.
However, before the 2022 election, Labor made a pledge to keep the NBN in public hands and Rowlands has continued to affirm that. Nevertheless the Coalition has criticised the “rushed” nature of the bill, describing it as a Labor stunt.
While Victorian Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie told Sky News that the Coalition had always though the NBN “would be privatised when the time is right”, it is yet to spell out its position on the new bill.
It was the Kevin Rudd Labor government and communications minister Stephen Conroy who, in 2009, came up with a $43 billion plan to build a national fibre-optic cable network to replace the antiquated broadband services.
It aimed to deliver broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second to 90% of Australian homes, schools and businesses. At the time, only a handful of countries had comparable speeds.
Private investment was encouraged but it was capped at 49%. Rudd said then that the government would sell its stake in the company within five years of the completion, if conditions allowed.
The plan was then “reviewed” by the Coalition’s communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, under the direction of Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
That review concluded that the NBN cost too much and changed the technology from the original “fibre to the premises” (FTTP) plan to a mix of technologies which would be incapable of delivering high speed broadband to everyone who wanted it.
MichaelWest Media’s Kim Wingerei, writing in September 2020, said Australia was then ranked 50 in internet speed worldwide well below almost every European country, North America and many South East Asian countries.
By then, the NBN had cost $14.5 billion more than budgeted; it is now is estimated to have cost well over $60 billion.
The Coalition’s revised 2014 network plan came in at a total cost of $43 billion, compared to the original FTTP plan which would have cost $64 billion.
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, Greens communications spokeswoman, said on October 9 the party wants to ensure the NBN is affordable and accessible for all.
She said the Greens are seeking a Senate inquiry on the bill and considering putting amendments to cap executive bonuses after the NBN CEO was paid more than $3 million in executive bonuses last year.
“Last time there was a minority government, it was the Greens who protected the NBN from being sold off by securing amendments that have kept the NBN in public hands.”