National Broadband Network Joint Committee Hansard 27 July 2011

7/31/2019 National Broadband Network Joint Committee Hansard 27 July 2011

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COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

Proof Committee Hansard

JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE NATIONAL BROADBAND NETWORK

Rollout of the National Broadband Network

(Public)

WEDNESDAY, 27 JULY 2011

BROKEN HILL

BY AUTHORITY OF THE PARLIAMENT

[PROOF COPY]

THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN PREPARED BY AN EXTERNAL PROVIDERTO EXPEDITE DELIVERY, THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS NOT BEEN SUBEDITED

CONDITIONS OF DISTRIBUTIONThis is an uncorrected proof of evidence taken before the committee.It is made available under the condition that it is recognised as such.


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INTERNET

Hansard transcripts of public hearings are made available on theinternet when authorised by the committee.

The internet address is:http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard

To search the parliamentary database, go to:http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au


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JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE NATIONAL BROADBAND NETWORKWednesday, 27 July 2011

Members in attendance: Senator Stephens and Ms D'ath, Ms Ley, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Turnbull

Terms of reference for the inquiry:

To inquire into and report on:Rollout of the National Broadband Network


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WITNESSES

BROWN, Mr Paul Edward, Mayor, Central Darling Shire Council ................................................................ 16

COWIE, Ms Sharyn Lee, Manager, Telehealth, and Acting Manager, Electronic Medical Record SupportTeam, Far West Local Health District Board ................................................................................................. 40

DUGGAN, Mr Lance, Commercial Services Manager, Perilya Broken Hill Ltd ............................................ 16

DYER, Ms Cathy, Director, Corporate Services, Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation ....................... 25

FERGUSON, Ms Jan, Managing Director, Ninti One Ltd, managing the Cooperative Research Centre forRemote Economic Participation ......................................................................................................................... 1

FLECKNOE-BROWN, Dr Stephen Crisford, Chairman, Far West Local Health District Board ................ 40

GOUGH, Mr Hugh, Private capacity ..................................................................................................................... 7

HANLEY, Mr Michael, Manager, Information Technology, Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation .... 25

HILL, Dr Michael John, Senior Medical Officer, Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia ......................... 34

KOHEN, Ms Apolline Aurore, Senior Research Officer, Ninti One Ltd ............................................................ 1

LOONEY, Mr Gary Robert, Private capacity ...................................................................................................... 8NADGE, Mrs Linda Patricia, Executive Officer, Regional Development Australia Far West Inc ................ 16

OLDMAN, Mr Gary Stephen, Information Technology Manager, Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia............................................................................................................................................................................. 34

PERKINS, Associate Professor David Allan, Director, Research, Broken Hill University Department of Rural Health, University of Sydney ................................................................................................................. 34

THOMSON, Adjunct Professor Clyde, Executive Director, Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia South-East Section ........................................................................................................................................................ 34

TURLEY, Councillor Darriea, Acting Chair, Regional Development Australia Far West; and DeputyMayor, Broken Hill City Council ..................................................................................................................... 16

WILSON, Mr Michael Robert Henry, Director, M&S Consultants Pty Ltd. .................................................... 9

ZAKNICH, Mr Frank, General Manager, Broken Hill City Council ............................................................... 30


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Wednesday, 27 July 2011 JOINT Page 1

NATIONAL BROADBAND NETWORK COMMITTEE

FERGUSON, Ms Jan, Managing Director, Ninti One Ltd, managing the Cooperative Research Centre for

Remote Economic Participation

KOHEN, Ms Apolline Aurore, Senior Research Officer, Ninti One Ltd

Committee met at 11:36CHAIR (Mr Oakeshott): I declare open the public hearing of the Joint Standing Committee on the National

Broadband Network in Broken Hill. We have had a lovely morning and, hopefully, we will have a lovelyafternoon with some of the submissions that we are about to receive. Before calling the first witnesses, I ask acommittee member to move that the media be allowed to broadcast the proceedings today in accordance with therules set down for committees, which include fair and accurate reporting of proceedings and not taking footage orstill images of members' papers or laptop screens.

Mrs D'ATH: I so move.CHAIR: Thank you, Yvette. The committee has come to Broken Hill to hear about possible National

Broadband Network roll-out issues that are important to the community of Broken Hill and to those who provideservices to Broken Hill. This is the first regional and remote area community that the committee has visited, and Iextend my thanks to all those in the Broken Hill community and surrounds who have given their time andexpertise to be here to speak with the committee. I also thank those who have travelled long distances either toappear before the committee or to be present here today.

I welcome witnesses from Ninti One. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence underoath, I advise you that these hearings are formal proceedings of the parliament and warrant the same respect asproceedings of the respective houses. The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may beregarded as a contempt of parliament. The evidence given today will be recorded by Hansard and attractsparliamentary privilege. Do you have a submission you would like to provide the committee?

Ms Ferguson: We can provide a submission. As you know, we came a little late in the proceedings. We canprovide it by close of business tomorrow. We do not have it here with us today, I am sorry.

CHAIR: That is okay. Would you like to make an opening statement?Ms Ferguson: Certainly. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present here today. Ninti One is a not-

for-profit company that exists in remote Australia to work towards eliminating economic disadvantage. Myapologies to the people of Broken Hill that I cannot stay after this. I need to get back to things in other parts of remote Australia and so my apologies that I will not hear your submissions, but I will read Hansard .

Ninti One is the management company behind the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote EconomicParticipation and it works to provide solutions to economic disadvantage in remote Australia. We work at themacro and micro levels of the economy and on systems issues that affect economic development in remoteAustralia. We work in the arts, tourism and pastoral industries, for example, and we work in them because themultipliers to the communities are actually greater and the economic advantages to those communities areactually greater. In the past, we have developed technology to address some of the issues faced by remote

communities in accessing fast ICT technology, but to date it has not been taken up. I am happy to take questions alittle later as to why that is the case. I would particularly like to set the scene for Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander Australians and how they are impacted by the lack of ICT access. It is not the only part of remoteAustralia that we work with, but we thought it was best to outline the significant disadvantage that exists for thosepeople, because I am sure others will bring the broader part of the community to bear. Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islanders are 2.5 per cent of the Australian population, and 38 per cent are aged under 14 compared to 19per cent of the general population. The median age is 21 compared to 38 in the rest of the population. Forty-sixper cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders live in outer regional areas and 25 per cent live in remote orvery remote Australia. The average household income for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is $460 per week compared to $740 for the remaining population. In remote areas this declines to $296 a week.

Only one in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids has access to the internet. Based on our researchwhich we have been conducting for close to 10 years, we believe that high-speed internet access is essential if this

outlook is to change. It is essential for access to markets and it is essential for access to services. There is preciouslittle you can access about a government service unless you have access to some form of internet connection. Themore photos those online services have the less capacity you have to access it if you are living remotely.


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Page 2 JOINT Wednesday, 27 July 2011

The current situation in remote communities is that they have very basic telephony and it is often out of order.End users conduct their business over a public telephone, and I can give examples if the committee decide theywould like to hear them. Mobile coverage is very poor in remote Australia. It is claimed that 99 per cent of Australia has access to mobile phones, but I can assure you that where I come from in northern South Australia Ihave to go to the top of the hill to get any mobile phone access; I do not have it anywhere close to my home. Iwould put it to you, given the range of technologies that we are using here today, that you and I could not functionnow without a functioning computer or access to a phone, and preferably an iPhone. We would also suggest to thecommittee that it is not in the public interest in terms of biosecurity, safety, disaster management or theperpetuation of disadvantage for very remote Australia to have such poor access to the current bandwidth speeds.

The world is moving at an exceptionally fast pace and two of the sectors we work with, arts and tourism,require internet access at fast speeds to have any kind of a market share. We also know from our research thatAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are very fast adopters of new technology. Where we have workedparticularly with kids to get them to pick up good skills and be able to use the internet, they have been successfulinternationally. One group we worked with won the Lonely Planet DVD competition as a result of that work.Without ICT none of that is possible. It also allows the capture of cultural pursuits which have significant healthand well-being and economic impacts for people. At the moment only one in five Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander households has access to the internet; whereas four out of five other Australians have access. In theNorthern Territory, for example, very few communities outside of the growth towns have any access at all. One of the impacts of this is that it severely limits the capacity to bring in any kind of health change because a lot of visiting specialists and the like need to be done through fast teleconferencing services and if you do not have thebandwidth you just cannot do it.

Some years ago we did an initial report into access and found it to be very poor. We then looked at what sort of technology would change that. We developed a piece of technology that would distribute the internet at thecommunity level. We had real difficulty in getting any take-up from any telecommunications entity because wework in the area of market failure and there are not the customers to bring in enough cash for them to be remotelyinterested in investing in it. This technology in 2008 cost $1,000 and was made with readily available componentparts. Due to the lack of income streams it just was not taken up. In summary, in the areas we work in we work with abject poverty. To change a lot of that abject poverty we would contest that we need high-speed, low-costinternet access to change people's access to markets and services. As I said, I can provide you with a writtenreport by tomorrow that provides you with all of the sources of this material.

We would recommend to the committee that other technologies should be explored to provide low-cost,effective ICT solutions for remote Australia, whether it is Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal Australia. It is reallyimportant that we have low-cost options. We would suggest that a report be commissioned to establish a programto serve remote Australia with the implementation of cost-effective ICT solutions. Government assistanceprograms for internet access should be provided for shared community access to WiFi networks for communityaccount holders and billing options. More funding is specifically needed for Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslanders' access to effective ICT. Thank you for the opportunity and I am happy to take any questions.

CHAIR: Thank you. Do you have an opening statement, Ms Kohen?Ms Kohen: No.CHAIR: You made reference to the technology development that you have been involved in. Can you give us

some details in regard to that journey?Ms Ferguson: With one caveat: I am not the most technically competent to talk about this, but as the

managing director I can give you CHAIR: You are amongst friends.Ms Ferguson: Yes, that is right. I do not want in any way to profess that I am technically competent in that

space. In partnership with the old Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre and the University of Wollongong, we developed this mesh technology, which is basically that if the internet came into the communityvia satellite it could be beamed around the community at very low cost. We trialled it particularly in the pastoralindustry space, where we have developed some very exciting technology about precision pastoralism. We usedthis web mesh network to beam information from the station out to the various bores. Provided you had a line of sight, there were no issues in beaming the information over about three kilometres. The component parts wereabout $1,000 at that time in 2008. At that time, we were combining it with telemetry and a whole series of otherpastoral pieces of technology, but this was just about testing whether it would work in real time and it did. Wetested it in Aboriginal communities, where we brought the internet in by satellite and then used our web meshnetwork to beam it around the community, and they got access.


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Ms Kohen: It can actually go up to 150 kilometres, which makes it really interesting in the case of outstationsin remote communities accessing an exchange or a growth town.

Ms Ferguson: In the pastoral sense, we tested it over three kilometres because that was the line of sight wehad, but you can take it up to 150, as Apolline said. We tried desperately through a whole series of opportunitiesto get this trialled extensively through communities and we could not get anybody to buy it. We worked withTelstra and a whole series of other companies. There is no financial trail of customers paying them a fee eachmonth to make it worthwhile for them.

CHAIR: Okay. Ms Ley.Ms LEY: Do you have a response to some of the costs that you have heard mentioned regarding what the

NBN will cost to customers once it is built?Ms Ferguson: Only in the context of the average household income. If you have $296 a week then it does not

leave you an awful lot to engage in that system. If you are at the poor end of the system then the figures I haveheard mean you would not actually be able to engage. We have done some work which I can refer you to aroundrelative levels of poverty $20 makes a huge difference to someone's relative level of poverty on $296 a week.On the figures we have seen, we do not believe that people can effectively engage when their average householdincome is only $296 a week.

Ms LEY: For a typical household, what would be the main benefits of fast broadband for that household? Iknow it is hard to pick a typical one, but could you please try.

Ms Ferguson: We are doing we are finding that communities genuinely want to engage in the real economythat comes down to how they do that. When you only have a public payphone then that is exceptionally difficult.We have done a lot of work with Aboriginal communities in understanding value chains. Once they understand avalue chain, they do not want to be a price-taker; they want to be a price-setter and that it is very hard when youput your 20c in the slot at the payphone. We suggest that if the internet is to come into their community and hadmultiple-use capacity then they would take it up very fast. The evidence we have from South Africa is thatpeople's employment opportunities increase by 50 per cent if they have access to mobile phones. So we can onlyassume that if you extrapolate that out to access to the internet then people's employment opportunities willincrease by the same sorts of dimensions as they have in South Africa.

Mrs D'ATH: Following on from that, you spoke about recommending high-speed, low-cost options and theaverage household income. To achieve that, what sorts of costs do you consider as reasonable that a householdwith that sort of income is going to be able to afford?

Ms Ferguson: We would like to suggest a slightly different model that it is not at every household but that itcomes into some sort of community facility. People in the bush are fast adopters of technology and they will pick up an iPad or an iPhone or whatever else, but they do not have the access. We would suggest that, if it came intothe community a lot of the communities only have 50 people in them they would pick up the technology likethey have with the iPhone or the iPad. At a household level we do not believe it is sustainable. In the currentsituation they are not going to have the money to sustain the $60 a month or whatever the charge is. It is thehouseholder thing that we think is the actual difficulty. One internet connection per household is problematic. If you bring it into one household, in an Aboriginal community or any other community, that person is going to geta lot of humbug to get access to the internet, whereas if you brought it into a community facility like you can doin any cafe in Broken Hill, which I have been doing this morning and have that kind of opportunity then peoplewill access it.

Mrs D'ATH: Is it your understanding that that cannot occur with the NBN, that it will not be attached tocommunity centres or other facilities, and can only be attached to households?

Ms Ferguson: Our perception of what we read obviously you are better informed than us is that the NBNwill not necessarily reach some of the communities that we are talking about. It will go to, for example, theNorthern Territory growth towns and will not go to the remote communities in more isolated areas.

Ms Kohen: I want to add that the seven per cent that will be offered via satellite or wireless solutions thepeople in the bush will need bandwidth. It is too hard to engage at that level. I think there are several issues.One is access, but then speed and what is offered in the bush are others.

Mrs D'ATH: When you talk about it being a waste of time hooking it up to households, your understanding isthat they are not households that would be hooked up anyway because they would be in the seven per cent. I

guess what you are advocating is that, in these more remote communities, you want to see fast access to acommunity hub.


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Ms Kohen: That is right.Mrs D'ATH: Then it comes down to who pays for the access in a community setting as opposed to a home

setting.Ms Ferguson: That is right. It is not the money or the level of disposable income to have a household internet

connection in these communities, and there will not be until we make some major change in their economicoutcomes.Mrs D'ATH: Just to clarify, you are advocating not just to put those facilities in but that there needs to be

additional support given. To just provide high-speed access without the training and support for that community,it would not be utilised to its full extent.

Ms Ferguson: That is right.Senator STEPHENS: On that issue, in terms of the mesh network, which I understand is an example, your

research deals with that.Ms Ferguson: It is probably available on the net. We are a publicly funded research institution. Nothing that

we do is secret.Senator STEPHENS: That goes to the issue of shared community access as well.

Ms Kohen: Basically once you bring a connectivity, through the records technology, to that mesh network then it is available in the rural community and possibly to other outstations, if they are not too far. That brings acommunal sort of access, which is really important and really good.

Mr TURNBULL: So your idea for these remote communities would be to have a community centre withbroadband access, and that would be with, presumably, a number of terminals like an internet cafe, in effect.

Ms Ferguson: That is one model, and that was certainly done through some of the rural transaction centres.We suggest that people will access the technology by a whole range of means. What they do not have access to isthe Wi-Fi network to work off. Wi-Fi comes into a lot of these communities, to schools, police stations andwhatever else, but they are very protected systems. What we would advocate is that it came in and they could pick up their own technology. We are not advocating universal technology; we are advocating that the Wi-Fi comes inand you allow people to pick it up as they choose and they will, from our experience.

Mr TURNBULL: So your understanding is that the NBN's model in the remote communities you are talkingabout here would not be fixed wireless; it would be satellite, and it would be satellite delivered to the household?

Ms Ferguson: Yes.Mr TURNBULL: And I gather you are saying you think that is going to (a) be too expensive and (b) expose

the residents of that household to a lot of humbug?Ms Ferguson: Yes.Mr TURNBULL: So are you saying that there should be, in effect, a Wi-Fi base station that runs off that

satellite signal and then connects the satellite through Wi-Fi to that broader community?Ms Ferguson: That is right, yes. We have a bit of an issue with the user pays model in the bush, because, say,

if any of you go out there and roll your car and you need someone to take you to hospital and someone to dealwith the belongings in your car and everything, one of us goes and does it. We do not say, 'Can we have yourcredit card, please, and can you pay us for this before we go and do it?' We just do it. But, when it comes to someof these other things that get pushed out, it always comes out as a user pays model. We are using the example of Aboriginal communities because it is the starkest, but the reality is that, if you had a model where Wi-Fi cameinto some of these remote places and the community generally could have access to it with the technology theybought themselves, you will get far more change and you will get better public safety outcomes a whole seriesof things. For example, if you have a biosecurity problem, you have immediately got the capacity to deal with itbecause everybody's technology is going to work.

CHAIR: And your mesh works with satellite?Ms Ferguson: Yes, absolutely.Ms Kohen: The theory is you can connect it to copper or whatever. Say you have got a gross town, such as, in

the Top End, Maningrida, which has got 33 smaller communities within a range of 200 kilometres: all thosesmaller communities, where people reside and really want to live and do stuff, can be connected.

Ms Ferguson: And, look, we are not here advocating our technology CHAIR: No, no; it is about whether it is adaptable.


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Ms Ferguson: Yes. When we as a remote organisation tried to find a solution to this problem, we got into themarket failure problem, where there just is not the critical mass of people required to pay the money to getanybody to invest, so nobody wants to actually do it.

Mr TURNBULL: I do not think anyone imagines it is going to be a highly lucrative commercial proposition.

Ms Ferguson: Neither did we. We would have liked it taken up as some sort of community service obligation.But we believe that we will get significant outcomes for remote Australia, for everybody, if we can actually getthe model tweaked slightly to take account of those issues.

CHAIR: Have you had any communication at all with NBN Co. or government?Ms Ferguson: Yes, we have in terms of this, yes, we have.CHAIR: Tell us about the journey.Ms Ferguson: We are great advocates of government so I say this with some element of sensitivity, but we

have been to the various government departments, over many years, that have been responsible for this processand asked: can we get enough money to run a field trial so we can see whether what we believe from the trialsthat we have funded is right? Can we get access to $1 million, I think we were asking for at the time, to seewhether this will really work and whether people will pick up the technology and really make it work? We havetried endlessly to do that and not been able to get anybody to take it up, because you get told figures like '99 percent of people have access to a mobile network'. Well, I can assure you that when I travel around remote AustraliaI get to a certain point and it just stops. I might pick it up at a mining site or somewhere else as I travel around,but I do not universally pick it up. I lost the network just out of Broken Hill here yesterday. It is not universallyavailable; it is patchy. So by talking to all the relevant people at the time, including Telstra and other telcos, wewere trying to get enough money to just trial this. We do not care if it is our technology, we just want to trial it sowe can see whether it works, because, if it does work, we will change the connectivity of our country. This is anational issue; it is broader than any of us. If we do it and we do it well then we will position the countryuniversally differently.

CHAIR: Did you get a blanket no and a series of explicit reasons why or did you just get the bowl of Jell-Obureaucracy where you just do not know what they think?

Ms Ferguson: My personal view would be we got: is this really a problem? It depends where you live

whether it is a problem: if you live in the CBD then it is not a problem but if you do not live in the CBD then it isa problem. I think it was more people saying, 'We sort of understand that this might be a good idea, but whoseproblem is it really?' It is a problem for people who live in remote Australia.

CHAIR: I think you have advocated very well. I suspect we will be in touch again. Thank you for that.Ms Ferguson: Thank you very much.Mr TURNBULL: Jan and Apolline, tell us about your business. How did you set it up? Are both of you based

in remote Australia?Ms Ferguson: We are. Our headquarters are in Alice Springs. Where do I live? I do actually have a house in

Adelaide. Because the travel is a nightmare everywhere else I have been home one night in three weeks.Mr TURNBULL: You contract to a whole bunch of CRCs and government programs.Ms Ferguson: We were set up for the management company behind the Desert Knowledge Cooperative

Research Centre. We realised there was a significant need to do a whole range of things in remote Australia. Forexample, we did research into why camels were a problem in Australia. We learnt from that that there is a thingcalled desert syndrome, which applies to remote Australia as well. Six or seven characteristics apply to everythingwe do. One of those is that you not get enough critical mass. We decided to grow the company to bring criticalmass to issues that face remote Australia. We put in a bid for a completely new CRC. We have got 54 partners inthe CRC 30 per cent of which are Aboriginal organisations and about 30 per cent are private entrepreneurs whochoose to invest in us. In the camels project there are 19 partners. In a whole series of our other projects there aremultiple partners who on their own could not do what needs to be done. If we come together in the bush, we getcritical mass and we can do what we need to do. We get enough money to run a small secretariat that goes outworking with these problems to try to understand how we can have an impact.

We are particularly good at a two-way model of involving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia. We work together. We have a very good model of actually establishing what we would call the true bush view by our

researchers being people who live and work in remote Australia. We have people who come from the coast a lotof intelligent, very smart people. They need to come in because we cannot maintain the expertise where we are.Mr TURNBULL: I am told that there are a lot of smart people in Port Macquarie!


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Ms Ferguson: People fly in and out. That is just the way it is. Our model is very locally based. We currentlyhave 29 Aboriginal researchers on staff.

CHAIR: I can strongly advocate they are the real deal. Thank you for attending today. If you have been askedto provide additional information, could you please forward it to the secretary. We have given you until 8 August.I think you can have a bit of time to prepare your work.

Ms Ferguson: Fantastic. Thank you very much for your time.CHAIR: I gather, on behalf of the local member, a couple of locals from Broken Hill would like to have two

minutes to express a view one way or the other on the National Broadband Network. Two minutes is theequivalent of 25 words or less and I am not sure whether we will have time for questions. I now hand over to you.


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GOUGH, Mr Hugh, Private capacity

[12:04]Thank you for the opportunity. I represent a couple of local businesses: a small bed and breakfast and I am

developing a website. I have brought this book along with me, entitled The Best Hated Man in Australia . Ibrought it along, because it was launched in this very room on 13 August last year. It is about the significant yearsof Percy Brookfield. Percy Brookfield held the balance of power in the Legislative Assembly of New SouthWales at one particular time you can, perhaps, draw some parallels. He was shot and gave his life where we arestationed at Riverton. His funeral was held in this very building. It is reported that between 15,000 and 20,000mourners were at his funeral. It was one of the biggest funerals ever held in Australia. To me, and I hope to a lotof other people as well, this building represents part of what is Australia. It is what makes Australians Australia. Itis a part of our history. My emphasis is really on: how quickly do we get the NBN? I was given to understandsome months ago that it was just a fait accomplis and that Broken Hill was to be the first place to get it. I havesubsequently learnt that we have to plead and have to put our case forward in order to get it in a timely fashion.

I draw your attention to the miners memorial, which sits on top of our skimp dump. On the memorial are over800 names of miners who lost their lives in the process of extracting the wealth out of the ground in Broken Hillin order to fund the industrialisation and the development of Australia. In building a website, which is quitesimple to remember, visitbrokenhill.com, I need to absorb what is it that makes Broken Hill unique? There isabsolutely no question, in my mind, that it is unique. One thing that I have discovered is that there is a great senseof debt. 'You owe us' is something that is prevalent throughout our community and, interestingly, in this casethroughout the rest of Australia, particularly in Canberra, Sydney and, to a lesser extent, Melbourne. There is anenormous sense of debt. I think that you as the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network have got afantastic opportunity to help make a degree of reparation relative to the NBN. Fast internet connection is vital toour area. What do we want? We want the NBN. When do we want it? We want it now.

CHAIR: Thank you for that evidence, Hugh. I was wondering where you were going with reference to thatbook and who you were referring to amongst the committee members. But thank you.


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LOONEY, Mr Gary Robert, Private capacity

[12:08]I am from Menindee, 100 kilometres away. I do not believe that speed is necessarily everything, although I

appreciate the NBN and what it could bring for us. One of the key things that perhaps should be looked at isquality of service. Businesses often use the word 'confidence' and, if you are sitting at a computer ready to dosome work and your connection goes down, how does that affect confidence? If you are at a computer and it is alittle bit slower than you want it to be, you can get by. We all do. We learn to live with what we have got. But Ibelieve that one of the biggest issues is quality of service. I have looked at the amount of uptime that is requiredunder the existing regulations and, from what I can work out, in practice it seems to me insufficient. That is onepoint.

Another point that I feel strongly about is that we should teach people to use the computer and show them howit can help them. We should get elderly people to use the facilities that are available. They are not going to take iton naturally. I do not think that just because you provide a service you are necessarily going to get organic growthfrom it. I believe that is too simplistic. We can give someone the fastest internet in the world, but unless we havepeople who know to use it, why they want to use it and what they want to do with it, I am not sure that we areheading in the right direction. If we are going to be a technology-savvy country we need to put a lot more effortinto training our people and encouraging them to use the services.

We have a rural transaction centre in Menindee. It has the computers in there. People do not necessarily usethem, which is why I make the point. I use a computer quite a lot. I use it to talk to people like you, so I hope youlisten sometimes! But I am sitting in the computer room by myself. Going back nearly a decade ago, it was alsothe case. We had another transaction centre-type arrangement with computers previously and I injected thousandsof dollars worth into it and got myself an education. I just went there each day and paid to use the service. I wasthe only one there, day after day, and the people who ran it got government funding. It is interesting that maybe if I had not been using the services it never would have proceeded. The other interesting part about it is that Ilobbied very hard for the first computer centre that was in Menindee for some years and gave the reasons that Igive today.

CHAIR: Thank you very much, and thanks for taking the time to travel from Menindee to be here today. Wereally appreciate it.

Mr Looney: I am happy to listen as well, so it is all good.Proceedings suspended from 12:12 to 13:13


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WILSON, Mr Michael Robert Henry, Director, M&S Consultants Pty Ltd.

CHAIR: I now welcome the representative of the New South Wales and Northern Territory School of the Air.Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I advise you that these hearings areformal proceedings of the parliament and warrant the same respect as proceedings of the respective houses. Thegiving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. Theevidence given today will be recorded by Hansard and attracts parliamentary privilege. Mr Wilson, do you have asubmission you would like to provide the committee?

Mr Wilson: Thank you. I have a written submission that I have provided and I would like to work through it alittle bit later, and I have a few words that I would like to say before that.

CHAIR: And that was my next question: would you like to make an opening statement?Mr Wilson: Thank you, I would. I am a consultant to the Northern Territory Education Department. I cannot

speak on behalf of the Northern Territory Education Department as I do not have that authority, but I have beeninvolved in the School of the Air for quite a long period of time. I am designing the network and software thatruns over the School of the Air.

Firstly, I would like to thank you directly. I believe that my appearance here would not be possible withoutyour direct intervention. I would also like to acknowledge Mr Paul Fletcher who has taken a big interest in thisarea.

I would like to get technical for a brief moment. It is imperative that I do this, and I promise not to talk aboutbits and bytes or the speed of light. When we send information around the internet, we do it in little packets.These little packets are just like little parcels with the data inside. We have an address on the front; we have thesender's name on the back and, just like the parcels, we attach stamps. Some may remember attaching airmailstamps to letters, because if you did not attach the stamp the parcel would go by sea or by road and it could take avery long time to arrive. An IP packet is exactly the same; it has stamps in it. The stamp is called a 'type of aservice' or, in NBN parlance, a 'traffic class'. Just like in the post office, each network component the routers,the satellite equipment et cetera inspects the packet to determine what priority to give the packet: should I dealwith the packet straightaway, or can I leave it in the queue and deal with it when I get to it?

I have given you a document and I would like to draw your attention to it. It is the NBN PowerPointpresentation entitled Traffic Classes . It goes through four types of traffic class. The NBN have identified real timetraffic, which is traffic class 1; interactive traffic, which is traffic class 3; and best efforts, which is traffic class 4.You might think of traffic class 1 as the airmail sticker on an envelope: send this straight away; I need this to gostraight away. NBN have identified that as your IP phone service. So when you pick up your phone, the packetsthat are generated by that phone will be stamped with traffic class 1, and the routers and the associated equipmentwill know to deal with that immediately and, importantly, deal with it without jitter, which is a word I should nothave mentioned.

You will see that they have identified traffic class 2, which they call 'interactive video'. This is in fact videoconferencing. This is distance learning: the School of the Air. They have then identified traffic class 3, which isbasically VPN. I am sure you have VPNed into your respective offices. What we have tried to do with that is getyour keystrokes there as quickly as possible. Then there is traffic class 4, which is web browsing: YouTube,

Google, email and other traffic like that. On the software program, when I write videoconferencing software and Ihave to mark the audio and video packets with a stamp that marks the packet as an audio or video pack, I do notmark the packets that are chat or PowerPoint packets, because we do not need the chat or PowerPoint packets toget there immediately. If they were there in 10 milliseconds, 100 milliseconds, 300 milliseconds or a second later,it would not affect the communication. But we must have our audio and video packets arrive on time. If we do nothave it, the voice becomes broken, the video becomes pixilated and it is not worth watching, to be frank.

I have another document, which is the NBN Corporate Plan. At page 93, you will see that they have basicallydone the same diagram identifying the four classes of traffic. You will see that they have identified the four typesof traffic. They then go on at 8.3 to talk about the fibre product, and you will see on the following page that theyspecify in diagram 8.5 that fibre will have the four classes of traffic on it. It will have voice over IP, traffic class2, traffic class 3 and traffic class 4. On the next page they talk about the wireless product, and you will notice thatin the wireless product they only prioritise one traffic class, voice over IP. They do not prioritise video

conferencing and they do not prioritise any other audio applications just the voice over IP.


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On the next page and the page after they then go on to describe their satellite product. Once again, we have thesame situation, where they only prioritise voice over IP. Everything else, videoconferencing et cetera, goes in thealso ran department. I can assure you as an engineer I have great experience in this; I was a senior engineer inOptus before my present position that this is not acceptable on a network that is a shared resource, such as awireless tower or a satellite hub. On your own physical connection, you have the opportunity to stop everythingelse while you do your video conferencing. For example, if I were on my ADSL or fibre at home and there were aproblem with this, I would just stop doing everything else and just do my video conference, and then there isreally no need to prioritise the packets, because those packets will have priority. However, when you deal with ashared resource like a wireless tower or a satellite hub, you are dealing with lots of other users, and those userscan be going as quickly as they can downloading movies or any other web traffic that they may do, and yourvideo packets or audio packets will have no priority at all, and your stream will at times be completely unusable.

There is an interesting note on the bottom of the satellite thing. They say that over time the product will evolveinto including four classes, as the fibre product does. They have no timetable; they have no data rates. An NBNemployee was questioned at the Australian distance education conference last week in Hobart, and he stated thatthat referred to a government and corporate service that the NBN planned to provide in about four years time. Ifind that quite amusing, because the idea that the government would provide students with a satellite service inorder to get their distance education raises some questions for me. Are NBN going to put two satellite dishes inthe front of the house, one for the NBN internet residential service and one for the School of the Air service? Idoubt that would be the result.

In a joint media release, of which I have included a copy there, the Hon. Peter Garrett, Chris Evans andStephen Conroy obviously had different thoughts from what we have seen in the NBN. Senator Conroy says:"The NBN will support the delivery of online learning through the video and web-conferencing platforms needed for 21stcentury education, training and skills development,"

A bit further on, the release says:"We will look at innovative education and training projects, which have the potential to deliver high quality, accessible andsustainable online tools to Australian schools, TAFEs, universities, workplaces and homes"

That was Minister Chris Evans."The program will focus on projects which help Australians to study, learn and develop skills no matter where they live or

work around Australia."I have a written submission that I would like to work through if that is how you would like to deal with this now.

CHAIR: Yes, sure.Mr Wilson: No questions so far?CHAIR: We will ask questions at the end. I am conscious of time. We have till 1.45, and I am sure there will

be lots of questions, so it is up to you how much of an opening statement you want to make.Mr Wilson: That is my opening statement.CHAIR: Okay. Do you need to work through this paper?Mr Wilson: I would like to do it, but CHAIR: It is up to you how you use your time.

Mr Wilson: It is just an overview. The currently proposed and offered NBN satellite solution does not supportdistance education, as it does not support video conferencing or have a multicast functionality. I did uncover that,but I think I do not need to do that. They quite plainly state that it does not support multicast. The schools of theair in the Northern Territory have been successfully delivering ideal lessons to their students using technologythat does support video conference.

Mr TURNBULL: Can I interrupt you, Mr Wilson, and just ask you: what do you mean by multicastfunctionality?

Mr Wilson: I will give you an example of how we use multicast functionality now. We have, for example, aclassroom in the Katherine School of the Air. At that School of the Air, we bundle the audio packets up and sendthem up to the satellite as an IP packet called a multicast packet. It is effectively no different to any other IPpacket, except that the address on it says, 'Send this to everyone in the neighbourhood; don't send it to anindividual computer.' A multicast packet can be received by anyone who chooses to. It is like a broadcast. When

you turn on the TV to Channel 9, you have joined a multicast stream.Mr TURNBULL: Hang on. This is the source of my confusion. So does 'multicast' mean the same as

'broadcast'?


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Mr Wilson: You could think of it that way. Technically Mr TURNBULL: But surely the NBN would enable you to stream or send. You are effectively having a

conference call with a large number of people on the conference, right?Mr Wilson: Yes, exactly.

Mr TURNBULL: Why can't it enable you to do that?Mr Wilson: Because they do not enable multicast on the satellite or wireless network.Mr TURNBULL: They have said that, have they?Mr Wilson: Absolutely. I can point to it in this document. You can read about it Mr TURNBULL: Is there any technical reason why they can't do that?Mr Wilson: No, not at all. There is no technical reason.Mr TURNBULL: Have you asked them why they can't do that?Mr Wilson: I used to work with Bob Murray, who is the head of satellite at NBN Co. I worked for him at one

time, and recently I did a consultancy with the Fiji education department. I have approached him since he took uphis new position, and I get no reply. This is the corporate plan. It says no multicast and no videoconferencing.

Mr TURNBULL: I have got the corporate plan with me here. What page are you looking at?Mr Wilson: It is from page 93 onwards. It is the final corporate plan. I think it is from November 2011. It is

very hard. If I was an engineer and I had to work to a specification this specification says no videoconferencing.So, If I was Bob Murray and I was in charge of the satellite network and I had to do what the plan said, I wouldnot do videoconferencing. The corporate plan says no videoconferencing and no multicast.

Mr TURNBULL: Is that an actual quote? I can see that at page 94 it says: 'NBN Co. will provide multicastfunctionality for the provision of IPTV services over the broadband network.'

Mr Wilson: Over the fibre network. On the next page it goes to wireless.Mr TURNBULL: Does it actually say it will not provide multicasting?Mr Wilson: I have it in writing that it will not provide multicasting over satellite.Mr TURNBULL: It does not actually say that here. Anyway, it is a valid point and we will ask NBN Co. to

give us an explanation.Mr Wilson: It is a very important point for us. On Friday morning assembly, Katherine School of the Air

sends up one one-megabit stream which contains all the audio and video for that class and it is received by 75 ormore students in 75 different locations around the Northern Territory. So it is a very efficient use of bandwidth.We can send one stream and we can contact literally tens of thousands of recipients through that one stream.

CHAIR: Mr Wilson, you said you have that in writing?Mr Wilson: I do have it. I may not have it with me at this very moment, but I will find it.CHAIR: Was that in correspondence with NBN Co.?Mr Wilson: Yes, with Jim Hassell.CHAIR: We received some correspondence from NBN Co. overnight, which every committee member has

just been given at lunchtime. I do not know if they have written this trying to pre-empt your evidence, but I willquote the final paragraph from it. I apologise, but you have not seen this. We only received it at one o'clock. Itsays:

The long-term satellite upload speeds provide sufficient bandwidth to deliver standard definition video. It is expected thatthe satellite services will support videoconferencing and some e-health services.

We need to clarify what 'some' means. But it does seem to suggest they are indicating satellite services willsupport videoconferencing.

Mr Wilson: Is that in the long-term plan that they are saying that?Senator STEPHENS: Yes.Mr Wilson: I questioned them on the long term. It is very nebulous. They are not tied down. They do not

make any commitments, certainly not to me. The time scale of it is nebulous too.CHAIR: It is important evidence, and we will pursue it, as Malcolm indicated. So please continue with your

evidence. I am sure we will have a lot of questions.


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Senator STEPHENS: Chair, in this piece of information we have just received, there is a paragraph that goesspecifically to the point Mr Wilson makes in his submission.

CHAIR: Where is that?Senator STEPHENS: It is three paragraphs from the bottom. It says:

As part of its long-term satellite solution NBN Co. will deploy two KA band satellites to provide access to the NBNoutside the fibre and wireless footprint. These satellites will provide better quality services than those currently available viaexisting satellites in metro comparable ADSL.

Mr Wilson, isn't that exactly what you claim in your submission is not going to happen?Mr Wilson: I am saying that it is not happening now and any evidence that they have here says in the long

term. I do not have the material to say, but we are talking at least five years out here; we are not talking aboutnow

CHAIR: So it is a transitional issue in particular is that the concern? You have got a service established Mr Wilson: Yes.CHAIR: and as this is built out, you are worried that there is going to be a downgrading of that service on the

way through, or that the end product

Mr Wilson: The endpoint is very interesting. I do not want to diverge again, but Ka band is a frequency wayabove Ku band. We presently use Ku band. Ka band is not recommended for tropical areas. It cannot penetraterain, so basically anyone above Townsville draw the line from Townsville up will find that their service is upand down constantly. The moment it looks like raining, Ka suffers severely from rain. We call it 'rain fade'. Theyraise more questions than they answer, but I do take the point and I appreciate that.

I would like to qualify something I said. I did say that when the NBN representative was approached in Hobartabout the long-term plans, he indicated that those services would be available in the long term to governmentagencies or enterprises. His information was that those services would not be available to the residential person.That is why I bring up the point: are we going to have two satellite dishes in the front yard, one for thegovernment service into your house where you can see your doctor or take your lessons, and one for your regularresidential internet connection? I appreciate what you are saying. They are rolling out a service now that does notdo what we are presently doing.

The NBN proposed satellite solution is inferior and inadequate to service the needs of the students receivingtheir education by satellite. If the proposed NBN satellite solution is rolled out in its present format, as they havepresently indicated it will be, students will be severely disadvantaged and be forced to take a retrograde step in thereceipt of education.

I just make a point here that on 5 July in this committee, you, Mr Oakeshott, raised with Mr Michael Quigleyconcerns that there could be a loss of videoconferencing capability as a result of the proposed upgrade in the NBNsatellite services. Mr Quigley was puzzled as to what would be downgraded. It is very concerning that the NBNCEO is oblivious of the requirements and the impact on such an important and growing sector of the community.

I would like to go on here little bit, because the point that I am making is that right now the federal governmenthas removed all funding for carriage services. If you make your application to the federal government now, theysay that carriage services will be conducted through the NBN infrastructure. About 60 years ago the School of theAir in the Northern Territory started using HCF radio to do their lessons.

CHAIR: Are you aware how much funding that is?Mr Wilson: I will go through that if you like; I have it in the document. In 2002 and 2003, School of the Air

moved to interactive distance learning technology as a model to deliver lessons to remote students. Thisfacilitated using computer technology and a software program called One Touch. This provided two-way audioand one-way video, enabling the students to see their teacher for the first time. In 2006 IDL moved to a differentprogram, which I will not talk about because it is mine I wrote it employing more up-to-date technology thatprovides multiway audio and video which permits the students to see the teachers and the teachers to see thestudents, just as if they were in the same room.

In 2007 as a result of $4.5 million federal funding, along with $8.6 million contributed by the NorthernTerritory government under the Clever Networks program, the STARS project built a new satellite network inDarwin which provided increased bandwidth for the delivery of education and learning services to remote

communities and homesteads in the NT. This was a significant improvement in the delivery of IDL at the Schoolof the Air and online education to over 200 urban regional and regional remote schools. The new STARS network has enabled an increase in the number and variety of education programs available and is providing superioraudio and video interaction capability.


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from the NBN. The NBN could provision that I can tell you absolutely as an engineer that they could but thecorporate plan says 'traffic class 1' and 'traffic class 4'.

Mrs D'ATH: That is certainly the most important question. Really what you are seeking is some guaranteethat the service will remain as is or will get better, but you will not lose any service as far as the schools' distanceeducation is concerned. I understand that position. In relation to the NBN footprint for the 93 per cent and thefibre delivery, have you overlapped that with your distance education and identified whether there are areas thatnow have access only through wireless or satellite but would be getting access through fibre? I am just wonderingif there is any overlap.

Mr Wilson: There is a very small percentage of the Northern Territory that is getting fibre. Probably 50 percent of our population will be served by satellite or wireless. About 125,000 people live in metropolitan areas thatwe might call fibre related areas of the Northern Territory; the other half do not. So, as a rough estimate, 50 percent of the Northern Territory will be satellite or wireless.

Senator STEPHENS: I take your point about the fact that the satellite capacity now is eaten and that you donot have any capacity to do anything else. But, in terms of e-learning innovation, are there projects in the pipelinefor the School of the Air that cannot go ahead given your concerns about

Mr Wilson: What we will be doing now is that, because of the trade training centres and the 20 towns that the

Northern Territory government has identified to be built up, we will have to withdraw services from School of theAir. We have only x amount of services. We are at our limit now if we want to service more, which we have to.We have long been waiting for the NBN and have been refused funding based on the NBN rollout.

Senator STEPHENS: On the point that you make about being bundled with the trade training centres and the20 growth towns, how have you been put into that same category?

Mr Wilson: We as an education department I should not say 'we' Senator STEPHENS: Exactly.Mr Wilson: But I have to provide the solution. The solution is that we are out of bandwidth and out of

facilities, so we must withdraw them from somewhere to accommodate the tens of millions of dollars that aregoing into trade training centres. We have been waiting for the NBN. We would dearly like to deliver lessons toresidents anywhere in the Northern Territory, whether it is VET or School of the Air. School of the Air should be

looked at as distance education. It is the ultimate distance education. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt fromthe School of the Air. It bugs me that there has been $27 million set aside to look at projects on how to dodistance education. Come and look at the School of the Air. Other countries do. We have just rolled out twonetworks in Fiji to cover the Pacific using the same technology that is used in the School of the Air, but people inCanberra have to put $20 million out to try and find out how to do that.

Senator STEPHENS: Thank you.Mr TURNBULL: You have suffered from 'not invented here' syndrome!CHAIR: Mr Wilson, are you happy for your submissions I think there are two of them to be made public

documents and put on the web as part of your evidence today?Mr Wilson: Definitely. Thank you.CHAIR: Thank you. This is the final question from me: when we approach NBN Co. about this, what, in your

view, are they going to say to us?Mr Wilson: I have no idea what they have said to you. I know what they have said to me: 'Look at thecorporate plan.'

CHAIR: And, in your view, what will the Northern Territory education department say to us?Mr Wilson: 'We'll bungle on. We've been good at that for the last 15 years. We'll make do. But please don't

hold out that you are doing us favours, because you aren't.'CHAIR: We really appreciate your evidence.Mr Wilson: And I appreciate your time specifically very much.CHAIR: Thank you for coming to Broken Hill today. If you have been asked to provide additional

information and there may be some questions that come back from us as well could you please forward that tothe secretariat by 8 August. That is the deadline we are putting on ourselves. Thank you for coming today.


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sectors that make sense for our region because they capitalise on our assets for example, the Menindee Lakesand the heritage and arts of the Broken Hill and surrounding region.

To give you some insight into the future potential opportunities, the two sectors that we wish to pursue in ourregion in the future are the ecotourism sector and the creative industries sector. The creative industries sectorrelies extensively on information communications technology. There are several foundation projects in theseeconomic sectors in our region that we are pursuing at the moment. One is the proposal to nominate the MenindeeLakes area as a Ramsar site and the other is the completion of the Broken Hill film studio. Incredibly, both of these projects are linked to and are heavily dependent upon improved technology. The NBN, as far as we can see,is central to all of our activities out here.

The submission that we have made touches on a number of the issues that we are experiencing currently withthe delivery of broadband. As Darriea has already mentioned, we are really pushing to get the NBN rolled outhere as quickly as possible. The future of our people in the region depends upon speedy delivery. If we wait untilthe end of the rollout period, for example, to receive the broadband network, a lot of our strategies would becomequite worthless and probably not worth pursuing in 10 years time because we will have been left so far behind.Some of the submissions that the Central Darling Council has received really endorse that, such as the ones fromPerilya and the hotelier in Tibooburra, who also sent a submission in. We also got one from a resident of Tibooburra, Andrew Chapman, who is well known in the education circles up there. The village committee fromTibooburra are also pushing for this. It is very important to the region.

A local business has also submitted some case studies from their experience. They are in the IT businesses.They have submitted some examples of the kinds of experiences that we have in this region at the moment. I havecertainly been pointing my iPhone to the sky in the last year or so trying to do some downloads of speed tests, andthe results in Wilcannia, for example, and Menindee are shocking, to say the least. I have put my data in the back of the submission.

There was a comment this morning by Mr Looney from Menindee, who mentioned that speed was not so muchhis concern; it was more about the quality of service. I have to say that I have a problem with the speed as well. Ithink the speed is a big issue because I cannot function in my office 200 metres from the exchange at the speed Iwould like to operate at. To get around that, I have two screens on my desk so that I can work on one while on theother I am waiting for things to happen on the internet. That is how bad it can be out here.

I also put some data in our submission about the quality, the lack of infrastructure and some of the technicalquestions. I am not the technical person to talk about these things, but there are technical people in the region whocan provide follow-up answers to any questions you may have. There are certainly issues here with quality of supply and speed and consistency of supply and speed. They are the big issues from our perspective. Not wantingto take up too much time, perhaps it is now time to listen to the mayor.

Councillor Brown: Firstly, I would like to endorse everybody else's welcome of the committee andappreciation for coming out this far to western New South Wales. Our local MP knows the area, but obviouslymany of you do not. I am appearing as the Mayor of the Central Darling Shire Council. We adjoin to the east of Broken Hill but we did not actually adjoin Broken Hill. We are one of the largest shires in the state, at 53,000square kilometres, with 1,900 residents or thereabouts. We have townships spread 200 kilometres apart over dirtroads. We are one of the least sparsely populated shires in the state and we abut the unincorporated area, which isan area determined not to warrant a local government area. I have given you a copy of those stats, but we believe

that in the main we will definitely be part of the seven per cent we have no reason to believe that we will notpart of the seven per cent that is not going to get fibre to the door. Our population depends at this time on satellitephones and satellite connections from rural properties. We depend on ADSL from some of our properties withinour townships; in many other areas we do not have any access at all.

One of the things that is particularly difficult is that we are dirt-road joined between our major towns. This, of course, creates difficulties in communicating as a local government area between our own facilities but also withour residents and with other facilities and service providers. This is all despite the fact that we are only 11 hoursfrom Sydney, nine hours from Melbourne and eight hours from Adelaide and about 12 hours from Canberra, butsometimes it seems like a lifetime.

The census results that we have attached to the back of our submission will give you some idea of the numbersperspective of the shire, although there is a suggestion that some of those numbers are inaccurate. The key onesthat we see are average household income, which is very low, and the age distribution within the shire. We do

have a relatively young age group coming through and, obviously, much of that is an Indigenous population.The circumstance of the Indigenous in Wilcannia has been recognised by the federal government in including

Wilcannia in the remote service delivery program for Closing the Gap. The difficulty of that is that, although


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Wilcannia has been included, we have the same issues throughout the rest of the shire. Closing the Gap was allabout several areas, in particular outcomes in health, education, employment and economic outcomes. All of thesewere through the provision of improved services and obviously these also parallel the same outcomes that aretargeted for the NBN.

Our confidence in telcos has been sorely damaged. It has been mentioned previously that we do have difficultywith our existing Telstra connections and the provision of services, both ADSL and mobile phone. For instance,in Wilcannia it is not possible to accept a mobile phone call in most of the buildings within the town. That meansthat anyone attempting to use a Wi-Fi connection, whether or not there is a service provider, also has noopportunity. Now that we have digital, it is almost the same as in the bad old days, when analog first came in,when you went out and stood on your left foot in the right-hand corner of the yard and pricked your ear in anortherly direction. Obviously, the analog was better in some ways because you did get continuity of service,even though it was poor. Now, with digital, it just cuts out; you get no service at all.

That gives us a background to people not believing what the NBN is all about. We realise this is not a forumfor complaints of that type. We recognise that the NBN is to be a new direction, but it sets the scene for thescepticism that we do feel and that you will hear out this way. For example, most of the residents in our area areasking why, as existing fibre connection runs past our townships, we are not going to be connected and have fibreto the premises? As part of the communications network, we now have fibre cables running past most of ourtownships. If they are or are not connected to fibre, how will they get greatly improved satellite services when theones who have been promised already are not operating in many cases? We recognise the announcements thatwere made in May about improved services in some areas.

People also do not understand why it would now cost them $60 a month for an ADSL connection, which givesnice high speed for about the first hour and then drops off for the rest of the month. How are we going to getbetter services for lower prices? This is where I draw your attention back to the average household income. At themoment, that constitutes probably about three per cent, four per cent of the income of a standard household. Aswe do not have proper connections to many of the houses, we do not have landlines as the telcos have taken outexisting public phones because of commercial reasons, again, there is suspicion within people's minds as towhether they will actually get services. So, in many cases, the NBN as a concept is not part of their make-up. It isnot part of their concept; they do not believe it will happen.

Our youth are a particular area of concern. At this time, many of those who attend are learning about computersthrough school. If not, they are learning about them through after-hours facilities, such as drop-in centres andyouth centres. That is okay as long as they go to school and as long as the centres are open. As soon as they gohome, there is no connection. The other day I saw a 14-year-old girl, in the back of a panel van, playing with acomputer. I said, 'That's fantastic to see. I'm really glad to see you are using a computer.' I asked her, 'What areyou connected to?' She said, 'I can't connect to anything; I'm just playing with the music.' The thing is that thatwas a literacy and numeracy adjunct to her education that she was not getting anywhere else.

Ms LEY: There are laptops in school?Councillor Brown: Yes, there are, but they are not attending school. That is where the issue is. They are not

attending school Ms LEY: But the laptops are working within their schools, aren't they?Councillor Brown: Yes, this was one of her own. It was a second-hand piece of equipment that she had been

given. As we see it, the opportunity for our youth to develop will need to be facilitated by access in the home, tobring the concept of a broader Australia, great opportunities to come back into their home. Many people are stillcoming to grips with what the NBN will actually provide, what services will be out there and how we are going totake advantage of it. I must admit that the previous presenter to the inquiry raised more concerns with me than Ithought existed. I am one who has taken at face value a lot of the comments about NBN and its promises.

Being remote, we understand that high-speed access will be most important in the main areas of concern for us,which is educational opportunities through connections to universities and higher tertiary education; in healththrough access to specialist and diagnostic facilities, yet we hear some of those may now be questionable; in localgovernment, through connectivity between our own facilities. Also, to be able to engage our own residents in theprocess of democracy, whether it is state, federal or local.

Most importantly, we understand the economic benefits because we believe that, as fuel costs increase, theneed to reduce our travel to even attend meetings such as this are going to be sorely challenged and that access tothis type of communication and technology will make a great difference. We would hate to be left behind; we arealready behind. Another 10 years, in front of the rollout or if we get caught up with the rollout, that will put us


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even further behind, it will put our children further behind and it will put our businesses further behind. All weask is: if the greatest benefits are in the NBN and if the greatest aspects of it are going to be present in modern-day life and if the remote regions have so much to gain, then why are we not at the forefront? Thank you.

Mr Duggan: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I am the commercial manager representingPerilya Mining in Broken Hill. I would just like to outline a little bit about what we do and our history so as to setthe context of some of our concerns or issues. We currently operate a mine on the south of Broken Hill. We alsohave a mine that is not operating on the north, and the Potosi sections, which are on the other side of town. Wealso have some exploration leases on the outskirts of Broken Hill. We mine zinc, lead and silver, and in 2010 wemined 64,000 tonnes of zinc-contained metal, 51,000 tonnes of lead containment ore and 1.6 million ounces of silver.

Perilya acquired its Broken Hill mine in 2002 from Pasminco. In October 2008, the GFC caused some concernaround the world and we basically halved our workforce. We currently have approximately 400 employees and 50contractors at our mine site. Due to financial difficulties and merging our resources, in December 2008 Zhongjinnon-ferrous metals acquired 50 per cent of Perilya. In January 2011 we completed the purchase of GlobeStar,which has operations in the Dominican republic and is a copper-gold-silver mine, and in Quebec, which is inCanada. We also have an interest in Mount Isa, Mount Oxide, which is currently under a study development.

From 2008 to 2011 the South Broken Hill mine increased its productivity by about 100 per cent, so in threeyears we have increased our productivity by 100 per cent and we aim to improve on that in future. By the sametoken, the commodity prices at the moment are similar to 2008's in Australian dollar terms. At the moment we arebasically looking at further development at the Potosi, which is on the northern side of town, the north mine andany further opportunities in the marketplace. That gives you some sort of a history of where we have come fromand some of the issues we are facing.

Mining in Broken Hill has been operating since 1885, so there have been some significant technologicalchanges during that time. We currently have some ageing infrastructure, mainly copper lines. We have installed anumber of fibre links underground which we still struggle with accessing through copper lines through the Telstraexchange. That is one of our issues. As to competing for resources, I am sure that everyone has heard that skilledworkforce availability for mining is very slim and very difficult at the moment. Recruiting and retaining people atBroken Hill is difficult for us, along with other people, and we see internet access infrastructure and

communications as one of the issues that could assist us in attracting to and retaining people at Broken Hill.We have had increased technology in the mining industry over the last number of years, and our remote accessto software applications is one of our issues. People may have to dial into our applications to assist us withtroubleshooting et cetera. For example, we have just installed a batch plant system at the mine at a cost of $5million. To maintain that system we need an external contractor to be able to dial in and assist us withtroubleshooting. That is just one of the many projects that we have underway or have completed recently.

We also have issues with business processing, including purchasing. I look after the purchasing department.We have increased technology and being able to purchase online. We have file delivery issues. We have difficultyin sending photos or large files to external parties. Videoconferencing has been mentioned here a few timesalready today. We have had a video-conferencing system in our office for six months which we cannot use.

There is also the issue of flexibility and people working from home. Their ability to access our system fromhome is difficult or non-existent. We have part-time employees who may need to work from home businesstravel people travelling to Sydney, Adelaide, the Dominican Republic et cetera who cannot access files, emailset cetera.

Our current mine data link is inadequate, with a single ADSL link providing only 300 kilobytes upload andthree megs download. As I have said, we have now expanded overseas and around Australia, and we havedifficulty with people moving around and not being able to perform their duties purely because the link is non-existent or too slow. It can take up to 30 minutes for people to complete a simple task.

Due to our distance from the mine to the Broken Hill exchange, we are severely limited by the technology tofulfil requirements. Currently no technology exists to service the mine's requirements in an economical fashion.One of my first tasks when I started at Perilya from the GM was to install a fibre link. We have been struggling todo that. In our initial investigations for the NBN versus Telstra we realised that NBN was not available and wasnot going to be for some time. That has forced us into a position now where we have commissioned Telstra toinstall that fibre link as a cost multiple times what the NBN would be.

Another issue we have is with our housing. Our housing is serviced by technology called fixed radio access FRA. This provides a fixed telephone service in the household but limits the data service to 56 kilobyte dial-upmodem service. We have a total of 67 Perilya residences serviced by this FRA and there is undoubtedly more


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housing around Broken Hill that has this. The dial-up modem service is paid for separately on top of the FRAservice. FRA is a dying technology with few Telstra personnel left in the entire country to maintain thisinfrastructure. Telstra is migrating from the FRA service and installing Next G into these houses. Next G is stilllimited in what it can offer and, infrastructure-wise, can still only handle a finite amount of data. Telstra will notinstall Next G services into housing that is currently unoccupied. We have a number of houses around town thatcurrently are not occupied. This essentially means that when we do recruit people to move into those houses, theywill have to pay for that out of their own pockets. These houses are sometimes used employees who visit fromChina. They can be in a house up to six months at a time and they do not have the facility to contact theircolleagues or families in China. We would envisage that all of these 67 houses would take up the NBN when it isavailable and we would be developing these to be fulfilled in the next two to three years. It is imperative thatthese homes receive the NBN as soon there will be no service for all or some of these houses when support forFRA is removed.

The lack of services will force us to use more of our resources from our head office, which is in Perth. Thiswill limit our ability to assist businesses and create business within the Broken Hill area.

In summary, what we are looking for at Perilya is an economical, reliable and fast data link that is accessible toeveryone in the town, including business and private customers and consumers. The benefit would be not only forour business but also for our employees working with the local community and for all businesses involved inbeing able to use the technology to improve their cost-effectiveness and productivity. We are also looking for aneasy-to-install, reliable and economical voice service delivered over the NBN to all the houses in town. Thank you.

CHAIR: Thanks for that, Lance. Everyone, we really appreciate the evidence given. We have a bit of time forquestions. My first one is really just about the level of consultation and communication between the departmentand then NBN Co. itself, particularly in light of the final two both the scepticism and then some very realpractical problems that have been identified. It is basically just a run through the three of you, coming from RDA,a major council in the area and a major business in the area. Have you had contact with the department and/orNBN Co. on the issues you have raised? What are the expectations you have been left with as a consequence if the answer is yes?

Mrs Nadge: We have had contact with the NBN for general consultation in the region for over a year. We had

two public consultations in Broken Hill, in May and in June last year. I should explain that the first load of thepeople who were invited to those two consultations were education people, for sure. Certainly we did not focus onthe general public. What we were doing there was looking at the expansion of education opportunities through theuse of video conferencing, and we had those consultations at the TAFE college. The second one that we had, inJune, was focused on the general business community in our region. We had the NBN Co. come out. We had thestakeholder manager. We had Nextgen; the digital switch-over fellow piggybacked onto their presentation. Thatwas quite well attended. Not everyone can get to all of the presentations, so we have a real issue in our regionabout people being able to get to consultations and then subsequently being able to access the follow-up data fromcompanies or from the government's websites.

We then followed up generally in our community. We had a technology evening with Pete Blasina, if youknow of that character. Basically the object of that particular presentation was to capture the imagination of localpeople, particularly businesspeople, to see where technology is going. According to the state government rep who

was there with us that night, it was the best attended business event in town, but it still attracted only 60 peopleout of a population of 20,000 people, which was interesting considering that that was the first time we asked for afee to come in the door to help cover costs. Today, for example in fact, last week I contacted the NBN Co.again. I have made several attempts to contact the NBN to get them to be supportive of our region. They are veryslow to respond to the emails; that is for sure.

CHAIR: The irony!Mrs Nadge: Yes. Even last week, I did contact one of our NBN stakeholder managers in the state of New

South Wales. Actually I asked someone in Victoria first, because I thought they might be a bit more proactive, buthe could not come out to this patch, which is interesting because our fibre link goes across the top of Victoria. Ithought it would have been normal to follow through, but anyway it went to the New South Wales patch as soonas it crossed the river. Basically he said: 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd love to come out. Yeah, if you don't hear from meby lunchtime, ring me back.' I was so busy writing my submission that I could not ring him back and do his diary

management. I did not hear from him again, and I was expecting him to attend, maybe on the lunchtime flight.We do have difficulty in getting the attention of the NBN, because we are just so far away.CHAIR: Have you been left with an expectation of certain dates or deadlines for the rollout?


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Mrs Nadge: Yes. We were certainly given a deadline in the forums last year that we are going to beswitched on by September.

CHAIR: September what?Mrs Nadge: 2011, this year.

CHAIR: Okay.Mr TURNBULL: 'We' being?Mrs Nadge: We, Broken Hill Mr TURNBULL: Broken Hill, right.Mrs Nadge: have got the fibre. So the cable between Mildura and Broken Hill should be switch-on ready, or

whatever the terminology is, by September this year. That is why we are kind of expecting that, any day now, weshould get this rollout, and we are waiting for some kind of communication from NBN that that will happen soon.We also, behind the scenes, have been advised that we need to assist the process, and we acknowledge that, so wewill do what we can. We are currently very actively looking at our digital economy strategy for the region. We arelooking at some really detailed internet investment, if you like, for how businesses can capitalise on thetechnology. You will hear plenty from the education and health sectors in the coming presentations, but I do think

that there are more things we could be doing. Time, money and resources permitting, of course we will do whatwe can. We are ready. But the biggest issue is we do not know when. Why would you do something now?Everyone forgets it, and you get the rollout nine years down the track. That is the problem.

CHAIR: Councillor Brown, can I get your input? What has your engagement been like and what is theexpectation you have been left with through that engagement?

Councillor Brown: Very little, Chair.CHAIR: On both?Councillor Brown: Yes, on both. As far as the NBN is concerned, we have obviously been invited to and we

had some management representatives on the RDA until recently. We are a small shire, although large in size. Weare a satellite shire. If we have an economic boom in our shire and you want to buy a motor car, you cannot buyone in our shire. If you want to buy a TV, you cannot buy one in the shire. If you want to buy a set of furniture,you cannot. We do not have the size in any of our townships to be able to maintain those types of entities. Sopeople in our southern parts will travel off to places like Hay and Balranald, Menindee people will travel here orto Mildura, from Wilcannia we will travel to Broken Hill or maybe Cobar, but normally Broken Hill in thesame way that Broken Hill goes to Adelaide or Melbourne and so on, down the track. The upshot of that is thatwe are on the end of things. We depend on others, in many cases, to speak for us, which is a little remiss on ourpart but at the same time we are tied up with our own local issues. We are a small shire, as I said; our resourcesare poor time, travel, distance and financial. Where we will be in five years time is on the lap of the gods. Wewill be going through our reviews and, obviously, the state government's review of where local government isgoing.

So, from a local government perspective, our issue is about having access to government entities if there arechanges in the method of service provision and we need to have that for access to the key players, the players inthe big cities. As far as our own engagement is concerned, there is none, and we do not expect to be linked in theearly stages. We are not even sure yet whether we will be wire, wireless or satellite; and, when we hear theconcerns about all of those, we are worried. For instance, at the moment we have a fibre cable that runs past usthat runs the main trunk.

Mr TURNBULL: Can I just ask about that. You are talking about Wilcannia now, are you?Councillor Brown: Yes, that is correct.Mr TURNBULL: So who owns that fibre? That is Telstra?Councillor Brown: Telstra. That would be Telstra.Mr TURNBULL: And where does it go from where to where?Councillor Brown: It runs from east to west. It is one of the main lines.Mr TURNBULL: Okay. So you have only ADSL1 available?Councillor Brown: ADSL2 in some areas, depending on the cable.

Mr TURNBULL: What sorts of speeds can you get from that?Councillor Brown: When I look at it, it tells me 256,000, but it depends on how much you want to pay to

keep that level up and it is through the phone line, so it is pretty poor.


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Mr TURNBULL: Yes. That is how ADSL is delivered, through the telephone line. I am just surprised you donot

National Broadband Network Joint Committee Hansard 27 July 2011

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