Abbott's broken promises on NBN leave Rankin residents in the lurch

05 August 2015

Shadow Minister for Communications Jason Clare and Member for Rankin Jim Chalmers will host a forum in Calamvale tonight to hear from local residents who have been wiped off the NBN map by the Abbott Government.

Tony Abbott has broken his election promise that all Rankin residents would have access to the NBN by 2016.

About two thirds of the fibre rollout in Rankin was cancelled after the election, including 8,000 homes and businesses in Woodridge and Logan where work had already commenced.

Tony Abbott also promised to prioritise the NBN rollout to areas with poor broadband. He has broken this promise too.

Many residents in Calamvale, Drewvale and Parkinson do not have any access to fixed line broadband, with current infrastructure not sufficient to meet growing demand.

To make it worse, the LNP’s latest rollout plan does not put a single additional home in Rankin on the rollout map.

This means families and businesses in parts of Rankin have had to rely on second-rate internet and are missing out on important opportunities in the digital economy.

Under Labor, all of Rankin would have got the super-fast fibre-to-the-premises NBN. 58,000 homes and businesses in Rankin were included in Labor’s three year rollout plan.

It is now August 2015 and most residents of Rankin still don’t know when they will get the NBN, or what type of NBN they will get.

The people of Rankin deserve better than Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott’s lies and broken promises which have wiped our local community off the NBN map.