Dr Dennis Jensen MP

Dr JENSEN» (2:59 PM) —There are a few aspects that I think those opposite spouting technology need to understand here. First of all, I have heard a lot of chatter about the speed of light. They say, ‘The speed of light is the fastest thing in the universe.’ The inference seems to be that the only thing that travels at the speed of light is light itself. I would like to let the members opposite know that electricity travels down electricity wires at the speed of light. Radio waves travel at the speed of light. The speed of light is an absolute furphy in this.

The amazing thing is that this shows their level of technical ineptitude. Those opposite talk about the fundamental physics but they do not even understand the fundamental physics. They think that somehow only light is this magical process that actually travels at the speed of light. They just do not have a clue that any form of electromagnetic radiation, of which light is a very small subset, travels at the speed of light—so much for these furphies.

They have made major errors with the NBN. The NBN actually specified in its tender documents that any of the cable that went inside houses or inside buildings had to be low smoke zero halogen. I do not know whether anyone remembers the fires that occurred at King’s Cross station in 1987 where dozens of people died and which resulted in a specification that all wiring to be used in the underground had to be low smoke zero halogen. Reasonably enough, the NBN in its tender documents stated that the wiring inside houses and buildings had to be low smoke zero halogen. The halogen we are talking about here is chlorine gas—a gas that was used to fatal effect in World War I.

The problem is that the NBN have specified only one supplier for their fibre and that is Corning. Corning does not make low smoke zero halogen fibre. It may have recently started doing so, but certainly in the rollout in Tasmania—this is one for you, Deputy Speaker Sidebottom, to consider—they did not have low smoke zero halogen fibre. So what did they roll out into the homes? Cable that was not low smoke zero halogen. This is a potentially dangerous to deadly situation for homeowners where, in the case of fire, there will be plenty of smoke plus chlorine gas.

We spoke to the Western Australian supplier of Corning. When asked about the consequences of using normal cable that was not low smoke zero halogen in homes Corning actually stated to my staffers, ‘No, don’t touch that stuff it could kill you.’ This is the sort of nonsense that we are getting from the proponents of the NBN.

The NBN is supposed to be about more than just high-speed broadband. It is supposed to about smart metering. The problem is that they have put the so-called optical network terminator inside homes not outside. The smart meters people say that they will not do smart metering with the ONT inside homes. There is a whole lot of botched stuff at a very fundamental level and we are getting ridiculous discussion from members opposite who have no clue about the technology involved and say, ‘But it is at the speed of light and nothing is faster than light.’

Another thing that they have in the system which is problematic is way too much fibre. The network architecture is not good. What they have is three fibres effectively to each home. They are talking about future proofing but think about this future proofing for a minute. If we have no Australians going into new developments, all of them simply subdividing existing homes, it means we would have to have a population of 60 million people