Serious Questions Need Answers Before NBN Digs Up Mitchell Streets

Thursday, 6^th June 2013

Alex Hawke MP, Federal Member for
Mitchell, said local residents must be fully informed about any health and
safety dangers from Labor’s NBN rollout and how these will be managed well
before work begins.

“There are
serious questions the Government needs to answer about asbestos and its
NBN. Labor’s NBN involves running fibre to 12 million homes and businesses
across Australia.  In a majority of cases that requires digging up local
streets and re-using or replacing Telstra’s pits.  It is estimated up to
one third of pits – those built between the 1950s and early 1980s – are
asbestos-contaminated, and this work therefore poses risks to workers and
residents alike unless safety procedures are carefully followed.

“We need a
safety first, politics last approach when it comes to asbestos. In speaking in
the Parliament on this matter earlier this week, I stated we should not
politicise this issue but;

“when I look at the map of Western Sydney and I
look at Liberal seats and marginal seats and I see the NBN rolling out in those
marginal seats, who has politicised this debate?’”

“It is very
disappointing that Labor has failed to properly manage the health and safety
hazards of its approach to the NBN.  And it is unacceptable that
subcontractors working on the NBN have exposed employees and local residents to
danger by not complying with required procedures to ensure such work is safe.

“I have had
calls from members of our community concerned that if we were to see this
government even begin a rollout of the NBN in Mitchell, that members of the
community would be put at risk of the exposure to asbestos.

Alex Hawke
MP said one of the advantages of the Coalition's NBN plan is that
infrastructure between street cabinets and premises is in most cases not
disturbed. 

“We won’t be
digging up streets and opening pits in front of millions of homes and
businesses.  Instead our plan is to roll out fibre to nodes that each
serve several hundred premises, and use the existing network to make the final
connection.  This will greatly reduce the disturbance of ducts and pits
including those made out of asbestos containing material,  This contributes to making our plan less
expensive, faster to deploy, and much safer.

Alex Hawke
MP said the Gillard Government needed to come clean and detail to communities
how workers, subcontractors and residents will be protected from the risk of
exposure to asbestos in areas where Labor’s NBN is rolled out.

The text of Alex’s speech on ‘The Government’s mismanagement of the NBN
Rollout’ can be found online at http://bit.ly/11k3RpJ