Senator Xenophon said the responsibility now went beyond Telstra. "This is a legal minefield in terms of NBN Co and ultimately the commonwealth bearing responsibility for shoddy practices that have exposed the public to deadly asbestos," he said.
He said the NBN rollout should be stopped until an audit was carried out to identify the potential exposures and to ensure the health of residents was monitored.
"This is just a massive ticking time-bomb in the suburbs that could have been avoided," he said.
AS Myths admits;
Telstra sub-contractors are digging up fibro-asbestos-cement pits and pipes infrastructure to make it ready for NBN Co. Under the Turnbull model it they would be left mainly undisturbed in suburban streets.
Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said the matter was one of ''greatest seriousness''.
He told Fairfax Media's Breaking Politics program on Friday that while the ''responsibility for remediating this old Telstra infrastructure has of course been Telstra's that is absolutely right, but they are doing that on behalf of and for the government-owned NBN company''.
''And so the government ultimately is responsible for overseeing the whole project so there is . . . I am not suggesting that Stephen Conroy has been personally responsible for this in a hands on manner but the truth is that there have been reports raised about inappropriate management of asbestos for some time and there clearly has not been an adequate response.
''The buck stops with the government.''
He said under the Coalition's plan there would not be the same disturbance of the existing infrastructure in place because ''in most cases'' the fibre would not be taken into every house.
I repeat "mainly undisturbed in suburban streets".
Asbestos disposal - it needs to go to an approved landfill. It is stable once buried, but there will normally be a specific area at the landfill where it is dumped and this will be covered over each night. Not all landfills accept it and there are generally specific times for taking it there so that it is segregated from everything else and properly covered over.Allegations from 2GB that sub contractors are dumping removed asbestos in national parks in the Sydney area instead of taking it to the appropriate places where it would be properly dealt with. Further, that they are using rental cars, thus leaving fibres in these hire vehicles.
Apparently there is a substantial fee for the proper disposal of asbestos, which the sub contractors will be receiving. Some of them obviously see this as more in their pockets by taking the money and not paying the disposal fee.
Strongly agreed and it comes down to what happens when you lose control of your own assets as Telstra has effectively done.Someone needs a reality check.
NBN is the catalyst for Telstra's issues.
And I repeat the question:
How will they run the fibre down the streets to the cabinets without using the same ducts that NBN Co are using? Just because they aren't replacing the copper doesn't mean they don't use the ducts.
Does the Telstra CEO, board members and other senior management even know what's in a pit (apart from asbestos)? And have any of them got real world experience with underground assets? Somehow I seriously doubt it, and yet it's critical to the company's business.
THE Coalition has put NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley on notice that his position may not continue under an Abbott government after a horror week for the $37.4 billion project in which it was revealed that workers and residents were exposed to asbestos risks during the rollout.
As evidence emerged of an exodus of senior construction and safety staff from NBN Co in recent months, the opposition's communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, reiterated concerns about the selection of Mr Quigley.
Although he stopped short of saying he would appoint a new NBN Co chief executive, Mr Turnbull said: "I don't think (Mr Quigley) was the best choice for that role given the fact that he had never run a telecom company or built a telecommunications network, been responsible for building one; he had worked for a vendor. Certainly the performance of the NBN Co in its continuation of its construction project has not been very impressive, has it?"
We can't say we weren't warned.
Labor's sumptuous school shelters and flaming home insulation programs were simply a warm-up for their asbestos to the home rollout.
The other thing, is that they should have been investing in the network in the first place going back at least to the middle of last decade. It should never have been in doubt that a future fibre network would use Telstra's existing undergound infrastructure (why wouldn't it) and work should have been done accordingly over the past decade in a rational, sensible manner to remove the asbestos.
As a case in point, an inner CBD location in Hobart. Not too long ago the council did works on the footpath and other services removed asbestos at this time. Telstra left theirs in place, losing the opportunity to do it incredibly cheaply whilst the council already had everything dug up. That's just crazy.
Another example, a major arterial road in the suburbs. A few years ago work was being done there, and at that location Telstra's conduits (not just the pits) are made of asbestos. So what did their contractor do? Smash a hole in the side and bring a cable out of it that way. Apart from the obvious safety hazard, it also defeats the purpose of having a conduit in the first place since that cable will now be firmly stuck in place and the conduit will end up filled with FCR (road gravel) where the hole is.
That's just two random examples that I've seen with my own eyes (and I've never been employed to work on Telstra's infrastructure). There's heaps more like that all over the place, and it's the inevitable consequence of the way Telstra runs things. There's a proper role for contractors, but having them effectively running the show is dangerous when it's a specialised asset. It's not as though we're talking about resurfacing a road or pruning some trees or something like that which can be easily inspected and which is generic in nature. With the sort of work Telstra needs doing, it could well be 20 years before defects are found - and good luck getting the contractor back to fix them after that time.
Does the Telstra CEO, board members and other senior management even know what's in a pit (apart from asbestos)? And have any of them got real world experience with underground assets? Somehow I seriously doubt it, and yet it's critical to the company's business.
I am 100% sure, that once Libs are elected, the NBN will die in the ass due to cost.
They will just stop, we all know politicians word is worth next-to-nothing
Australians who believe they have been exposed to asbestos will be able to be placed on a national register under a government bill.
It's in a lot of bother if the following blog comment is true,I think the NBN rollout is dead in the water now.
I watched the team across the street from me last week when they removed the old pit and put a new plastic one in it’s place, they were in full hazmat gear so obvious precautions were being made.
But it’s not the pits that are the problem, it’s the conduits, and they are going to be near impossible to replace Australia wide.
When they are laying the NBN fibres they aren’t using a snake to pull it through, that’s too time consuming and ultimately too costly. Instead they are firing the fibre through via air pressure (this is pretty standard practice by the way). The problem though is the asbestos conduit has started naturally crumbling over the years, and firing the fibre through gives a big cloud of asbestos dust at the other end, not healthy, not healthy at all.
It's in a lot of bother if the following blog comment is true,
http://delimiter.com.au/2013/06/03/telstra-pledges-strong-nbn-asbestos-controls/
However, what I do think is that this is precisely the kind of issue which only raises its head when we really get into the details of deploying fibre ”” to the node or to the premise ”” in Telstra’s existing infrastructure. What we are seeing here is the realisation of the fact that the FTTP/FTTN debate about the NBN may have been something of a furphy all along. The real issue, and it’s going to be an issue lasting several decades, it is increasingly looking like, is the ongoing remediation of Telstra’s network infrastructure in general ”” not just cables, but the physical pipes, pits and ducts where those cables are laid.
You can see this in the asbestos issue because it’s a very old type of material that hasn’t really been used in Australia for a long time. According to Wikipedia, which has a great and very detailed article on the subject, Australia phased out asbestos starting from 1989, and ceased mining asbestos in 1983. Concern had also been around since the 1970′s about the use of the material in building construction, and the actual diagnoses of asbestos-related illnesses dates way back to the 1920′s and 1930′s.
What this shows us is that much of Telstra’s physical network infrastructure hasn’t gone through significant remediation and modernisation works for decades. This is, perhaps, the real task facing Australia’s telecommunications industry, especially Telstra and NBN Co, right now ”” not deploying the NBN per se, but getting our national physical telecommunications infrastructure as a whole up to spec so that the network can be deployed. And I suspect that it will take a lot longer than anyone ”” even now ”” really expects, whether you use a FTTN or FTTP model. This is deep and complex stuff which will require a sustained effort to deal with.
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