Opposition slams Anthony Albanese’s free NBN offer, saying six million households have been ‘smashed’ by price hikes

The plan to give 15,000 Australians families ‘doing it tough’ free internet via the NBN has come under fire, as households face steep price hikes from the government telco.

Anthony Albanese says the free internet program is ‘helping to connect Aussie kids with vital educational materials and removing pressure from parents that are unable to afford the internet’. Picture: NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Anthony Albanese’s plan to give 15,000 Australians families “doing it tough” free internet via the NBN has come under fire, with the Opposition saying 400 times as many households have suffered steep price hikes from the government-owned telco.

The Prime Minister said on Thursday he was “delivering real cost of living support for families” under the School Student Broadband initiative.

This program has connected more than 15,000 families to a free NBN service, costing taxpayers $8.8m.

“We want to ensure no Australian child is left behind in their learning due to cost of living pressures,” Mr Albanese said.

“This program is helping to connect Aussie kids with vital educational materials and removing pressure from parents that are unable to afford the internet.”

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

But Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said six million families have been “smashed” by NBN price rises of up to 14 per cent since October.

“They get nothing from the Albanese government – just more cost of living pain. There are 400 times as many families who have been hit by these price rises, compared to the number affected by today’s announcement. This is a typically weak response from a weak, ineffectual government,” Mr Coleman said.

Despite the criticism, several prominent Coalition MPs have promoted the School Student Broadband Initiative on their websites, including Peter Dutton. While Mark Coulton wrote an oped last year backing the program in a local paper in his electorate.

Peter Dutton has promoted the School Student Broadband Initiative on his website.

The NBN price hikes have made home broadband more expensive for Australians, with its telco customers – such as Telstra and Optus – passing on the cost rises to households, further placing pressure on the Reserve Bank to rein in inflation, particularly in services.

Telstra also wrote to customers in May, saying it was hiking the cost of its broadband plans by almost 5 per cent a month, citing wholesale price increases from NBN Co.

“As a business, we’re constantly striving to balance the needs of our customers whilst ensuring we remain financially sustainable. NBN Co is increasing the price they charge us for wholesale internet and this is an important factor for the changes we’re making, along with our ability to keep investing in our network, products and services while responding to increased data usage,” a Telstra spokeswoman said at the time.

“This includes 24/7 network monitoring to help protect against scams, 4G back-up to help keep you connected in an outage and support from our local teams when you need us.”

The NBN has raised prices by as much as 14 per cent since last October. Picture: Bloomberg

Weeks later, Telstra also increased the price of its mobile plans by up to 11 per cent, fuelling further inflation in the services sector, which has proved difficult for the central bank to tackle.

Inflation accelerated for the first time in 18 months, rising 3.8 per cent in the year to June. Soaring rents, petrol prices, building costs, and fruit and vegetable prices highlighted how there was little relief in sight to the intense cost-of-living pressures that have devastated family budgets.

But economists and financial markets are ruling out a restart of interest rate hikes in Australia, after the nation’s underlying rate of inflation resumed its decline, despite being well above target levels.

Amid heightened attention on the interest rate outlook after the nation’s economic growth and disinflation progress stalled in the first three months of the year, the closely-watched “trimmed mean” measure of price increases fell to 3.9 per cent from 4.0 per cent in the March quarter.

Still, economists said inflation is still too high for the RBA to start openly discussing the case for interest rate cuts.

Mr Albanese said the School Student Broadband initiative – which is being implemented by NBN Co with $8.8m from the federal government – will end up supporting up to 30,000 families across the country.

“The government is also considering options to continue to support participating families at the end of 2025, including asking the NBN Low-Income and Digital Inclusion Forum to examine discounted products,” he said.

Anna Perrin, NBN chief customer officer, said when the telco published its wholesale tariff list it in May “that any price change can be a concern for customers, particularly considering current cost of living pressures”.

“For this reason, we strive to be as prudent and efficient as possible with our investments to make every dollar count,” she said.