Which politicians already have the NBN at their electorate office?

Does your local member already have fast broadband? Find out with finder's full list.

I was wondering recently: are politicians gaming the system so they can get access to the National Broadband Network (NBN) faster than anyone else?

To find out, I grabbed a full list of the electorate office addresses for every member of the House of Representatives in the most recent Parliament. By feeding those addresses into our NBN tracker, it was easy to calculate the proportion of politicians who have ensured that their office staff are getting the benefit of a faster connection.

It turns out that in aggregate, politicians are no more likely to be hooked up than the average Australian. Of those 128 local members, 28 (21.88%) have an NBN connection available to their electorate office. Overall, the NBN has been connected up to 2 million of its planned 8 million premises. In other words: a quarter of us can get the NBN, and that's also true of politicians.

17 (13.28%) of the electorate offices listed are in locations where the NBN is actively under construction. The remaining 83 (64.84%) still don't have a confirmed date for NBN construction. Like the rest of us, they're just going to have to wait.

It wouldn't have been surprising if politicians sought to help themselves during the NBN rollout by making sure their office was connected as quickly as possible, but based on these numbers, that hasn't been the case so far. There's no doubt that many of the early NBN rollout sites (such as Armidale in New England or much of the Tasmanian rollout) were chosen for political reasons. However, at this stage the odds of a politician having their electoral office on the NBN are no better than for the population at large.

Speaking of politics, don't forget to vote this Saturday. You can use our handy below-the-line vote card creator to maximise your Senate vote.

If you're curious, here's the full list of members in the 44th Parliament and their electoral office NBN connection status. Click on any of the headings to sort on that column.

Angus Kidman's Findings column looks at new developments and research that help you save money, make wise decisions and enjoy your life more. It appears Monday through Friday on finder.com.au.

Picture: nbn