Ms Swanson and Stephen Jones MP met with residents at Thornton to denounce the Turnbull government’s fibre-to-the-node network, which integrates the ageing copper telecom network into the purpose-built fibre network.

Earlier in the month Fairfax Media reported the Hunter and Central Coast topped the country when it came to complaints about the NBN. 

“Malcolm Turnbull has buggered this up,” Mr Jones told the audience.

Mr Jones said the Coalition had derailed Labor’s plan to get high-speed fibre installed to 97 per cent of homes nationwide.

“The guarantee I can give you today is that you are going to get a better broadband service under a future Shorten government than you will ever get under the bloke who buggered it up,” he said.

The forum came one day after the government’s Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield toured Paterson lauding the Coalition’s plan as a “good experience”. 

He dismissed complaints of slow internet speeds and disconnections across the Hunter as “teething problems”. 

But Mr Jones argued the existing system was inherently flawed and warned problems would persist as long as fibre met copper.

Ms Swanson and Mr Jones both stressed the importance of the network as education, health and employment increasingly rely on fast and reliable internet connections.

“This NBN is so important to our people, now and into the future,” Ms Swanson said.

“At the moment it’s being made a mess of by federal government. It’s distressing.”

Ms Swanson said she was constantly being made aware of concerns about the NBN while doorknocking in the electorate.

She said she had heard about a nurse in Thornton who needs to attach a dongle to her laptop and climb onto the roof of her house to download her rosters.

“Is this 2016?” Ms Swanson asked rhetorically.