Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister representing Minister Conroy for his opening remarks. I understand the line the government ran during Senate estimates and I anticipate that there will be more of the same here. You touched on the process integrity issues surrounding the broadband tender process and I know the minister has been keen to play the probity card when it suited him. Is there any reason then why the minister was prepared to discuss specific issues relating to the national broadband network going to network architecture, structural separation and the like with one of the proponents who have lodged the $5 million bond just days before the closure of that bond period? Is it a problem with the lack of resources for the probity adviser in keeping across those kinds of interactions that seem to breach the very probity that the minister is so fond of talking about when he does not wish to answer any of the questions?

The second issue around the national broadband network is that Senator Conroy said in September last year:

Labor’s carefully costed fibre-to-the-node network is based on a detailed calculation of the number of nodes required to reach 98 per cent of Australians. This includes the number of upgrades of exchanges and pillars into nodes that are required.

Why is it, Minister, that that claim was made yet now we are seeing enormous variations in the cost of this network, many times the amount that the minister claimed it would cost? We have seen the tender process that you are seeking to hide behind not getting fully underway because this very information that the minister claims he has is not available to telecommunications companies to make a bid. So I am just wondering what the basis of that statement by the minister was and, if Labor has all this detailed information that tenderers are interested in receiving so that they can submit a bid, why they just do not simply make that available.

On the same basis, we facilitated the passage of the ‘show-and-tell’ legislation for the minister after he comprehensively botched the parliamentary process in the Senate, not even allowing enough time for his own amendments to be debated let alone the valuable input from the opposition. That was done with such great urgency because it was said to be needed. Why has he not acted on any of that urgent power that he sought breathlessly to get through the Senate? It seems to make a mockery of the tender process.

Again, while not talking specifically about, as you mentioned, the number of bonds and deeds, and you pointed to people referring to the RFP process, the Auditor-General has drawn the minister’s attention to his public statements about noncomplying bids being acceptable and how the minister needs to actually vary the RFP to indicate what is acceptable noncompliance. I am sure that would be of interest to those bidders who have paid their bond. It probably would be of interest to those bidders who may have paid a bond had they known what that acceptable noncompliance was. I ask the minister to address whether that has been taken up by the minister and whether he has respected the advice of the Auditor-General and has done something about his own self-spruiking of non-complying bids, which is actually in contravention of his own RFP process.

Going back to the Tasmanian government interest, they are very focused on the transmission link between the mainland and the island, and the RFP that the minister speaks about encourages state specific bids. By definition, if you are linking Tasmania to Victoria, it involves more than one state and therefore that would be a non-complying bid under his own RFP. But he assured the Senate that everything was in order. How would he know that if he was not aware of the bid of his Labor mate from Tasmania and how would he be able to satisfy himself that it is complying? Again, I would seek some answers on that issue of process probity.

Finally, on the broadband issue, we are very interested in holding the government to account for its commitments to working families. I note that there has been enormous variation in the total project costs for this project and I ask whether the government has any idea of what the total project cost might be, given that the variations are threefold and fourfold. I also point to a recent report that suggested the pathway which the government is pursuing will actually have very adverse implications for working families. The Centre for International Economics in its findings suggested that there would be increased inflation, reduced national growth, lower wages and reduced national consumption. I wonder what modelling the government has done to actually assess the cost impact of its proposals on users and the diminution of choice that seems likely to result. (Time expired)

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