Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I will follow a couple of those issues and then move on to some more specific questions. I have sought to follow up with the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. He has said publicly that he has got no idea how many will come next year. I would like to know the rationale behind it. I presume you and your department take some responsibility for ensuring that the numbers make sense and that you can have reasonable confidence in the assumptions. Given that this year there were 5,500 arrivals and a billion dollar blow out, I would be interested to know what process you went through to arrive at a figure of 2,000 for next year. Given that you have had a blow out this year, I would have thought that, conservatively, you would use a higher number or as high a number as this year. If you succeed in reducing the numbers well and good, but the experience to date is there seems to be no evidence of numbers coming back so I would be interested in that process.

Secondly, the Building the Education Revolution, as you say, has thousands of different projects but, whether there is one or thousands, it still remains the responsibility of the government to act in a conscientious and prudent way to avoid waste. It seems to me you are really putting the proposition that government, with thousands of projects, cannot be expected to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. Would that be the case?

I understand the point you were making that there are joint responsibilities between individual ministers and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. The point of my question was what specifically have you sought to do to rein in what is clearly some of the biggest wastage perhaps in our country’s history of federal government programs including the massive wastage which will end up, no doubt, in billions of dollars with the Home Insulation Program?

There have been billions of dollars wasted, on the evidence to date, which seems to me to be a lot more than the occasional problem here and there. What specifically have you done over the last six months when it became patently obvious that there were generic problems in the management of these programs and when those ministers responsible, for whatever reason, were failing to rein in these programs? I would have thought you have a significant responsibility. How did you exercise that responsibility? I would be very interested to know.

You made a statement about the $4.7 billion that the program was in prospect and that because of the global financial crisis funds were not available for commercial interests, but you went on to say that, as a result, you went to the next logical step of fibre to the house. Was it always intended that the next logical step would be fibre to the house and that it would involve massive government involvement in the creation of that network, the funding of that network, the operation of that network and, hopefully, the financial return on that network? Was it envisaged that you would in fact renationalise a very big part of telecommunications? Was that the logical next step for the government? As you thought through this program, was that in your head when you went to the last election and promised a broadband network around the country? Is what we are not getting the thing you have always had in mind as the logical next step?

On other specific items: on page 84 in Budget Paper No. 2, nearly $1.3 billion was listed as decisions taken but not yet announced over the forward estimates with $50 million listed between 2009-10 and 2010-11. Can you rule out these funds being announced ahead of the federal election? (Time expired)

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