Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

With respect to the supplementary question asked by the member for Goldstein on matters regarding asylum seekers, I will take that question on notice in order to give him a proper response. Secondly, I do not accept the premise on which his further question about the Building the Education Revolution program was unfolded. So I do not accept his claims with respect to waste. I am afraid that for me to answer the question he asks me about what specifically did I do, that would involve me revealing cabinet discussions and cabinet deliberations, which I am not in a position to do.

Penultimately, on the question of the move from a fibre-to-the-node proposal, as put to the election, with the fibre-to-the-home National Broadband Network proposal, when I said that that was seen as a logical next step I did not say that this was seen as a logical next step by a specific party—that is, the federal opposition. This was generally widely in public debates seen as, in effect, a stepping stone. That does not therefore mean that the opposition at the time had any specific subsequent commitment in mind. We were aware of that possibility but we had made no decision about it and had no preconceptions about it. Once the tender process for the fibre-to-the-node proposal failed, we had to give consideration to that possibility along with various other possibilities, but there was no preconceived proposal flowing in the wake of the original election proposal.

Finally, on the decisions taken but not yet announced, I am not in a position to rule anything in or out about how those matters are dealt with. Apart from anything else, it is not my responsibility. My responsibility in this regard is simply that these things are accurately recorded in the budget, but I am certainly not in a position to make any statements about when any particular thing will be announced.

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