Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I am asked about the opposition’s proposition that the NBN go to the Productivity Commission. I am answering that question, and I am answering that question on the basis that it is very clear from the opposition’s statements that it is not serious about absorbing any work that comes out of the Productivity Commission. I will use the member for Wentworth’s own words. On 24 September this year he was asked by a journalist: ‘If the cost-benefit analysis did come back with an unequivocal “Yes, go ahead and do it,” would the coalition at that point support it?’ Surely that was a question that begged yes as an answer but, no, the member for Wentworth said: ‘Well, that would depend. A good cost-benefit analysis will be very transparent, set out all its assumptions, will enable people to play with those assumptions, to change them. But no-one’s going to give it a tick in advance.’ So the opposition is not at all serious about this, not at all serious about the work coming from the Productivity Commission. The only reason it is advocating a Productivity Commission approach is as another delaying tactic, because the opposition’s actual strategy is the one set by the Leader of the Opposition, another three words: demolish the NBN.

I understand that, when it comes to the Productivity Commission, the member for Wentworth does sometimes value their opinion. He was asked on radio this morning about the Productivity Commission and carbon pricing, and he said:

… the Government believes that the Productivity Commission will say that a market-based approach to reducing emissions is the most cost effective …

Now there’ve been plenty of other studies that have come to that conclusion, they can be highly confident I would think of getting that outcome from the Productivity Commission.

If the member for Wentworth is that serious about carbon pricing, he had better have a chat to this bloke sitting in the chair.

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