Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House requires the Government immediately to publish the National Broadband Network Business Case.

We heard the Prime Minister today assert repeatedly that the National Broadband Network is in the national interest. What we require the Prime Minister to do is to stop asserting it and start proving it. If the National Broadband Network is as vital, necessary and worthwhile as she says, why is she scared of releasing the business case—which she has been sitting on and hiding for some time—during the very sitting fortnight that she expects the parliament to approve this $43 billion investment?

The Prime Minister asserts that there is some grotesque falsehood in the idea that the NBN is going to raise telecommunications prices. Let me give a simple economics lesson to the Prime Minister: $43 billion of investment has to be recouped. The people investing that money will want to get it back. That is $43 billion more that is being invested in broadband and this Prime Minister thinks that it will not make any difference to the price that consumers are charged. What a completely clueless Prime Minister we have.

She says that it is impossible to release the business case because it needs methodical study and that it is 400 pages long—oh, dear, 400 pages long! It is as if this parliament and its members are incapable of reading and digesting a 400-page business study over the weekend. We are capable of reading that document, we want to read that document and we believe that the policy of this parliament will be so much better if it is informed by that document.

This is a government which is constantly saying that it wants evidence based policy, and now it will not release the evidence on which it says its policy is based. Shame on this weak, divided and cowardly government for not giving the Australian people the evidence on which its policy should be based.

The Prime Minister is telling us that the National Broadband Network is too important to be delayed and too important for this parliament to be detained for a few days by 400 pages of evidence. Let us not forget the last time this government came into this parliament and said that a policy was too important to be delayed, to be subjected to scrutiny and to be subjected to evidence—the pink batts program. We all know what the pink batts program did: there were hundreds of house fires and there were deaths. Another policy that was also too important to be delayed was the school halls program. We all know what happened there: $16 billion was spent on $8 billion worth of value, if we are lucky. This is a government which rushes into things and makes decisions without subjecting them to the proper scrutiny that responsible government decisions need.

Let me make this prediction to the House: the National Broadband Network will turn out to be the school halls program on steroids. The school hall program wasted $8 billion. As it is currently constituted, the National Broadband Network could easily end up wasting tens of billions of dollars. No responsible parliament could make a decision of that nature without access to all the evidence that is currently available. The business case is currently available. I say to the Prime Minister and the government, and to the people and the parliament of this country: the business case must be released before the decision is made.

I could argue at this time the merits of the National Broadband Network. I could talk about the error of replacing a competitive market, which has driven down prices, with a government monopoly that is certain to raise prices. I could argue the mistake of spending $11 billion to buy the Telstra copper line network only to close it down. I could argue the folly of stringing out $43 billion worth of cable on power poles that will desecrate the garden suburbs of our cities and towns. I could argue all these things, but now is not the time to argue the merits or demerits of the National Broadband Network; now is the time to say that decisions should not be made until we have the evidence before us. The government has the evidence. It should give the evidence to the parliament and let the parliament make the most informed decision that it can.

In the end, this is not about the quality of the National Broadband Network; this is about the quality of the decision making of this parliament. I say to every member of this parliament, including members who support the National Broadband Network but do not necessarily trust the decision-making processes of this government, here is a chance today to try to ensure that this parliament actually is its best self, that this parliament actually rises above the ordinary argy-bargy of politics and says, ‘Let’s for once try to make a decision that is truly based on the best evidence available.’

The Prime Minister has spoken at length today about the fact that an implementation study was published. I congratulate the Prime Minister. I think it is good that there was an implementation study. I think it is great that the government published that implementation study. But there is more, Prime Minister. There is now a business case over and above the implementation study. If you think it is good to publish the implementation study and argue for the National Broadband Network based on the implementation study, why not publish the business case too? Why not allow this parliament to make the extraordinary decision to spend $43 billion worth of public money—more money than was ever spent on the Snowy Mountains scheme, by far the biggest investment ever made in this country by a government agency—on all the evidence, and on the best evidence, available?

What do this government and this Prime Minister have to hide? Has she read the 400-page study? Maybe it is beyond her? Maybe she has and it undermines the government’s case? Maybe she has not and she just does not trust us, the parliament, with the study? I do not know the answer to that question. I just think that whatever this parliament is to decide on the National Broadband Network it will be far better decided if we have all the evidence available. I think this parliament is intelligent and discriminating enough to be able to make a sensible decision, and it will be a more sensible decision the more evidence we have. Give us the evidence. Do not expect us to make a decision without the evidence. What is wrong with a government which tries to ramrod and steamroll the parliament into making the most important decision of this term of parliament without the evidence? Let the sunlight in, and give us the evidence. Let the sun shine on the business case for the National Broadband Network and, if that is not possible for this government, may the judgment of Senator Faulkner echo around this chamber again and again that this is a government which is long on cunning but very short on courage. It does not have the courage to produce the evidence for its own policy.

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