Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. It is vital that we deal with this today. This parliament is being asked to approve the largest infrastructure investment in our nation’s history completely and utterly in the dark, and we have been misled by remarks made today by the Prime Minister about the pricing of the NBN. She said again and again that it was a falsehood to say that the NBN will result in increases in internet prices. Well, it is actually even a longer document than the business case, Prime Minister, but I am sure you have read it. The McKinsey implementation study, page 356, sets out the key assumption: a one per cent real increase in price over time—that means one per cent on top of inflation, so, four per cent a year for a decade. We have had prices for telecommunication services going down year after year. Now they are starting to go up under the NBN. We are going to have a massive fiscal burden of $43 billion on the taxpayer for a National Broadband Network that most Australians will find more and more unaffordable.

The government is creating a gigantic monopoly which will have to be fed. It will need revenues. It will have no competition with it at the fixed line level. The Prime Minister has brushed that concern aside. But the OECD did not brush it aside. The Treasury did not brush it aside. What were the two concerns the Treasury made clear in their advice to the incoming government? They were, firstly, a threat to the public balance sheet, with the spending of so much money with so little consideration and, secondly, the concern about establishing a massive fixed line monopoly—precisely what the OECD complained about.

The government, notwithstanding its claimed commitment to doing rigorous cost benefit analyses of major infrastructure projects, has refused to do one for this project. The biggest of them all will not be subject to a cost benefit analysis. It does not have the rigour, the discipline, to ask the question, ‘What are we trying to achieve?’ and if what we are trying to achieve, as I assume we are, is universal and affordable broadband, then the next question to ask is, ‘What are the most cost-effective ways of achieving that?’ There is no question this is the most expensive way to achieve it and it is difficult to see, particularly in the light of the massive investment and the advice from McKinsey, that this is going to make internet access more affordable. Rather, it will make it less affordable.

It is an affront to the democratic process that such a vast investment is being put before the parliament and the government is sitting on a business case and refusing to make it available until after the parliament has risen and everyone has gone back to their electorates. This is treating the parliament with contempt. It is the most arrogant act of a very arrogant and reckless government, because they know that if this went to the Productivity Commission the folly would be exposed. They are concerned that if the business plan is published before the parliament rises the Prime Minister might have to answer some questions on it and it might turn out that she knows as little about the business case as she did about the McKinsey study. Only a moment ago she essentially accused the Leader of the Opposition of lying when he said that it would push prices up. She accused me of lying when I said it would push prices up.

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The only evidence we have—apart from commonsense, always the most compelling counsellor—is the advice of McKinsey. The government paid $25 million for a report that said if you spend $43 billion on a network it is going to result in higher prices. It was worth every penny, Prime Minister, it really was. It was a great deal. But the Prime Minister did not read it, and there is the bottom line. Universal broadband, yes. Affordable broadband, yes. What the NBN is going to deliver is less affordable broadband. The digital divide will get deeper and wider. The people who the Prime Minister has such great interest in on her long walks around her electorate, people on low incomes, will find it harder and harder to get access to the internet because of this massive overinvestment. That is why we need the business plan, not next month, today.

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