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

I note that the opposition interjects at this point. There have been times when opposition members have been out there fearmongering about what the government’s NBN proposal means for Telstra shareholders and the price of Telstra shares. I ask those opposition members who have been pretty happy to engage in that fearmongering: why would you put yourselves on this destructive course of saying, ‘Just release the national broadband business case,’ without due regard to the commercially sensitive information in it? Why would you recommend that course of action when you have been known in the past to go out and fearmonger about Telstra prices?

The government is in the process of analysing the national broadband business case. We will work through the confidential information and we will release to the public the maximum amount of information that we can. When that information is released, people will see there a corporate plan that sets out objectives and priorities for the next three years. They will see that that corporate plan is to be updated once a year. They will see details of the process of designing, building and operating the National Broadband Network. They will see the details of the government’s case for the affordable fast broadband it will provide and they will see the business assumptions that underpin the case. That information will be made available.

I also say to the coalition that, when that information is made available, we know what will happen. We know that the coalition are not going to do anything proper with that information. We know that they are going to cull through it to clip a word here and a figure there to try to use them out of context, out of sequence, in a mischievous way to try to pursue their case of demolishing the National Broadband Network.

For those of us who genuinely care about Australians having opportunities in the future, I would refer them to the OECD work that talks about the competition that the National Broadband Network will bring to retail prices. The member for Wentworth is out there trying to create the impression in people’s minds that there is no retail competition. He knows, if he is being honest with Australians, that retail competition is good for pricing. He knows as well that the structural separation of Telstra is a profound reform agenda in telecommunications long sought after to end a vertically integrated monopoly, with all of the costs and implications for service provision, particularly in rural and regional Australia, that that has had.

Finally, if the opposition truly were in any way interested in, expert in or concerned about broadband and the access for Australians to broadband, how could you possibly explain their shambolic performance in relation to their own policy generation? Does anybody remember those days in the campaign when the broadband policy came out? The Leader of the Opposition thought it so irrelevant to the nation’s future he did not even bother attending the launch. Then, of course, the shadow spokesperson was put on the bench because he was so embarrassing and they fielded the member for Bradfield. That was what: their 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th go at trying to get a policy together? And even that policy has not stuck, because, since the election, we have had the shambles of CANCo. The member for Wentworth was out there spruiking CANCo only to be hauled back by persons unknown who do not want to support his broadband policy.

We will leave this shambles to the opposition. We will inform the public debate. We will work with those members of parliament who care about the delivery of broadband and we will, of course, be releasing to them the National Broadband Network business case, having dealt properly and appropriately with the question of commercially sensitive information. The Leader of the Opposition and the opposition do not care less about this national policy question. They are only interested in playing politics, and you could not see a bigger example of that than this conduct today.

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