Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue. It is all about the efficient and effective allocation of resources. I think that all in this House see the need for improvement in broadband services but the issue is: how do you deliver it? Do you deliver it in a way that is efficient and effective and provides a return on investment for taxpayers’ funds, or do you deliver it in a way which is more about PR stunts and photo opportunities and an endless waste of taxpayers’ money without scrutiny and without reference to economic outcomes?

That is the path that this government is taking us down. If we go back to December 2007, Senator Conroy gave a commitment on spending to ABC’s Lateline program, when he said:

We are committed to spending no more than $4.7 billion.

That was Labor’s commitment on the day we announced the broadband network, and we have never changed it. $4.7 billion was their commitment back in December 2007 and in just two years the price of Labor’s network did not go up 100 per cent, it did not go up 200 per cent—it has gone up 1,000 per per cent. He has broken his promise to the Australian people not to spend more than $4.7 billion. He has broken that tenfold, and he says, ‘Trust me, it will all work out.’ How do we justify that expenditure?

When he had to get on the plane with the former Prime Minister and they were in a bit of jam because they could not find a commercial tenderer, an operator who could make it viable at $4.7 billion, he had to come up with something. They needed to have a major announcement. So they said, ‘Let’s come up with something that is truly spectacular, something that will capture people’s imagination—not something that is financially viable and not something that is actually going to deliver a return on investment,’ and they came up with an announcement that was going to cloak the fact that they could not get a commercial operator to pay $4.7 billion. In the true spirit of Labor, in the true spirit of the nanny state, they blow 10 times that figure in taxpayers’ money purely to provide political cover for their first failed proposal.

It seems incredible that when you look around at what markets are doing, you see a decline in the use of fixed lines. Senator Conroy has for months—in fact for over a year now—been quoting the benefits of South Korea and saying how good the South Korean system is, that it is something we should aspire to. When the Economist Intelligence Unit puts out a report and unfavourably compares Australia’s proposed national broadband network with what is happening in South Korea, he says that that is comparing apples with oranges. So he seeks to compare us with South Korea when it assists his case, and as soon as the very clear differences between the two systems are noted then he seeks to distance himself from that.

It is interesting to note also that in South Korea the use of wireless is outdoing the use of fixed line by two to one. So rather than looking at the overseas experience and gaining from that, looking out in the market and seeing what the trends are, he decides to dictate a solution that involves digging up 10.9 million backyards and providing fibre to the premises, whether that is economically justified or not. It is all about pursuing a political outcome.

How do you achieve that? You do not achieve that through thorough analysis. You do not achieve that through finding the most efficient way to deliver the service. You achieve that through protecting the project from scrutiny. You achieve that by denying the Productivity Commission the opportunity to investigate the matter. You achieve it by denying the Joint Public Works Committee the opportunity to investigate the matter. You do it by denying the opportunity for documents to be sourced under freedom of information. You would expect that they would welcome scrutiny of a project that was allegedly a world leader and was allegedly going to take this country into the 22nd century. You would expect that they would throw open the door, because this project should stand on its own two feet. But instead, they fear scrutiny.

See this speech in context