Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support these amendments. Under part 3 of the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010, NBN Co. cannot be privatised until five clear steps have been taken. First, the communications minister must declare that the NBN is built and fully operational; second, the Productivity Commission must conduct an inquiry into the NBN; third, a parliamentary joint committee on the ownership of NBN Co. must examine the Productivity Commission’s report; fourth, the finance minister must declare that conditions are suitable for entering into and carrying out an NBN Co. sale scheme; and, fifth, it must be the case that the parliament does not disallow the finance minister’s declaration.

It is very clear that the retention of NBN Co. in public ownership until the network is complete and operational is designed to ensure that the network can be rolled out consistent with the government’s objectives and as recommend by the implementation study. The effect of the coalition’s amendments would be that a future government could sell NBN Co. at any time, even if only a small part of it had been built. As such, the coalition amendments would jeopardise the rollout of the NBN as a national network providing new broadband infrastructure to all Australians.

It is not surprising that the ideological free marketeers opposite want to repeat the mistakes they made with Telstra. We know that, when Telstra was privatised, it went from being a public institution to being a privatised monopoly with consequential negative impacts on consumers. Most importantly, we know that because the structural separation question was not addressed by those opposite when they were in government there was a failure of public policy that had to be fixed up by this government when we passed legislation dealing with the question at the end of last year.

The opposition is proposing amendments that also remove the right of a future parliament to disallow any sale. But this government considers that a sale decision would be best made in the future by the government and the parliament of the day. The amendments do retain both a Productivity Commission inquiry and a joint parliamentary committee inquiry on ownership of NBN Co., but the amendments do nothing more than pay lip service to them.

The amendments would allow a future coalition government to sell NBN Co. regardless of what the commission and joint parliamentary committee decide. The main purpose of the amendments is simply to enable a future coalition government to sell NBN Co. as quickly as possible, regardless of the needs of regional and rural Australians and the public benefit from restructuring the telecommunications market. That is why the government simply does not support these amendments.

We need to move forward in a positive way towards the future; not to look backwards at the mistakes of the past and repeat them. But those opposite are ideologically opposed to the idea that the government should address market failure, which is what we have seen in the telecommunications sector. We have seen market failure in practice, with 20 failed plans and a lack of services, particularly impacting on regional Australia. So the government will not support these amendments and, indeed, is strongly opposed to them. We say to the opposition: it is one thing to make mistakes in government—and they were made time and time again and reinforced by the coalition when in office—it is another thing not to have the capacity to step back, examine the consequences of those mistakes and concede that they were indeed mistakes and should not be repeated in the future. The government opposes these amendments.

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