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

I do not know whether the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport has been sold a pup, because quite a large pup has been sold to the Greens—which we will come to later. What he just said to the House is absurd, frankly. The utilities have been quite clear about what they are seeking to achieve. The Energy Networks Association, in their submission of 24 February to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, said:

Even if retail service providers do offer an appropriate NBN service type, the requirement to deal through a third party would add additional costs, without adding value.

That is no more than saying, ‘I always prefer to buy wholesale; I do not want to deal with the retailer.’ On that basis the NBN will dominate totally all of the government and large corporate telecommunications business in Australia. Again, I do not know whether the government has been sold a pup on this by the department or by the energy and utilities sector, but there is no limitation on what utilities can do. They obviously cannot resell the telecommunications services to the public unless they have a carrier licence, but if they do have a carrier licence they are entitled to. In terms of their own services, consider clause 11, which deals with electricity supply bodies. It says that the prohibition on providing services to persons other than carriers does not apply if:

… the sole use of the carriage service is an electricity supply body to carry communications necessary or desirable for:

(i) managing the generation, transmission, distribution or supply of electricity; or

(ii) charging for the supply of electricity …

What else does an energy supply company do? That describes the entirety of its business. It manages the generation, transmission, distribution or supply of electricity and it charges for it. Literally everything it does is for that purpose. I challenge honourable members on the other side to tell me and the House a function of an electricity utility that is not covered by those general words. I cannot think of one. It covers the entirety of their operations and the same language is there in clause 12 for gas utilities, clause 13 for water utilities and so forth.

With respect to the honourable minister, this is an exemption that will basically mean that there will no longer be any fixed line telecommunications services provided to any of these utilities in Australia other than by the NBN. All of the corporate and utility business of Telstra, Optus and other providers will be gone. The NBN, because it has the benefit of this enormous government subsidy, will be able to undercut anybody else. It will have the dominant if not monopoly fixed line infrastructure and it will take over that business. If the government seriously believes what the minister just said, it has been deluded, conned or misled.

I recognise that we are not going to divide on this amendment tonight, but this is something that I would commend to the government and the Senate committee to reflect on very deeply. I listened very carefully to what the minister said and if the object that he sought to achieve in this bill was as he described, that object is not there. He has been sold a pup.

Question negatived.

I move opposition amendment (7):

(7)    Clause 41, page 35 (after line 30), insert:

     (3A)    An NBN corporation must not supply an eligible service that is higher than Layer 2 in the Open System Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model.

This can be dealt with fairly quickly because we are talking about the same issues. This refers to the layer 2 bit stream service. We are proposing here that, on page 35 of the bill, in clause 41, a new subsection is added which provides at 3A that an NBN corporation must not supply an eligible service that is higher than layer 2 in the OSI reference model. This is designed to ensure that NBN does not creep up into higher value added services, creep up the value chain, if you like, and depart from what is said to be its objective as a provider of that layer 2 service.

This is a fairly technical area. I will not say any more about it simply because I know there has been quite a lot of correspondence between the government and the telcos and I think this section is probably in the stage of tentative amendment following those discussions. It is probably a matter that will be dealt with in the Senate committee. The bottom line is once again that this is a massive, highly capitalised government monopoly. The government has said it is to be wholesale only and it is to be like the freeway on which the retail service providers will be able to run their electronic buses, trucks, cars and trains and so forth.

This amendment is needed, just as the other amendments were, to ensure that the wholesale-only freeway does not start to get into the retail carriage business. I hope that I have demonstrated to the House that there is ample scope for it to do so under the bill as it is currently drafted and that this restriction here is effectively some legislative belt and braces to ensure that it does not escape the bounds that we are seeking to set for it.

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