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

I must correct the minister. He said that the amendment of the Greens—and I appreciate we are effectively debating these together—will put NBN Co. in the same position as Australia Post. That simply is not true. Division 1 of part II of the Freedom of Information Act is titled ‘Agencies exempt in respect of particular documents’. It lists, for example, the:

Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in relation to its program material and its datacasting content …

So the commercial activities of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation—and it does engage in quite extensive commercial activities, as we know—are not exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. It refers to the:

Australian Postal Corporation, in relation to documents in respect of its commercial activities …

I would encourage my friend the member for Melbourne to listen to this because I am trying to save him from an embarrassing blunder here. Section 7, subsection (3)(a) defines ‘commercial activities’. It is said to mean:

(a) activities carried on by an agency on a commercial basis in competition with persons other than governments or authorities of governments …

So it is only the activities of Australia Post that are competitive with other companies’ activities that fall into that definition.

However, the Green-Labor amendment proposes to insert the NBN Co. in this list of agencies that are exempt in respect of particular documents and to state that the NBN Co. is exempt in respect of documents in relation to its commercial activities, but to define ‘commercial activities’—in a new subsection, 3A, to go into section 7—as meaning activities carried on by NBN Co. on a commercial basis. A ‘commercial basis’ really means any basis other than a charitable basis, so—the member is shaking his head, but I can assure him I am right here—any basis on which the NBN Co. is providing services in return for reward is clearly a commercial basis. It is not going to be providing services for free. Given that the entirety of the NBN’s activities is conducted on a commercial basis, no documents would fall outside of this exemption.

So the government has gone to the Greens and said, ‘Oh, look, that amendment you’re proposing which is the same as the opposition’s is just a little too broad; we can tighten it up a little bit and you’ll still get what you want.’ But the NBN Co. will be, for all practical purposes, completely exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. So the amendment of the Greens which we are going to consider after this and which we will divide on, we will vote against it, is a solemn farce. It is an insult to this House. It is a con. The Greens have been sold a pup. The party that claims to have been part of the group to ‘let the sunshine in’ is in fact a party to the government locking it out.

Our amendment on the other hand, as I said earlier, will make the NBN Co. a prescribed authority and, hence, an agency covered by the act, with all of the traditional exemptions, including those relating to documents that are commercial-in-confidence and commercially valuable. All of those exemptions will be there, and appropriately so. Our amendment, which I commend to the House, will let some sunshine in to the NBN Co. The Greens amendment will lock it out forever.

Question put:

That the amendment (Mr Turnbull’s) be agreed to.

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