Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service and Integrity) Share this | Hansard source

And I have to say that, I think like all of us present, especially when contemplating McLaren Vale shiraz, we would all prefer not to be doing it in a cyber way; we would prefer to be doing it in a real and genuine way. It is an important question to go to current initiatives in the budget that deal with the National Broadband Network. In particular there is funding provided for in the current budget through the Department of Finance and Deregulation to assist in the oversight of the new entity to manage the universal service obligation that comes with the National Broadband Network. On 20 June 2010 NBN Co. Ltd and Telstra announced an agreement and the rollout of the National Broadband Network. In support of that agreement the government announced policy reforms to support the transition to the National Broadband Network environment including the implementation of an institutional regulatory and funding regime for the delivery of the universal service obligation and other public interest services and that is what we dealt with in this budget.

Earlier, on 10 February 2011, the government announced that it had reached an in-principle agreement with Telstra for the package of measures announced by the government in June 2010 to facilitate the transition to the National Broadband Network. These reforms included establishing the new entity which will function from July 2012 and to provide funding that will ensure that all Australians have reasonable access to a standard telephone service—the universal service obligation for voice telephony services—and ensure that pay phones are reasonably accessible to all Australians—the universal service obligation for pay phones. It will also include emergency call handling, the triple 0 and 112 numbers, and the national relay service. There will be migration of voice only customers to a fibre based service as Telstra's copper exchanges are decommissioned and the development of technological solutions for continuity of public interest services such as public alarm systems and traffic lights. There will be $1.2 million over five years provided to the Department of Finance and Deregulation to assist in managing the government oversight of the new entity that will be established to manage this universal service obligation.

Given the government's significant financial investment in maintaining the continuity of voice services to Australians, appropriate oversight of this entity is required. Currently, no resources are provided for that function. The Department of Finance and Deregulation will provide advice to government on the governance structure of the new entity and monitoring of the ongoing strategy and performance of the entity including in relation to complex financial matters including the government's financial investment, the USO regulatory environment and related legislation, appointments and performance, stakeholder management between NBN Co. Ltd during the rollout of the National Broadband Network and with the broader telecommunications industry and other related matters.

Those initiatives are part of the all-of-government response that embraces both the reality and the possibilities that are presented by NBN. We know the language and we are commonly understanding the language of government 2.0—it has been around for five or six years—and it denotes a kind of government that has as its hallmark the ability to reach out, the ability to listen to, the ability to insightfully interpret the communities that engage with it and importantly the ability to provide information to our citizens in a timely and efficient manner. That was never more poignantly demonstrated than during the emergencies that our country faced in January and February of this year. The developments in government 2.0 and in cloud computing simply allow the government to be more embracing of the communities that we represent and allow us to deliver in an effective and efficient way. With the development of the capacity represented by the NBN Co. and the requirement to attend to the universal service obligation facilities that we are commonly understanding are part of large and complex utilities then we can see that the all-of-government approach to supporting the activities of NBN Co. is underpinned by the work that is done in the department of the digital economy and also in the department of finance. (Time expired)

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