Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

Out of the minister's own mouth, indeed. Third, it says the coalition's plan will result in lower revenues of up to 30 per cent, which will impact on the ability of NBN Co. to raise debt. Fourth, it says no-one knows how much it will cost to fix Telstra's old copper network so it can be used for the NBN—not Telstra, not the government and not NBN Co. Fifth, it also says that the cost of maintaining the copper network is estimated between $600 million and $900 million per year. That is between $6 billion and $9 billion over the next decade just to maintain the old copper network. Sixth, it says the coalition's promise of minimum speeds of 50 megabits per second by 2019 cannot be guaranteed using copper. Seventh, it says the coalition's slower speeds would compromise the provision of tele-health, distance education and other business applications.

So, all up, what does this report say? It says the coalition's plan is a dud. It was a dud in April and it is more than a dud now. It is a litany of betrayal by this government, which promised one thing before the election and which is now, after having perpetrated a deceit on the Australian people, breaking its promise today. What we know in this document and what has been proven by what the minister has said today is that the NBN will now take longer to build than promised before the election; it will make less money; and it will not meet the needs of business or families. In the end, we are going to have to come back and finish the job.

The minister has said a lot about costs in his speech, and we should not be surprised. Remember: the capital cost of building the NBN has been outlined in the NBN Co.'s corporate plans. In the corporate plan 2012-15 it was $37.4 billion. In the corporate plan 2013-16, leaked to the Australian Financial Review, it was $37.4 billion. In version 13 of the corporate plan, which was prepared by NBN Co., given to the board on 20 September and is sitting on the minister’s desk right now but not released, it is $37.4 billion. All of these accounts have been ticked off not just by the company but also by the board—including two members of the board who were there in September and have been there for all of these corporate plans—and have been audited and verified by the Australian National Audit Office, by Ernst and Young and by KPMG. So these costs are verified in government, Finance, Treasury as well as these other organisations, and now, suddenly, it has all changed. Suddenly, the experts have been sacked. People have been brought back in and we have got a different answer.

Some people might be surprised that all of this information is now out of date, but I am not. For the last few weeks, I have been warning the Australian public that this would happen. I did it again on the doors today, and I have been proven correct today. You only have to look at what Brad Orgill said in a column that he wrote for the Financial Review a few weeks ago to know why this is the case. This is what Mr Orgill said:

Selective data, conservative assumptions and extrapolations out to 2021 could be formulated to argue why the NBN might have comprehensively blown out its costs and not achieved its objective. It would be a continuation of the Coalition's attacks from opposition on NBN management and the board including threatening a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

In other words, change the assumptions and you get a different result. You do not have to think hard to see how this has been done.

Mike Quigley, the former CEO that the minister likes so much, said this last week:

Rates to build the fibre network based on the existing design and architecture were rising. But those rate increases would not have produced a cost increase because we had identified and validated, network and design changes that would have offset those increases.

He goes on:

Which is why I find it incomprehensible to hear the suggestion that the increases in LN/DN rates should be built into the forward projections and cost reductions that have already been identified, should not be.

Here is the killer:

Unless, of course, your objective is to try to confirm a pre-conceived position.

The minister in his contribution talked a little bit about copper and the work that has been done in the strategic review to cost that copper. The fact is that, in this report, there is no detail about the exact amount that it would cost to fix and then to maintain the copper network. Three weeks ago the minister said at a CommsDay conference:

We want hand on heart true, realistic and achievable options prudently costed and scoped on which we can make weighty decisions.

My argument to the parliament today is that this report does not do this. It fails to provide this information. It fails to provide the exact information we need on how much it will cost to fix and then to maintain the old copper network. It gives estimates. It gives international comparisons. It gives, as the minister has just said, conservative assumptions. It does not reveal them and does not provide us with the information we need.

This report, which the minister will not let me table in parliament, does. It tells us that the cost of maintaining the old copper network could be between $600 million and $900 million a year. So it is between $6 billion and $10 billion to maintain the old copper network over the next decade. My argument to the parliament is: would that money not be better invested in building a fibre network than keeping the old copper network going?

The most important thing today, the most important thing in the report and the most important thing in the contribution that the minister has made today is the admission that he is breaking a promise to the Australian people. This is not the only broken promise that he has made today, but it is worth remembering that it is still on the Liberal Party's website. It might not be now; it was when I came down to the parliament. This is from the Liberal Party's website:

Download speeds of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by the end of 2016 and 50 to 100 megabits per second by 2019.

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