House debates
Monday, 12 September 2016
Committees
Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network; Appointment
3:16 pm
Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source
I would like to say a few words on this. We are pleased that there will be a committee established for parliamentary scrutiny of the NBN, but we have a couple of points to make. There were seven committee members on the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network in the last parliament. There are 17 members and senators proposed for this committee.
I note in paragraphs (11) to (13) of the terms of reference for this committee that is being established that there is a requirement that 'five members of the committee constitute a quorum, provided that in a deliberative meeting the quorum shall include one government member of either house and one opposition member of either house'. That basically flows through from paragraph (11) into paragraphs (12) and (13). The issue that we have is: why is there this insistence on the attendance of a government member, or even an opposition member, to have quorum. Our view is that quorums should be based on the attendance as a whole, not on political affiliation. It could result in a perverse situation, which I will explain. I note that the previous terms of reference simply stated:
(c) that 3 members of the committee constitute a quorum …
When you note that three of the 17 members of this committee are going to be Greens or Independent members or senators, so unaligned, then the potential outcome could be a situation where if you have those three Greens or Independents turn up and seven Labor members turn up—so that is 10 out of 17—but there is no government member present, then it would not be quorum for a deliberative meeting of the committee. Indeed, in our view, this would be a perverse situation. So we will be reserving our rights to pursue this matter further in the Senate. This is indeed an issue which I seek to highlight in order that the proper functioning of the committee and the task it is set to carry out under the terms of reference are fulfilled.
Question agreed to.
Comments
Charlie Schroeder
Posted on 13 Sep 2016 3:48 pm
Just get people who know what they are doing to get the flaws ironed out.
At the moment, I am struggling with the NBN co, who have apparently assigned the wrong IP address to my Sky Muster satellite modem and won't change it to the proper one as it should be.
Sometimes I am trying to get a connection through several hard reboots of the modem and bringing my Ethernet up and down several times. The after hours, still no internet connection?
Please get the NBN Co to make certain they either, fix their modems, or, give us access so we can fix them.
Fortunately I am now on to be able to post this. [sigh]
Charlie Schroeder
Posted on 13 Sep 2016 3:41 pm
Just get people who know what they are doing to get the flaws ironed out.
At the moment, I am struggling with the NBN co, who have apparently assigned the wrong IP address to my Sky Muster satellite modem and won't change it to the proper one as it should be.
Sometimes I am trying to get a connection through several hard reboots of the modem and bringing my Ethernet up and down several times. The after hours, still no internet connection?
Please get the NBN Co to make certain they either, fix their modems, or, give us access so we can fix them.
Fortunately I am now on to be able to post this. [sigh]