Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I quite like the member for Banks. We did a bit of work together before he got elevated to deputy chief Treasury Muppet or whatever. But that's not an answer. I actually used my serious voice. I used numbers. I pointed to real facts and figures that are in the budget papers. And you completely didn't address the question. You responded to the member for Boothby's government waffle, when she wasn't even interested enough to stay around and hear your response. I feel slighted. I feel a little upset by this. So let me continue.

On the Inland Rail—and I would welcome your answer to a pretty specific and clear question, Minister—what is the basis on which you can classify this $9 billion of 'funny money' as an off-budget investment? What is the basis? Tell us how that accords with your accounting rules, which require you to make a commercial return and repay the cost of capital in a reasonable time frame. That would be a good question to answer. If you could answer that, that would actually be helpful and make this part of the legislative process perhaps just a little bit meaningful for all of us.

But I draw your attention to another and very significant off-budget investment, if you like—the National Broadband Network. That was started by Labor—and I thank you for your acknowledgement of that, Minister—as a good nation-building project. Of course, it was based on a set of assumptions—it was based on a business case at the time—that have now changed. The Prime Minister, when he was communications minister, bastardised, as we know, Labor's visionary NBN. I challenge him to come to Glen Waverley in my electorate and have a chat to anyone there who keeps getting stupid letters from the NBN saying, 'The rollout's off,' 'The rollout's on,' 'The rollout's off,' 'The rollout's on.' The only thing worse than not getting the NBN is getting the NBN, as it turns out for people who do.

The NBN is currently valued at replacement value on the books, but industry experts are saying louder and louder that the NBN is not worth what the government claims, with the changing business model. If that's true, then the loss in value at some point will come back to budget and blow out the deficit. We're not talking about small numbers here. We're talking about $29.5 billion now of equity that the government has tipped in and another $19.5 billion of loans. Minister, can you explain the basis of the valuation and can you state unequivocally to the parliament, hand on heart—pinkie promise, invisible ink, swear in blood, whatever you like, whatever's your thing—that the NBN is worth what you claim it is, that the cost of capital will be repaid and that this is not a fiscal time bomb for future governments or taxpayers to bear? It would be very good if we could hear that unequivocal assurance that the NBN is worth what you say it is and that your reputation will hang on that.

The other point I would make is about the $75 billion sham package for infrastructure. I said to the Parliamentary Library: 'We hear about this $75 billion. What's the list of projects?' The Parliamentary Library said they couldn't find the full list of projects—and they're pretty good at finding stuff; they're much cleverer than me. I don't have a PhD, of course, unlike my learned friend, here—he's pretty good at finding stuff. But the Parliamentary Library can find no full list of the projects. In fact, when you look at the budget papers, Minister, there's only $24.3 billion of this mythical $75 billion in the forward estimates—real money. The rest is not budgeted. It appears it will be a mysterious, opaque mix of things, including contingent liabilities, like the East West Link in Melbourne—a joke—so we think you're counting that in the $75 billion. There would also be concessional loans, such as for the WestConnex tunnel in Sydney, the road to nowhere; the Auditor-General has identified a lot of problems with how that's gone. It would also include indemnities, guarantees, equity investments. There is the Melbourne rail link—the rail line the Prime Minister thinks you can build with no actual money, because apparently it's going to make a profit. I think it would be the only rail line in the world, outside Hong Kong or Singapore, that you could make a profit on building. There's a form of magic going on. As the chief executive of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia said, you can't finance your way out of a funding problem. It doesn't matter how much you cook the books or spin it, you can't. On the airport rail scam, the Grattan Institute said:

So there’s a real risk that these equity investments will end up not even making a positive rate of return, never mind a commercial rate.

So can the minister please tell me where I can get a full list of exactly what is in this $75 billion package. I want a full list—I think the Australian people deserve a list—project by project, outlining how they're funded, what the mix of innovative financing mechanisms is, and what the finance department's advice and scrutiny has been, project by project, of the fiscal risks posed by these mythical investments.

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