Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications and Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

If there is one thing we have learnt about this government, it's that it always puts itself first. When taxpayer funding is involved, this government's priorities are always its own political interests over the national interest. As a result, we've seen this confluence of rorts—all the ways that taxpayer funding is spent on the political interests of the Liberal and National parties, not in the national interest. So many rorts are swirling around this government that they've formed one giant megarort—a rort tornado or a 'rortnado'—at the heart of this government. That's what this government stands for. We've seen the sports rorts scandal where colour coded spreadsheets were used to allocate money away from electorates like mine, where there were sports projects that were independently rated objectively higher than those in coalition seats. But, no, the political interests of this government said that the money had to be spent in marginal seats, and that's where it went. We had the safer seats rort where the Minister for Home Affairs directed taxpayer grants for security projects, again, away from objectively rated proposals to where his interests and the political interests of the Liberal party land.

Of course, the other thing that we have learnt this week is that they put themselves first and you can't believe what they say. You can't take them at face value. Now we find that the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government have been using dodgy figures to justify their dud NBN political strategy. I don't say 'NBN policy'; I say 'NBN political strategy' because that's what it has been since the start. Before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott—remember him?—tasked Malcolm Turnbull with 'demolishing' the National Broadband Network. It was always a political job, not a policy job. It was always about their own perceived political self-interest, not the national interest. Abbott didn't task Malcolm Turnbull with building a national asset to turbocharge productivity growth in Australia, to power economic growth into the future and to build social inclusion throughout our suburbs and regions. He tasked him with a political demolition job, and the core of this political task was the MTM, or the multitechnology mix.

The political claim was that the coalition could build a cheaper NBN and roll it out more quickly if they abandoned Labor's fibre-to-the-home rollout, which was already well underway, with a mix, in exchange, of fibre, HFC and copper—oh, so much copper! And that was used to roll out this MTM model of the NBN. They said that continuing Labor's all-out fibre NBN would cost $72 billion, wasting well over $50 billion, and that's why they pursued the dud MTM model. Now we know, thanks to a report from The Sydney Morning Herald, that they knew all along that these figures were dodgy. The Sydney Morning Herald reports, 'Secret figures show full fibre NBN may have cost $10 billion less than claimed'—that is, less than claimed by those opposite The 2013 strategic review blanked this out, as the member for Greenway, the shadow minister for communications, pointed out earlier. Claiming commercial in confidence, it redacted '$10 billion cheaper' because it could 'damage the organisation's ability to negotiate or renegotiate any associated contracts', but we know the real reason. It's because it undermined the political narrative of those opposite.

This government is allergic to accountability. It is allergic to alternative views. It will do anything to avoid scrutiny and dodge accountability, including cutting the funding of the ANAO throughout the life of this government. They have never seen a cover-up that they didn't like, going back as far as 2016 when there were attempts to expose just how badly the NBN rollout was managed under those opposite. They tried to keep the real costs identified in the 2013 review a state secret. They went so far as to call the Australian Federal Police to raid the then shadow communications minister's Parliament House office and his office in my electorate in Melbourne's west, all to keep secret the fact that their cost estimates were a hoax and a political cover story, and that they could have built a full fibre network for $10 billion less than they claimed.

Using the AFP to conduct raids over leaks that make this government look bad is something they have significant form in—we all remember those raids on ABC journalists in their homes. Labor's plan would have been faster and cheaper, and the government knew it. They didn't want the cost per premises figures to be public because, as they said, it was commercial-in-confidence and would undermine NBN's contract negotiations. But it would have undermined their political argument!

The MTM quickly became 'Malcolm Turnbull's mess'. The cost to roll out this dud NBN blew out year after year after year. They should have listened to those of us on this side of the House. They should have listened when we said, 'Do it once, do it right, do it fibre.' We now know that even those opposite knew that doing it once, doing it right and doing it fibre would have cost $10 billion less than what those opposite told the Australian public.

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