Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

In due course I will get to what are perhaps the most farcical six pages of proposed legislation that I have ever encountered in the 11 or so years I've had the privilege of being in this place. But, before I do, I think that sometimes we assume a level of knowledge in our contributions which can perhaps be unhelpful for those who are following the debate or seeking to, so I just want to start with some basics and make a point which I don't think has been made. I think some of those opposite might be interested in understanding the shift in position that they have adopted—one which I say is welcome, but the reality is that those opposite have shifted their position in relation to this proposal.

The NBN Co is an unlisted public company limited by shares, incorporated under the Corporations Act 2001, and is a Commonwealth company for the purposes of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013.

NBN Co was established in 2009 as a government business enterprise by the Australian government which is its sole shareholder. Under the legislative provisions, there are two shareholder ministers for the purposes of the NBN. It is a government business enterprise which operates, as it should, at arms' length to government but is wholly owned by government.

It might not be surprising to learn that the shareholder ministers are the Minister for Finance of the day and, of course, appropriately, the Minister for Communications. One thing these shareholder ministers can do is issue a statement of expectation. They can't operate the company. They're not directly responsible for decisions day to day. What they can do is issue a statement of expectation. That statement of expectation is to effectively say, 'We, the shareholders, expect the following,' and that's the way that shareholder ministers might exercise some intention in relation to the operation of government business enterprise.

This nation has had a long list of finance ministers and a long list of communication ministers, and this is when I say that those opposite might not be cognisant that this bill represents a change in approach for those opposite, one which I say is welcome. As I said, I will get to arguments around how this correlates to their proposal, particularly in the 2016 election to create the campaign around 'Mediscare'. But not so long ago, in fact in December 2022, the shareholder ministers—the Minister for Finance, Senator the Hon. Katy Gallagher, and the Minister for Communications, the Hon. Michelle Rowland—issued a new statement of expectations to the NBN Co. That's perhaps not unsurprising having come to government and being shareholder ministers responsible for such a large and important government business enterprise. However, what is interesting is that the statement provided:

The Government will keep NBN Co in public hands for the foreseeable future to provide the Company with the certainty needed to continue delivering improvements to the network while keeping prices affordable.

To go back a step if I could, what the responsible ministers, the shareholder ministers, of the now government, who came in here and so proudly proclaimed that they urgently need to pass this bill to 'stop those nasty tories from selling off the NBN', had to say in the statement of expectations was, 'The government will keep the NBN Co in public hands for the foreseeable future.' Why the qualification? Well, the reality is that those opposite had a different plan. They've now adopted this approach, and fair enough. But it's a point that has been missed—that this is a substantial change.

Of the two parties of government to come into this place and do battle, one of them, it would seem, had a plan to sell the NBN, and it's not 'those filthy tories', as those opposite would suggest. It wasn't us. I'll tell you, there aren't many conversations that take place around coalition tables that I'm not privy to, and, like Anthony Albanese, who's barely mentioned the word 'NBN' in the time he's had the privilege of sitting opposite, I can tell you nobody in the coalition is spending their time considering or, indeed, planning for, the sale of the NBN, like those opposite would have you believe.

I'll tell you what we've been focusing on from day one, and it wasn't the Voice. We weren't focused on that from day one. From day one, we came into this place worried about cost-of-living pressures and worried about the creation of the working poor.

That's been our focus, not what those opposite would have you believe. I can't help but to think about how we came to this point.

As a former criminal barrister, I would always spend a lot of time thinking about motive and, in particular, what might have motivated my clients to act in a particular way and what, indeed, the prosecution would be thinking about my client's motives. I can't help but bring that methodology to most everything I do in this place, and so, when I heard those opposite were going to present a bill to the parliament—which, by the way, spans a gargantuan six pages only because it's in size 14 font and has been formatted as a way to save lots of white space—I thought to myself: 'What's motivating this? It's come like a bolt from the blue,' and then I thought: 'Hang on a minute. We've got the Prime Minister under a bit of pressure.' You might recall that the Prime Minister was having to answer questions around whether he had accepted upgrades or, indeed, sought to solicit upgrades, and that was running pretty hot, I'd like to think. I reckon the tactics team, the hardheads within the Labor Party, were like: 'You know what? We've got to go to the drawer.' When I say 'the drawer', you know what I mean—the drawer labelled 'distraction'. They went straight to that drawer. They pulled it out, and, unfortunately—to be fair, they've been under a bit of pressure lately, and there have been lots of things pulled out of that drawer. I don't think anyone's replenished the drawer, so they've looked up on the wall, and someone's seen reports from the 2016 election congratulating themselves on what a fantastic campaign that was. The then Leader of the Opposition probably didn't think it was that a good campaign on the morning after, but, in any event, there were a number of people interested in the sophrology and the campaign strategy, thinking it was a fantastic campaign. And one of the shining lights of that campaign was 'Mediscare'—this idea that the coalition had some sort of plan to sell off Medicare. I laugh even now about it, but we shouldn't, because it was pretty serious at the time. We had older constituents calling us. At one stage I thought it might have been called 'granny scare' because older constituents are reliant on Medicare because they're at that phase in their life where they're in need of lots of medical assistance. They were literally crying on the phone to me saying, 'Why would you plan to do this, Tony?' Night after night, I was explaining to people that this was just a horrid scare campaign by those opposite. How anyone could think that you could privatise an entity responsible for giving away or at least transferring large sums of public resources and public funds, I don't quite understand. It's one of the most significant line items in the federal budget. But, in any event, those opposite were very successful in prosecuting that campaign. It's one of the reasons I think—not the only reason, but one of the reasons—why the then opposition came very close to attaining government in 2016.

Back to the hardheads. The hardheads are in Labor Party central thinking: 'Gee, we're in trouble. The Prime Minister's approval ratings are falling off the cliff. He's not so much marching us off the cliff but asking us to run to the cliff. We need to do something about this. We've got a nervous backbench, and first-term MPs are worried about being introduced to the Chairman's Lounge, Aussies and the benefits of flying business class around Australia; they're worried about losing these entitlements. We have got to take action.' They would have said: 'We need something like 'Mediscare'. What can we say to those filthy tories? Wait a minute. The NBN. Let's just run fibre scare. It's not 'Mediscare'. Let's run fibre scare.' So into the parliament comes a bill to seek to protect the NBN from privatisation in circumstances where no-one—not even the Prime Minister—was talking about this, certainly no-one on the opposition benches.

Were this a serious proposal, it wouldn't have been laughed off by the fourth estate, as it has been.

Rather than become the distraction that they were hoping, it's really become a joke, and it's now emblematic of what's happening to those opposite. While Australians—

I appreciate the member for Kennedy. One day I might have the privilege of answering your questions in question time, but not now.

Australians are worried about cost-of-living pressures. We've got Australians having to say to their children, 'Look, I would love to enrol you in that sport, but we can't afford it.' We've got Australians taking decisions about how much underinsurance they factor in because they can't afford to pay the full insurance bill. We've got Australians talking to their councils about having to enter into payment plans. We've got Australians who leave the energy bill in the envelope on the fridge for fear of opening it. We've got Australians walking down the aisles of supermarkets, avoiding quality fresh fruit and vegetables because they're expensive. We've got other Australians, dual-income Australians, lining up at Foodbank in unprecedented numbers—the working poor I mentioned today. We've got other Australians having to get onto the bank and say, 'Can we enter into a special arrangement regarding our mortgages because we're currently paying up to $45,000 more in interest than we were two years ago?' We've got Australians struggling with all of these pressures, which, by the way, for those opposite—I'm sure they appreciate it—are feeding into the mental health stresses that are operating on individuals and families. And while we're dealing with those circumstances as a nation, while we're dealing with a flat-out crisis, with a cost-of-living crisis, with a housing crisis, those opposite, instead of sitting around at head office and working on how they can deal with this homegrown inflation crisis, are thinking about how they can hoodwink the Australian people into thinking that something that has absolutely no veracity can be sold to the Australian people.

Fear is the strongest motivational force. Aside from consistency, fear is the strongest force effectively anywhere in the world. Those opposite have decided that they are going to take 'Mediscare' and make it 2.0, but this time it's got to be 'fibre-scare', doesn't it? It's got to be 'fibre-scare', because we're going to sell it. You heard the contributions from those opposite: 'They'll just sell it, and we're going to stop them selling to those nasty internationals.' I mean, please!

A note to the Prime Minister, who is not in the country—there's a surprise; he's often away: Come home. Focus on the cost-of-living pressures. Help Australian households, families and businesses with this crisis. It's your challenge. When we had ours during COVID we stumped up and acted in their best interests.

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