Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is totally political in nature. It is very much formed to be a political wedge to put privatisation on the agenda for the 2025 election. That is what Labor is doing. When Labor introduced its legislation establishing the National Broadband Network, it specifically contemplated a situation in which it could be sold. The act outlines a staged process under which the government's NBN Co stake can be sold down.

Let's hear what some key stakeholders have had to say about this latest situation. Ziggy Switkowski, former chair of NBN, former chief executive at Telstra and Optus has said:

The decision to hold NBN in government ownership is fine for the short term, say this decade. … But beyond that horizon why do it? It feels like the ban on nuclear power - why do it?

Paul Budde, telecommunications industry analyst, said: 'Even if sold at the most recent valuation of $20 billion, that would still represent an enormous loss for taxpayers and would be a political disaster. Finding a buyer, even from overseas, would be difficult.'

I do have a bit of a problem sometimes with overseas buyers, particularly for our strategic national assets. I can well recall in the first year of the Abbott government when there was a proposal put forward to sell off GrainCorp. Indeed, Archer-Daniels-Midland, the American owned company, which had a less than desirable track record in some of its corporate doings in the US, was going to buy, essentially, all the silos and all the infrastructure that my late father, Lance, and all the other wheat growers had paid for many times over. What would that do to Australia? It would determine how much wheat, how much grain, we would grow. In particular, it would determine the price. Heavily subsidised US wheat growers would get an advantage over Australian wheat growers, who grow the best hard wheat in the world.

Our wheat growers will be put at a disadvantage, and we don't need that, particularly when Canada produces a lot of wheat, particularly when the world markets are crying out for our wheat. Why should the price of our wheat be determined around a boardroom table in Illinois, America? It is just not right. I stood against it then and I know that we made the right decision. When it came to foreign investment we changed the rules, when we came to government, particularly in relation to agricultural assets.

With this particular bill, I must say, we do have an Americanisation of the NBN. Recently I got fibre to the premises at my home and—

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