Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As much as I like the member for Fenner and as much as I could agree with some of his comments, he went through a litany of privatisations in his contribution but he forgot to include the myriad of privatisations that have occurred under state Labor governments over the past 30 years, particularly in Queensland. The only state government in Queensland that has privatised any state assets is the state Labor government. People should never forget that it was state Labor in Queensland that privatised a myriad of assets, including toll roads, which Queenslanders are now paying for more than ever.

So, when I listen to the member for Fenner and the other contributions from those opposite, I find their recent conversion to the notion that privatisations are bad quite interesting, because the piece of legislation that we're talking about is actually a Labor piece of legislation that was put in place when they created the NBN back in 2011. So I suggest that they maybe go and have a discussion with the former communications minister, Stephen Conroy, to find out why this was inserted into their own bill in the first place back in 2011.

This is nothing more than a political stunt. It's what you do as a government when you are facing difficulties and headwinds in other areas and you don't want to deal with those issues or face up to your shortcomings as a government, because they are myriad and plenty. I know the member for Hume at the table could list an extraordinary list of their failures, and we would find that the government has an incredible talent for misdirection. We know the Australian people are facing a cost-of-living crisis, yet what do we see this government doing? Nothing—or, at best, fiddling at the edges, to be gracious to them. They are failing the Australian people abysmally, and then they come into this place and introduce a piece of legislation such as this, which is just a pure, pathetic, political stunt. It says everything you need to know about this government.

As I said, this was passed back in 2011 when the current Prime Minister was a member of cabinet. If the Prime Minister is so exercised about these couple of clauses in the current legislation that prevent privatisation, why did he not oppose them back in 2011 when this bill was actually passed to create NBN Co? He didn't, because he didn't believe it was necessary; they thought it was appropriate. It went through the government's cabinet process to be the law of the land today.

This is purely a distraction from their failure to deliver for the Australian people, and it's straight out of Labor's misinformation handbook. It brings to mind the 'Mediscare' campaign of 2016. It's what they do. It's what the government does.

They don't want to talk about their record because they have no record to hang their hat on, so they find or invent some scare campaign to distract from their lack of contribution and performance when dealing with the issues that are actually facing this country.

So we stand here today dealing with an obstinate inflation rate of 3.4 per cent. We stand here today with the average mortgage holder paying $35,000 a year more on their mortgage. We stand here today with people's electricity prices, food and groceries, fuel, transport and energy all having increased by double digits. Yet what do we see this government doing? Putting into this House a bill that is just a political stunt to divert from their failure to deliver with the cost-of-living crisis facing everyday Australians.

The interesting thing about this bill is that it actually fails to deal with the nearly 14 per cent increase in NBN prices since October last year. That's another impact on people's cost of living that the government is failing to deal with. When I talk to businesses across my community, they talk to me about their struggles to pay ever-increasing energy prices, particularly gas. I used the example earlier today of a business whose gas prices have gone up 180 per cent in the past 12 months, and they're thinking about closing their doors. But every business I speak to is struggling with energy costs, rental increases and increases in the cost of inputs into their business.

They are very conscious of the fact that Australian families are struggling. They are trying to work out as a business how they cover their cost increases yet keep prices at a level that is affordable to everyday Australians. They're struggling with that, because if they have an overdraft or a loan, just like a household, their interest costs on those loan facilities have gone up quite substantially. Many a small business owner in this country also has a mortgage on their home, so they get hit doubly. Yet they are the very people that we want to be successful and prosper, because they are the ones that employ Australians, they are where our innovation occurs, they are where our new ideas occur, and they are the people that make stuff that generates wealth for this country. Just like our farmers, just like our miners, our small business community works extraordinarily hard every day, not just to put food on the table for their families, but to put food on the table for every single person they employ. And they generate enormous wealth and opportunity for this country as a result. They are the things that we should be speaking about in this place. Yet we stand here debating a bill that is nothing short of a political stunt.

As I said before, we've seen NBN prices go up some 14 per cent in the last 12 months. But we also see that their satellite business is failing to keep up with new and more flexible and adaptable entrants, such as Starlink. Two years ago, the NBN had 120,000 satellite customers, and Starlink had virtually none. Today, NBN has 85,000 satellite customers and Starlink has 270,000. What has the government done about that? Nothing.

Over the same time, the NBN brownfield business and existing homes has lost almost 100,000 customers. They're haemorrhaging cash. But this bill does nothing to address those fundamental structural issues in the operation of the NBN.

Why are we not here talking about that—how we make the NBN more cost-effective and more effective for providing the genuine service we want the NBN to provide to Australians? And we all want the best internet possible for Australians, because we know that increasingly we are spending more and more time online. Sadly, that's probably not in the best interests of our community, because we spend time talking to each other online rather than face to face. I know from talking to some of my former colleagues in the financial industry that one of their great bugbears is that new employees tend to want to email or text people rather than actually sit down with customers and have a face-to-face discussion.

But as I look at this bill and much of the other stuff that this government does, it's not, as I say frequently in this place, about listening to what the government says; it's about looking at what they do. Nine times out of 10, these are two completely and utterly different things. And as we've seen over the past 2½ years, it's the Australian people who pay the price for this government's failure to deliver on their promises and deal with the issues the Australian people are facing each and every day.

To borrow somebody else's phraseology, I think it's a fair question to ask—and I have this discussion with people in my electorate all the time—'Are you better off today than you were 2½ years ago?' The simple answer is that the Australian people are not—full stop. This bill, this political stunt—that's what it is, a pure political stunt—does nothing to assist or improve the lives and livelihoods of the Australian community, which is suffering under a Labor induced cost-of-living crisis. We should, rightly, not support this bill.

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