Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Broadband Network Companies Amendment (Commitment to Public Ownership) Bill 2024. The biggest question about this bill before the House is: why? I think it's ruse. I think it's a distraction. I think, with this legislation, the Albanese government is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Respected political commentator Chris Uhlmann summed it up as basically a scare campaign dreamt up in a tactics meeting. With a customary flourish, he described the bill as 'a bill to ensure that something that's not likely to happen won't happen'.

Ziggy Switkowski, former chairman of the NBN and a former executive at Telstra and Optus had this to say: '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?' I've asked that question before today—why do it?

Nobody quite got to the nub of the issue as well as my friend on this side of the House the member for Fadden did. He made a statement in this place on 9 October, the week that this was introduced, and called it one of the greatest political smokescreens to have ever been created in the history of this place. He said:

The NBN bill introduced today is a shameless stunt. The Prime Minister walked out of the chamber at 8 pm last night having given his apology to the Australian people at 7.59—

the apology relating to his comments about people with Tourette's—

and thought, 'Well, that day didn't go well.' I suspect he'd been playing Jenga over the weekend and was inspired to be a destructor actor—

this is according to the member for Fadden—

So he picked up the phone to some of his ministers, wanting to know what they had in the drawer. He phoned his friend Minister Giles first, but we know he had absolutely nothing to offer. He phoned the Minister for Education, but all the Prime Minister got—

according to the member for Fadden—

was a long-winded story and then had to hang up. He phoned the Minister for Communications, and she said, 'Well, I've got this Mediscare kind of thing about the NBN and public ownership and creating a false story about how it might be sold and that sort of thing.'

The Prime Minister says, 'Bingo!'

The National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 was introduced by none other than our current Prime Minister, who was the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport at the time. In the second reading speech he said:

These bills enshrine in legislation the policy commitments the government made in its NBN announcement … and provide clarity and certainty … to NBN Co. Ltd, industry and the wider community.

Presumably, when the bill passed back in 2010 it cemented that very clarity. He said that the bill:

… sets out arrangements for the eventual sale of the Commonwealth stake in the company once the NBN rollout is complete, including provisions for independent and parliamentary reviews prior to any privatisation, and for the parliament to have the final say on the sale.

…   …   …

There is no longer a requirement that NBN Co. Ltd must be sold within five years of it being declared built and fully operational. Rather the time frame for any sale is left to the judgment of the government and parliament of the day, enabling due regard to the role the NBN is playing, market conditions and any other relevant factors.

I'm just interested in what some of the members of the then government said about this NBN bill at the time. Senator Stephen Conroy made a statement on 25 November 2010. He said:

The Bill also sets out ownership arrangements. The Gillard Government remains firmly committed to selling its stake in NBN Co after the network was fully built and operational, subject to market conditions and security considerations.

Senator Collins, a year later, said:

The bill also creates a power for the Governor-General to make regulations concerning future private ownership and control of NBN Co Limited, and establishes other relevant reporting, governance and enforcement mechanisms.

The government, back then, made it clear that future governments could make decisions and make regulations regarding the future of NBN. So, while they yell across the chamber, 'The coalition government wants to sell the NBN,' and, 'They privatise everything,' it was the ministers in the then Gillard government who were talking about selling it.

Nobody in this place has been talking about the NBN. The Prime Minister hasn't been talking about it in this term, as far as I can ascertain. He's only mentioned the NBN six times in parliament this year. And no-one has been talking about a change to policy on ownership. It seems to me that it's the basis of a scare campaign and a distraction—that we will privatise the NBN and drive up prices.

This would be worth a bit of chuckle if we could just focus on that stunt and the shambolic approach of the current government. They rushed to introduce this legislation to head off something that they legislated in 2010. So desperate are they to create a political distraction that they are introducing amendments to legislation that their own side passed in 2010—

when our current Prime Minister—as the member for Hume quite rightly reminds us—was in cabinet. The cruel irony is they're saying they're doing this because of the cost-of-living crisis that we're experiencing. They created it and we're feeling it—especially people in rural Australia.

They haven't got inflation under control. The interest rate cuts look like a long way away. There are higher prices for energy, higher prices for food, and higher prices for services and mortgages. Where are the interest rate cuts? There are higher prices for rent, and productivity has nosedived. I would have thought a government that was committed to helping out Australians would be focusing on policies to help those things. There's the price of food. You help the price of food by helping farmers do their job, not by taking the irrigation water away, killing their export markets, and making them pay ridiculous fees like the biosecurity tariff that they have to pay.

The cost-of-living crisis that's with us is as a result of the government's policies, and all we get from those opposite is a sort of scare campaign: 'Look over here! Look over here! They're going to privatise the NBN one day. We'd better change our own legislation, which we put together in 2010, to make sure they don't do it.' And we're not even in government!

NBN costs have actually gone up under the current government. We've seen six million families impacted by NBN price rises of up to 14 per cent since October last year, so NBN is one of the many things that have gone up during this government's term. The NBN satellite business is collapsing. Two years ago the NBN had more than 120,000 satellite customers and Starlink had virtually none. Today the NBN is down to 85,000 satellite customers and Starlink has more than 270,000.

This bill, as I said, is a distraction. We could be talking about many things. We could be talking about how to increase productivity for our businesses. We could be talking about how to better structure IR so that small business, which is the backbone of our economy, isn't smashed by burdensome regulations. We could talk about our agricultural businesses: how we can provide them with more irrigation water to grow the food, to make it cheaper for Australians at the checkout and to continue with our great agricultural exports. We could be talking about all sorts of other things. We could be talking about cheaper child care—which they do talk about, but there are so many places in regional Australia where you can't get a place. It's no good it being cheaper if you can't access it.

It seems to me that the current government's strategy—and I've noticed this in question time over the last couple of weeks—is to call the opposition leader names. I remember when I was a kid at school and I was in the schoolyard. You would be having a bit of an argument with your mates, or maybe the bullies were trying to tease you. You knew when they started calling you names that they didn't have a proper argument anymore. I can hear the tactics committee: 'Let's try and get as many references to the arrogance, recklessness and anger of the opposition leader. Let's try and get them in every answer to a question.' I reckon that symbolises a government that has run out of puff and doesn't have any more policy ideas.

I reckon we need to get to an election—hopefully sooner rather than later—so that the Australian people can think about all of this—these distractions of policy, this NBN into the ether. People out there are being smashed via their household budgets. You've got to help them out. You've got to talk about policy, not just have this two-stage policy: 'Let's try and scare everyone in relation to nuclear energy, and let's try and paint a picture of the opposition leader as angry, reckless and arrogant. Let's call him as many names during question time as we can, and that will substitute for real policy that helps get the cost of living down.' The disastrous—

Government members interjecting—

Well—

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