Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the few minutes before we adjourn let me briefly touch on this Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. The legislation itself is not that controversial but, by golly, the project is. This is about the National Broadband Network, the sound bite that never had the sound public policy to support it. It is now in its second incarnation and yet the fog and mystery of what this will actually look like is still as thick and as vivid as it ever has been.

This bill, though, is to extend the show-and-tell provisions that oblige certain parties to provide information to facilitate the government’s work in this area. Essentially, the original bill was to provide factual information about the existing network’s structure to enable telecommunications companies and other bidders on NBN version 1 to actually cost their proposals and submit a proposal under the request-for-proposal process. That shambolic request-for-proposal process never concluded. Now, in a fit of trying to ensure that the National Broadband Network has a second incarnation, we see the government opting to go it on its own, to go its own way.

What this bill seeks to do is to extend the range of parties that would be obliged to provide information in this show-and-tell exercise, the time over which those requests can be made and the duration for which that information can be retained and applied. So you now see another show-and-tell episode. It is more show, it is a longer running series and there is more involved but the government has still learnt very little about how to go about handling enhancement to the broadband infrastructure in this country. It seems as though—like the last time—if it were not for the coalition, Senator Conroy would have dug himself into a bigger hole. We bailed him out of his own self created problems last time, and I suspect that this will happen again.

What we have got here is a bill which the coalition feels has some serious deficiencies. Our concerns about the bill have been addressed in some amendments that I will touch on later. This concern, though, is entirely in keeping with the serious concerns the coalition has about the government’s entire approach to its proposed National Broadband Network. While we, like most people, support improved broadband services, enhanced availability and more affordability for those services, we, like many, are yet to be convinced that the government’s latest proposal can or will be delivered and at what cost, given its massive price tag and its potential contribution to Australia’s debt levels. This is the first piece of legislation since the government’s NBN mark 2 was announced in April that this parliament has been in a position to consider.

The bill seeks to amend part 27A of the Telecommunications Act in order to require telecommunications carriers and utilities to provide information about their existing networks to the Commonwealth to assist with the planning of the government’s NBN for both the duration of the implementation study and for a 10-year period should any rollout actually occur. I point to the implementation study phase, which is where the government is busily trying to work out what it is on about. This is sort of a cart-before-the-horse exercise where there has been much fanfare, many big public statements, plenty of press releases and much in the way of sound bites and publicity but, as I said earlier, not the sound public policy to back it up.

At least this implementation study phase is a clear acknowledgement that the government has little idea about what it is doing. It is the government’s intention that carriers and utilities will have the opportunity to provide requested information on a cooperative or commercial basis. However, the bill gives the minister the power to issue a legislative instrument to compel the provision of network information. The minister has the scope to define the information request and to make rules in relation to storage, handling and destruction of this information in order to protect its confidentiality and security. We know that the security regarding the NBN generally is the subject of some discussion. The AFP, before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, made that very point in a public hearing today. It made its position clear that much more work needs to be done to ensure the security of the NBN network if and when it ever materialises.

In 2008 a similar bill was considered and passed that required telecommunications carriers to provide specific infrastructure information to the Commonwealth for the RFP process under NBN mark 1. I was very familiar with that as I was shadow minister at the time. While we did not oppose the legislation, we did Senator Conroy’s work for him. We did raise concerns about disclosure and safeguarding of information. We undertook the consultation that Senator Conroy and the federal Labor government failed to take with key stakeholders and we raised and put forward a number of very worthwhile amendments, many of which the government conceded were a positive step forward and embraced in its final response. But, sadly, these obvious failings in that approach have reappeared here again where, if it was not for the Senate and its inquiries, the consultation that should have been part of the development of this legislative proposal would not have been done.

On April 7 2009, the government announced that it had abandoned its election commitment for fibre-to-the-node broadband and the associated request-for-proposal process. I always call that RFP a ‘request for a policy’ because there has never been one about how to implement some of these bold statements. The government then announced that it would establish a company to own and operate a fibre-to-the-premises broadband network with a potential price tag—in crayon drawing numbers—of $43 billion. How fascinating! The international telecommunications community, the best minds in the world, struggled under the government’s confused and shambolic process. The government decided that it knew best about how to roll out a national broadband network when all of the companies involved in that business apparently did not know as much as Kevin Rudd and the federal Labor government.

In light of these changed goalposts, this bill seeks to amend the existing provisions of the act to include the provision of information by utilities as well as telco carriers for the purposes of NBN mark 2. The bill proposes that the information of carriers and utilities be utilised not only for the implementation study but also potentially by the NBN company itself or its potential subsidiaries or partners for any actual rollout of the network over the next 10 years. I hope I can continue my remarks at another time.

Debate interrupted.