Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House requires the Government immediately to publish the National Broadband Network Business Case.

We heard the Prime Minister today assert repeatedly that the National Broadband Network is in the national interest. What we require the Prime Minister to do is to stop asserting it and start proving it. If the National Broadband Network is as vital, necessary and worthwhile as she says, why is she scared of releasing the business case—which she has been sitting on and hiding for some time—during the very sitting fortnight that she expects the parliament to approve this $43 billion investment?

The Prime Minister asserts that there is some grotesque falsehood in the idea that the NBN is going to raise telecommunications prices. Let me give a simple economics lesson to the Prime Minister: $43 billion of investment has to be recouped. The people investing that money will want to get it back. That is $43 billion more that is being invested in broadband and this Prime Minister thinks that it will not make any difference to the price that consumers are charged. What a completely clueless Prime Minister we have.

She says that it is impossible to release the business case because it needs methodical study and that it is 400 pages long—oh, dear, 400 pages long! It is as if this parliament and its members are incapable of reading and digesting a 400-page business study over the weekend. We are capable of reading that document, we want to read that document and we believe that the policy of this parliament will be so much better if it is informed by that document.

This is a government which is constantly saying that it wants evidence based policy, and now it will not release the evidence on which it says its policy is based. Shame on this weak, divided and cowardly government for not giving the Australian people the evidence on which its policy should be based.

The Prime Minister is telling us that the National Broadband Network is too important to be delayed and too important for this parliament to be detained for a few days by 400 pages of evidence. Let us not forget the last time this government came into this parliament and said that a policy was too important to be delayed, to be subjected to scrutiny and to be subjected to evidence—the pink batts program. We all know what the pink batts program did: there were hundreds of house fires and there were deaths. Another policy that was also too important to be delayed was the school halls program. We all know what happened there: $16 billion was spent on $8 billion worth of value, if we are lucky. This is a government which rushes into things and makes decisions without subjecting them to the proper scrutiny that responsible government decisions need.

Let me make this prediction to the House: the National Broadband Network will turn out to be the school halls program on steroids. The school hall program wasted $8 billion. As it is currently constituted, the National Broadband Network could easily end up wasting tens of billions of dollars. No responsible parliament could make a decision of that nature without access to all the evidence that is currently available. The business case is currently available. I say to the Prime Minister and the government, and to the people and the parliament of this country: the business case must be released before the decision is made.

I could argue at this time the merits of the National Broadband Network. I could talk about the error of replacing a competitive market, which has driven down prices, with a government monopoly that is certain to raise prices. I could argue the mistake of spending $11 billion to buy the Telstra copper line network only to close it down. I could argue the folly of stringing out $43 billion worth of cable on power poles that will desecrate the garden suburbs of our cities and towns. I could argue all these things, but now is not the time to argue the merits or demerits of the National Broadband Network; now is the time to say that decisions should not be made until we have the evidence before us. The government has the evidence. It should give the evidence to the parliament and let the parliament make the most informed decision that it can.

In the end, this is not about the quality of the National Broadband Network; this is about the quality of the decision making of this parliament. I say to every member of this parliament, including members who support the National Broadband Network but do not necessarily trust the decision-making processes of this government, here is a chance today to try to ensure that this parliament actually is its best self, that this parliament actually rises above the ordinary argy-bargy of politics and says, ‘Let’s for once try to make a decision that is truly based on the best evidence available.’

The Prime Minister has spoken at length today about the fact that an implementation study was published. I congratulate the Prime Minister. I think it is good that there was an implementation study. I think it is great that the government published that implementation study. But there is more, Prime Minister. There is now a business case over and above the implementation study. If you think it is good to publish the implementation study and argue for the National Broadband Network based on the implementation study, why not publish the business case too? Why not allow this parliament to make the extraordinary decision to spend $43 billion worth of public money—more money than was ever spent on the Snowy Mountains scheme, by far the biggest investment ever made in this country by a government agency—on all the evidence, and on the best evidence, available?

What do this government and this Prime Minister have to hide? Has she read the 400-page study? Maybe it is beyond her? Maybe she has and it undermines the government’s case? Maybe she has not and she just does not trust us, the parliament, with the study? I do not know the answer to that question. I just think that whatever this parliament is to decide on the National Broadband Network it will be far better decided if we have all the evidence available. I think this parliament is intelligent and discriminating enough to be able to make a sensible decision, and it will be a more sensible decision the more evidence we have. Give us the evidence. Do not expect us to make a decision without the evidence. What is wrong with a government which tries to ramrod and steamroll the parliament into making the most important decision of this term of parliament without the evidence? Let the sunlight in, and give us the evidence. Let the sun shine on the business case for the National Broadband Network and, if that is not possible for this government, may the judgment of Senator Faulkner echo around this chamber again and again that this is a government which is long on cunning but very short on courage. It does not have the courage to produce the evidence for its own policy.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. It is vital that we deal with this today. This parliament is being asked to approve the largest infrastructure investment in our nation’s history completely and utterly in the dark, and we have been misled by remarks made today by the Prime Minister about the pricing of the NBN. She said again and again that it was a falsehood to say that the NBN will result in increases in internet prices. Well, it is actually even a longer document than the business case, Prime Minister, but I am sure you have read it. The McKinsey implementation study, page 356, sets out the key assumption: a one per cent real increase in price over time—that means one per cent on top of inflation, so, four per cent a year for a decade. We have had prices for telecommunication services going down year after year. Now they are starting to go up under the NBN. We are going to have a massive fiscal burden of $43 billion on the taxpayer for a National Broadband Network that most Australians will find more and more unaffordable.

The government is creating a gigantic monopoly which will have to be fed. It will need revenues. It will have no competition with it at the fixed line level. The Prime Minister has brushed that concern aside. But the OECD did not brush it aside. The Treasury did not brush it aside. What were the two concerns the Treasury made clear in their advice to the incoming government? They were, firstly, a threat to the public balance sheet, with the spending of so much money with so little consideration and, secondly, the concern about establishing a massive fixed line monopoly—precisely what the OECD complained about.

The government, notwithstanding its claimed commitment to doing rigorous cost benefit analyses of major infrastructure projects, has refused to do one for this project. The biggest of them all will not be subject to a cost benefit analysis. It does not have the rigour, the discipline, to ask the question, ‘What are we trying to achieve?’ and if what we are trying to achieve, as I assume we are, is universal and affordable broadband, then the next question to ask is, ‘What are the most cost-effective ways of achieving that?’ There is no question this is the most expensive way to achieve it and it is difficult to see, particularly in the light of the massive investment and the advice from McKinsey, that this is going to make internet access more affordable. Rather, it will make it less affordable.

It is an affront to the democratic process that such a vast investment is being put before the parliament and the government is sitting on a business case and refusing to make it available until after the parliament has risen and everyone has gone back to their electorates. This is treating the parliament with contempt. It is the most arrogant act of a very arrogant and reckless government, because they know that if this went to the Productivity Commission the folly would be exposed. They are concerned that if the business plan is published before the parliament rises the Prime Minister might have to answer some questions on it and it might turn out that she knows as little about the business case as she did about the McKinsey study. Only a moment ago she essentially accused the Leader of the Opposition of lying when he said that it would push prices up. She accused me of lying when I said it would push prices up.

15:06:46

The only evidence we have—apart from commonsense, always the most compelling counsellor—is the advice of McKinsey. The government paid $25 million for a report that said if you spend $43 billion on a network it is going to result in higher prices. It was worth every penny, Prime Minister, it really was. It was a great deal. But the Prime Minister did not read it, and there is the bottom line. Universal broadband, yes. Affordable broadband, yes. What the NBN is going to deliver is less affordable broadband. The digital divide will get deeper and wider. The people who the Prime Minister has such great interest in on her long walks around her electorate, people on low incomes, will find it harder and harder to get access to the internet because of this massive overinvestment. That is why we need the business plan, not next month, today.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now that the hysteria is over, let’s actually have a look at a few facts. One always finds with the opposition that if you inject a few facts into their ranting and raving then their case falls away. Fact No. 1: how did we get here with our telecommunications system? Let us look at the words of the OECD about how we got here. The OECD has commented:

Australia has fallen further and further behind the rest of the world since the Liberals and Nationals voted to privatise Telstra … without ever putting in place the arrangements to properly protect competition and services in regional areas.

There are those of us in this parliament who remember the Telstra privatisation debate. Members from rural and regional areas, including from the coalition, raised in this parliament time after time how the failure of the coalition to deal with the competition questions would disadvantage regional Australia. But the coalition did nothing. So this has resulted in a situation where, when we compare ourselves with countries with which we compete, when we compare ourselves with comparable nations around the world, Australia is now ranked 17th out of 31 countries for fixed broadband subscriptions. We are down the rankings. We also pay more for broadband than OECD countries. For average subscription prices Australia is the fifth most expensive overall. This is a recipe for disadvantaging Australians today and our international competitiveness tomorrow.

The Leader of the Opposition has spoken today in this place as if the parliament has never before had an opportunity to talk about broadband, as if the parliament has never before had the opportunity to debate and consider broadband. The opposition tries to pretend, when it gets up every morning, that somehow its sins of yesterday have been forgotten by everybody and they do not exist. We know, of course, that broadband has been debated in this parliament. We have had Senate report after Senate report, inquiry after inquiry—all participated in by the opposition. We have had the implementation study and the information flowing from that. As that information became available in the public domain, more and more of it backing the need for the National Broadband Network, what did the opposition do? Did it rationally digest this information? Did it feed it into its policies and plans? No, of course it did not. The reality is—and everybody in this parliament knows it—the opposition is not calling for the release of the business case because it is interested in the information in it. It is not interested in the business case at all. Whatever the business case says, the opposition has already locked in a policy setting of demolishing the NBN. It is irrelevant to them what was in the implementation study. It is irrelevant to them what is being debated in this parliament. It is irrelevant to them what has been discussed in Senate inquiries. They do not care about the facts because they have already locked into their policy setting: demolish the NBN. Whatever the business case says, the opposition will simply stay in its fixed position, in denial of the future, out there trying to demolish the NBN.

I understand that there are other members in this parliament, not the opposition but other members of this parliament, who actually understand the need for the NBN, who are not in denial of the future, who will properly read and absorb the business case of the NBN and then go out and tell their constituents the truth about it. I understand that there are members in this parliament of that ilk. They are not sitting on the opposition benches. I say to those members that the government will release the NBN business case. But I also to those members that this is a document of over 400 pages. It is lengthy, it is detailed and it looks at complex commercial and financial issues of costs and pricing and a number of these matters are commercially sensitive.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that the opposition interjects at this point. There have been times when opposition members have been out there fearmongering about what the government’s NBN proposal means for Telstra shareholders and the price of Telstra shares. I ask those opposition members who have been pretty happy to engage in that fearmongering: why would you put yourselves on this destructive course of saying, ‘Just release the national broadband business case,’ without due regard to the commercially sensitive information in it? Why would you recommend that course of action when you have been known in the past to go out and fearmonger about Telstra prices?

The government is in the process of analysing the national broadband business case. We will work through the confidential information and we will release to the public the maximum amount of information that we can. When that information is released, people will see there a corporate plan that sets out objectives and priorities for the next three years. They will see that that corporate plan is to be updated once a year. They will see details of the process of designing, building and operating the National Broadband Network. They will see the details of the government’s case for the affordable fast broadband it will provide and they will see the business assumptions that underpin the case. That information will be made available.

I also say to the coalition that, when that information is made available, we know what will happen. We know that the coalition are not going to do anything proper with that information. We know that they are going to cull through it to clip a word here and a figure there to try to use them out of context, out of sequence, in a mischievous way to try to pursue their case of demolishing the National Broadband Network.

For those of us who genuinely care about Australians having opportunities in the future, I would refer them to the OECD work that talks about the competition that the National Broadband Network will bring to retail prices. The member for Wentworth is out there trying to create the impression in people’s minds that there is no retail competition. He knows, if he is being honest with Australians, that retail competition is good for pricing. He knows as well that the structural separation of Telstra is a profound reform agenda in telecommunications long sought after to end a vertically integrated monopoly, with all of the costs and implications for service provision, particularly in rural and regional Australia, that that has had.

Finally, if the opposition truly were in any way interested in, expert in or concerned about broadband and the access for Australians to broadband, how could you possibly explain their shambolic performance in relation to their own policy generation? Does anybody remember those days in the campaign when the broadband policy came out? The Leader of the Opposition thought it so irrelevant to the nation’s future he did not even bother attending the launch. Then, of course, the shadow spokesperson was put on the bench because he was so embarrassing and they fielded the member for Bradfield. That was what: their 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th go at trying to get a policy together? And even that policy has not stuck, because, since the election, we have had the shambles of CANCo. The member for Wentworth was out there spruiking CANCo only to be hauled back by persons unknown who do not want to support his broadband policy.

We will leave this shambles to the opposition. We will inform the public debate. We will work with those members of parliament who care about the delivery of broadband and we will, of course, be releasing to them the National Broadband Network business case, having dealt properly and appropriately with the question of commercially sensitive information. The Leader of the Opposition and the opposition do not care less about this national policy question. They are only interested in playing politics, and you could not see a bigger example of that than this conduct today.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for the debate has expired.

Question put:

That the motion (Mr Abbott’s) be agreed to.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On indulgence, Mr Speaker: given that there has been a clear expression of the will of the House, and indeed a clear expression of the will of the Senate, may I suggest that it would assist the working of the parliament if the government took note of the clear will of this House and published that—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. It was an overly ambitious seeking of the call on that matter.