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

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Wentworth proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The failure of the government to protect the interests of taxpayers and consumers in the rollout of the NBN.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

We have seen an extraordinary demonstration of defensiveness, incoherence and confusion from the government as it attempts to explain to the Australian people why it refuses to allow this massive infrastructure investment—$43 billion—to be scrutinised by the public by the publication of a business plan and business case or, indeed, by the Productivity Commission in a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

We have had one misrepresentation after another. We have just heard in question time the Prime Minister saying that it was outrageous, false, lies to suggest that the NBN will put up internet prices. And yet I was able to quote from the McKinsey implementation study—$25 million worth—stating that that is exactly what the plan is: to increase prices in real terms every year for the next decade. These are very big issues, because the object of policy should be to deliver universal and affordable broadband. But the question is: what is the most cost-effective way of getting there? To understand that, you need to have real insight into the economics of this proposal and, indeed, into the economics of alternative proposals.

The government says that anybody who asks for financial information is a wrecker and just wants to stop the NBN. Well, John Morschel, the chairman of the ANZ, said only a month ago:

… the lack of a business case and full publicity of that business case is throwing a lot of doubt in people’s minds about the level of expenditure.

Is he just a wrecker—another Luddite?

What about the chairman of Wesfarmers, Bob Every, who said:

I’m not convinced, and feel it needs a cost-benefit analysis.

               …            …            …

We have under-invested in infrastructure for the last 30 years, in road, rail, water. I just see this as another part of infrastructure that we need to go through, stocktake and prioritise. And I don’t know if it will rank in priority.

What about the Productivity Commission itself. Dr Michael Kirby from the Productivity Commission was asked recently about how they would proceed to look at a project like the NBN. He was not phased at all—this is their job; they do analyses of these kinds. He said:

The key steps are considering the objectives you want to achieve, considering the full range of options that might help, considering the impacts and the costs and benefits of the various alternatives, and then making a selection that leads to the greatest net benefits to the Australian community. That is the way to go.

We say he is right. We also agree with Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, who said, famously, in September of last year:

Government spending that does not pass an appropriately defined cost-benefit test necessarily detracts from Australia’s wellbeing. That is, when taxpayer funds are not put to their best use, Australia’s wellbeing is not as high as it otherwise could be.

Our job as members of parliament is to protect the interests of the Australian people. And, relevantly here, there are two great interests: there are the interests of the Australian people, as taxpayers—to see that their $43 billion is well spent, to see that the policy objective of universal and affordable broadband is being achieved in the most cost-effective way—and then there is the interest of consumers and users of the internet and businesses that use the internet, to ensure that it is an effective universal system and, above all, that it is affordable, because if it is not affordable you defeat the whole purpose. If you spend billions of dollars running a broadband system past millions of homes and the people who live in those homes, or a substantial percentage of them, cannot afford to buy the service, then you have created a massive white elephant.

There is no point in the Prime Minister trying to fool the House—standing up here and complaining about high internet prices today, when in fact her proposal is going to put those prices up. And she talks about competition. This is a critical part of the analysis that we have to take into account. For years—decades—there has been criticism of Telstra as a vertically integrated telecommunications company and of the fact that Telstra’s customer access network is a fixed line monopoly in large measure, which other retail providers of telecommunications services have to get access to. The member for Bradfield wrote an excellent book about this, describing the challenges that telco competitors faced. He argued compellingly the case for structural separation, and he was right. Governments from both our side and the Labor side should have done that years ago, and it would have been in the best interests of Telstra as well.

But that is now in the past. We are looking at the present and the future. The single most important issue on the structural side is competition. Yes, you can end the vertical integration, but you do not need to build a completely new network to do it. You simply need to separate, on terms that are fair to the shareholders of Telstra and in a satisfactory way, the customer access network. That had been the policy of those who advocated that for many years. If you establish a monopoly over a fixed line to the home, even if you have equivalent pricing to the retailers that use that monopoly network, the monopoly network will have the extraordinary power to charge higher and higher wholesale prices. The Prime Minister seems to overlook this point.

We know that prices will go up and we know that, around the world, the ideal is to have what is called facilities based competition—that is, competition between two or more fixed line providers. Of course, this is exactly the point that the Treasury and the OECD made in that recent report. Far from praising the NBN for increasing competition, the OECD report says—and I am quoting from page 108—that ‘multiple studies have stressed the value of competition between technological platforms’. It expresses concern that a monopolistic incumbent like the NBN could forestall the development of as yet unknown superior technological alternatives. Far from endorsing this business-plan-free NBN, it recommends an alternative: ‘to let the market guide choices between the various Internet service options’. The report goes on to say that ‘to that end, it would be desirable to maintain competition between technologies’.

Part of the NBN plan and part of the economics that will no doubt, we hope, be revealed in this business plan—if we ever see it and see enough of it to be able to understand what they are planning to do—is to contractually prevent Telstra from competing with the NBN on its HFC cable network. The argument of the plan, as honourable members know, is that the fibre optic network will replace the copper customer access network, which will be decommissioned. The HFC network, on which pay television, broadband and voice are carried at the moment, is going to be there for many years, probably decades. It is available there as a real competitor with the NBN, potentially. It passes 30 per cent of Australian homes. Because it is there, it would provide real discipline for this great big new monopolist—the NBN—and ensure that we had lower prices. But, for no reason other than the economic interests of the NBN, that competition is being taken out of play. In order to make sure that the ACCC cannot interfere with that, the legislation that was regrettably passed by the House this week but that is yet to get through the Senate actually prevents the Trade Practices Act’s authorisation procedure from applying to that agreement.

The government claims to be interested in markets. The Prime Minister has talked about markets and competition. She has recently discovered a devotion to those things, which came as a surprise to us. She expressed her interest in competition and markets, yet she is creating the biggest telecommunications monopoly we have seen and one in which the power of the government, the power of the parliament and the power of legislation are being used to prevent competition.

If this project were being undertaken by the private sector—a public company, for example—the management, or the board would have to present a detailed business case to their shareholders. They would have to persuade their shareholders that the project was going to add value to their shareholdings, that it was going to increase dividends and that it was going to be a wise investment of the shareholders’ funds. They would be accountable to the analyst community. There would be conference calls, meetings and presentations, and they would have to answer a lot of questions. They do that in the real world. In the world of business, that is what happens. But here in Labor land—the fantasy world that the Prime Minister and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy seem to be occupying—under this government you can commit to a $43 billion project without a business plan. Normally you have the business plan first.

Indeed, today I downloaded from the internet an application for a small business loan from one of our leading banks. It has a list of the things you have to bring along to the bank manager. We have all been through this. For a company, you have to bring the articles of association and all that stuff. One of the things on the list is a business plan. If you want to borrow $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 from a bank for a small business, you have to produce a business plan. But this government believes that it can take $43 billion from the taxpayer and not provide any business information at all.

The consequences of this overinvestment are potentially catastrophic. We are talking about a massive excess investment well beyond what is actually needed. Honourable members on the other side have said, ‘Broadband is good’—we agree with that—‘therefore the NBN is good.’ But that is like saying, ‘Roads are good, therefore any road investment is good,’ or ‘It’s good to have bridges over a river, therefore we should build bridges anywhere.’ You cannot argue from the general to the particular in this way. They have confused the means—the means being a fibre-to-the-home network across 93 per cent of Australia, and wireless and satellite for the rest—with the end. The end, the goal, is not a national fibre-to-the-home network. The goal is universal and affordable broadband.

They point to deficient areas of service, including in the suburbs. The honourable member for Greenway talked about areas in her electorate which are poorly served, and she said that my electorate is better served. That may be the case, but the answer therefore is to address and rectify the areas of underservice, whether they are in the cities or in the bush. That can be done for a tiny fraction of $43 billion, because nobody seriously suggests that there is nowhere in Australia where broadband access is inadequate.

We talk about 100 megabits per second as being a goal. Honourable members should try this experiment. Get access to internet at that speed and compare it with internet access at 10 or 20 megabits per second. They will find it very difficult to tell the difference, frankly. That is one of the reasons telcos have been unable to effectively charge substantial premiums for increased speeds. But in Melbourne the Telstra HFC network has been upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 and is running at 100 megs now. So why would we overbuild that network? There is 30 per cent of Australia covered by the HFC network that can run at 100 megs or better now. Why in heaven’s name would we be spending billions and billions of dollars to overbuild network assets that are capable of delivering connectivity at the very speed—the very high speed—the government says is desirable?

This is so poorly thought through. They have gone from one bad policy to another and they have ended up with the single most expensive way to deliver a national broadband network. It may well be universal, in the sense that everyone will have access to broadband through one technology or another, but it will not be affordable. The government cannot run away from that. This network will not only cost the taxpayers of Australia and cause future generations to pay higher taxes to pay it off but it will make broadband more expensive, and therefore it is a self-defeating policy. (Time expired)

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before calling the Leader of the House, I remind honourable members on my left that it is disorderly to interject other than from your own seat.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this matter of public importance today on the issue of the National Broadband Network. It is another opportunity for the government to pursue our case of the importance of the National Broadband Network for Australia’s future economic prosperity. We had today an extraordinary position whereby the Leader of the Opposition moved that the government immediately publish the NBN business case. He did that as if he were asking that a motion at some branch meeting be tabled. He did that as if there were no consequences for the shareholders of various telecommunications companies, of which of course the largest is Telstra, with 1.4 million shareholders. He did that as if there were no consequence or concern that might be there about commercially sensitive information and whether that should be made available or not. It might be just one of those political things—argy-bargy where you have one side against the other—were it not that this is actually the alternative government of the nation. Rather than act responsibly, the alternative government of the nation is prepared to do anything and say anything in order to try to secure a political point.

The proposer of this MPI today played up his business experience. It is true: he is an experienced and successful businessman. He knows full well that the idea that you just publish a 400-plus-page business case without any regard whatsoever for the commercial implications of that is simply not tenable. He would not have done it in any of the businesses in which he was involved.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the idea of committing to spend $43 billion without a business case?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bradfield’s interjection gives up the game, because he has agreed with my point as a result of that interjection. The member for Bradfield has had a bit to say. He said:

In fixed-line telecommunications today—

that is, when the Howard government was there—

we have the equivalent of Qantas owning all the airports. The result: competition is weak.

He has gone on to say many things that we agree with—

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I didn’t say you needed to spend $43 billion to fix it. That’s called a non sequitur.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

the blowhard opposite. We have here an opposition that today showed just how irresponsible it has become. We actually do need the NBN to be globally competitive, to drive productivity and to drive jobs. I want to go through what some of the arguments have been. Firstly, the shadow minister said that we have not identified what the problem is with the existing broadband network. Well, we believe there is a problem. We believe there is a problem when Australia is ranked 50th for broadband speeds. We think there is a problem when not one Australian city makes the top 100 in the world for broadband speeds. We think it is a problem when those in our region are rolling out fibre broadband networks or have done so already—Japan, Singapore and New Zealand—but the coalition simply seek to delay and seek report after report after report.

I welcome the shadow minister’s discovery that the digital divide does have something to do with income, as access to every other service and product does have something to do with income. I welcome the member for Wentworth’s acknowledgement of that. He said the digital divide is about income, not regional Australia. Just last month, in a speech to the CommsDay Congress, he said:

… most Australians live in cities where there is more than enough commercial incentive to provide broadband services.

He is ignoring the reality out there that there is very different access to broadband, depending, for example, on whether you live in my electorate or whether you live in regional Australia, in places like Mt Isa or the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Those opposite show again and again with their comments how out of touch they are. It is little wonder that they remain on the other side of the chamber. I cannot decide which is more out of touch: denying the digital divide or the big economic issue that was raised by the shadow Treasurer this week of the leaf-blowers at Parliament House. That has been the shadow Treasurer’s contribution to the economic debate this week. It has been an absolutely extraordinary performance from him this week.

The shadow minister also raised the issue of the cost-benefit analysis and why it is necessary. He ignored the fact that the McKinsey report, which is over 500 pages, looked at the detailed costings and found that the cost estimates are conservative and looked at the financial revenues and returns and found that a strong, viable business case exists, with NBN repaying taxpayers their investment, with positive returns from year six. He certainly did not look at his own record, where he committed $10 billion of public money to the Water Plan when he was minister. That was done in January—I was shadow minister at the time and I certainly recall it—without going to cabinet or Treasury or the finance department, without getting any advice from anybody. When he was asked about that—because he had no cost-benefit analysis at any time—he said:

Well, it wasn’t subject to a cost-benefit analysis by the Productivity Commission, but there was a lot of analysis done, and we published it at the time and defended it.

They did indeed defend their position, even though they appear to be walking away from many of the comments and commitments that were made in the time in which the member for Wentworth was water minister. He also mentioned the NBN report and quoted selectively from it. The fact is that the OECD report said this:

NBN is a “far-reaching reform project” to “fill the gaps in the broadband internet sector.”

It said:

NBN “will improve internet services for the entire population and promote a fairer competition between private firms on retail services.”

Further:

… calling the dominant operator’s vertical integration into question is also welcome, as it will stimulate competition in the DSL Internet sector, and it can be expected to yield substantial benefits …

On fairness and access and the issue of the market, it said that the NBN:

… will avoid the risk of a geographic digital divide insofar as it will cover the entire population … whereas if it were done by the private sector it would be done more gradually and only to the most densely populated areas.

Further:

… due to Australia’s size and relatively low population density, it would be difficult for more than one competing fixed telecommunications network to exist.

It found that:

… management of the NBN by a public enterprise not involved in commercial activities ensures that private operators accessing the NBN will each get fair treatment on the basis of uniform nationwide pricing.

That is what it found. The NBN is a wholesale network which will provide the backbone of the modern system. You will then have retail competition on top of that, as we are already seeing in Tasmania. Getting rid of the structural separation is therefore particularly important, which is why the legislation before the parliament this week is important.

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

Why are you misleading us on the OECD report? The OCED did not say that.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He had 15 minutes himself, but he continues to blow away. They were direct quotes from the OECD report. The member opposite lives in his own fantasy when it comes to these issues, and he keeps saying it. He keeps having essentially one policy, which is delay, and when that does not work it is wreck. They told us to wait for the ACCC advice, then to wait for the implementation study, then to wait for the response to the implementation study. They told us to wait for the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network, and it had five different reports. Then they wanted a delay for a Productivity Commission inquiry, which they will not even say they will listen to. Then they said they wanted a committee of politicians to oversee the NBN rollout—politicians, not experts. Then they said they do not like the McKinsey report because it does not say what the honourable member wants them to say. Their criticism is extraordinary. When we made our announcement, Senator Joyce, who was the previous shadow infrastructure minister, claimed it was coalition policy which had been adopted. When he has been asked about Productivity Commission reports, he has said, ‘I use them when I run out of toilet paper.’ That is his view of Productivity Commission reports. Yet you expect us to take you seriously when you raise issues of Productivity Commission reports.

The fact is that those opposite had 20 failed broadband plans. In all of them, there was not a single cost-benefit analysis of any of their own policies. Indeed, as the Prime Minister stated in question time today, plan No. 20 was leaked due to the internal chaos occurring over there with the former Leader of the Opposition, who would like to be the Leader of the Opposition again and the shadow finance minister, who would like to be the shadow Treasurer and therefore would like to be the deputy leader, who would like to be the Leader of the Liberal Party. Because of all that chaos it was leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald, but we never saw anything more of it. They leaked out that there was this grand plan, the new Malcolm Turnbull policy on broadband, post election, post the election debacle.

Remember back then during the election campaign there was the alternative government and the then shadow minister stood up with the then shadow finance minister—that extraordinary press conference that the Leader of the Opposition could not even be bothered attending—where you had advisers up the back saying, ‘End it, end it now, just stop.’ One of those hooks from the Bugs Bunny Show is what they needed. That is what they needed at their press conference, hoicking him out of the screen, because the policy they put out during the election campaign was so pathetic that it did not last a day after 21 August. But now they have said they have a grand new plan. They announced it through the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald. I think they have an obligation to put out that policy, to put out their alternative, and we will have the debate.

The McKinsey and KPMG study is supported by hundreds of studies that indicate that investment will drive significant economy-wide benefits. We know that the NBN is of vital importance in its benefits across the economy for education, health and smart infrastructure. Indeed, Access Economics has identified that Australia could save between $1.4 billion and $1.9 billion a year if 10 per cent of the workforce teleworked just half the time. But those opposite have never had a plan. They had 20 separate policies. They took a public monopoly and turned it into a private monopoly and called it reform. People in Australia, particularly in the regions, did not benefit. They continued to go backwards as a result of that. What we hear from those opposite is that we should just wait for the market to deliver. They did not deliver during their 12 long years of waste, of opposition. They simply could not deliver it. What this government is determined to do is to actually deliver this reform, deliver this nation-building infrastructure, because it is vital for our future.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak in this matter of public importance on the National Broadband Network. It is interesting to hear the member for Grayndler, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, quoting from the OECD, but they were very selective quotes indeed. What did the OECD actually say about infrastructure in regard to its recommendations rather than what the OECD said about how the government had justified its decision to proceed with its project? The OECD said with respect to infrastructure:

• Systematically publish the cost/benefit analyses with sufficient details for the projects evaluated.

That is the very nub of the discussion we are having today. It is disregarding the recommendation of the OECD, an organisation it seeks to quote, because it will not publish a cost-benefit analysis. The OECD went on to say:

• Independent evaluation should be made mandatory for investment projects exceeding a certain amount.

I have to say that $43 billion is a very substantial ‘certain amount’ indeed. The OECD also went on to say:

An alternative to this picking-the-winner strategy would be to let the market guide choices between the various Internet service options on the basis of prices that reflect costs, factoring in externalities that ought first to be evaluated. To that end, it would be desirable to maintain competition between technologies and, within each technology, between Internet service providers. This would be consistent with the planned vertical separation of Telstra and with other aspects of the reform that seek to promote competition.

There we have what the OECD says. But what is the government doing? It is pretty much doing the opposite. It is actually eliminating competition. It is creating a new 21st century Postmaster-General so that it can create its own cosy monopoly. Why do we need this monopoly? We need this monopoly to ensure that the government can keep prices up. That is what this is all about. It is not about, as it is claiming, cheaper internet services; it is about creating a situation where it can artificially retard competition to push up prices.

This week we have seen the government directly voting against the interests of taxpayers and directly voting against the interests of consumers. In doing so, the government has voted down the best chance it has to provide affordable broadband to all Australians. We saw today the Labor government vote against sending the National Broadband Network to the Productivity Commission for a vitally important independent analysis. We have the minister refusing to release the business case for the NBN, despite the Senate ordering its release yesterday through the coalition and crossbenches. The government has voted against submitting the $11 billion deal with Telstra to the ACC for analysis and Labor is still refusing to allow a joint standing committee of the parliament to oversee the NBN rollout.

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame indeed. This comes on top of its regulations exempting the NBN from scrutiny through the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works. You would have to ask why this government fears scrutiny so much. What has it got to hide? Why does it fear scrutiny? That is what we want to know. Yesterday, the Australian Financial Review summed up the government’s position:

The government should have nothing to fear from such transparency. If the project is the no-brainer the government claims it to be, it will have no trouble passing. The suspicion is that the government knows the NBN will pass no such scrutiny, and is nervous about its capricious policy-making being exposed.

We all know what happens when the government undertakes its capricious policy-making routine. We have had the pink batts, and they were a burning success. We have had the school halls. I remember in the member for Lyne’s electorate the Hastings Primary School was to get a $150,000 COLA for the cost of a million dollars. That was a great success; that was capricious policy making.

They spent $2.4 billion on pink batts, there was a $2 billion blow-out on the school halls program and now they are going to spend $43 billion. What are they going to say? They are going to say, ‘Trust me.’ ‘Trust me,’ they are saying. ‘We know what’s good for you. We know you don’t need competition. We know that we can manage this program properly, even though we’ve stuffed up the pink batts, we’ve ruined the school halls program, we made a mistake with the Green Loans program and we’ve had to restructure virtually all our environmental programs. We’ve had the computers in schools program go over budget.’ Everywhere you turn, they are policymaking disaster. There was the failure of the GroceryWatch website. There was the disaster of Fuelwatch. They are a policymaking disaster zone and yet they are going to spend $43 billion without a cost-benefit analysis and ask the Australian people to trust them. I know the members on this side of the parliament certainly do not trust this government, and we know the Australian people have lost confidence in this government. It is this House that stands between the Australian people and an absolute financial debacle that our grandkids will be paying back for years and years and years.

One of the other things that is really concerning to me as the shadow minister for regional communications—and out in the regions many people are on lower incomes than those in the larger metropolitan centres—is that this policy is actually becoming discriminatory. The government is imposing a postmaster-general type monopoly and effectively pushing up prices for broadband. What is that going to mean for affordability for people? It will mean low-income earners whose taxes are subsidising this white elephant are not going to be able to afford to connect to it. The figures from the ABS show that just 43 per cent of households earning under $40,000 a year access the internet at home. Those households will be paying with their taxes for Labor’s cost overruns, they will be paying for Labor’s inefficiencies and they will be paying for those people who can afford to access the internet. It will be the low-income earners who are actually cross-subsidising the high-income earners who will be able to take advantage of this situation.

Let’s have a look at Tasmania for a moment. One of the things you note when you look at every offer out there in ‘commercial land’—as opposed to la-la land, which the minister works in—is that every offer out there is price based. They are all very much commodity based, looking at the price point to try and attract business. But what do we see with the NBN in Tasmania? You can get 100 megabits for $139.95 with a 200 gigabit per month download limit. So what we see is $139.95. Are people earning under $40,000 a year going to spend $139.95 to take advantage of 100 megabits per second and a 200 gigabit download? I do not think so. So we have a situation where the market is demanding cheaper prices. The statistics are showing reducing prices for internet services, and what does the government’s strategy require? In order to be successful it needs growth in the real value of internet services, and that is not happening out there in the market. You can see by the rollout in Tasmania that people are not rushing to this product. The providers are not getting the market penetration that they would want, and I think that is one of the reasons for all this secrecy. They can see as this process is rolling out, as this infrastructure is being rolled out, that it is a market flop. It is a market flop and they do not want to subject it to the Productivity Commission’s review. They do not want to have third-party oversight because the writing is already on the wall. If you cannot sell it in Tasmania, how could you possibly sell it in Broome? If you cannot sell it in Tasmania, how could you possibly sell it in Weipa? Why are the people in Tasmania so averse to taking up a new ‘miracle product’, the product that everyone was going to beat the government’s door down to get?

It is absolutely outrageous. We are embarking on a project of huge magnitude. We are embarking on a project that is going to take our grandkids a generation to pay back, because no commercial investor is going to subscribe to this project to allow the government to keep its contribution to only $26 billion. No commercial investor is going to invest without a return. The government is totally incapable of showing where the revenues are going to come from to pay for the commercial component of this project, which means it is the poor old taxpayer who is going to have to pay. It is the poor old low-income earners who are going to miss out on cheap broadband. It is the Labor government up to its old tricks, proving it is just incapable of implementing policies on an effective and an efficient basis.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After having to sit through that, I want to quote someone with some eminently sensible views on this issue:

It is time for Australia’s communications infrastructure to take the next leap forward.

High speed networks, multi-megabit services and next generation broadband are the key to our future economic and social prosperity …

It is a journey … of ‘ever increasing bandwidth’ and the challenge as a nation is … to secure critical infrastructure that will remain relevant in the broadband race.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At what price?

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A member of the opposition interjected on those words, but they are eminently sensible words. They are the words of Senator Helen Coonan in 2006. What a visionary! Let’s make no mistake: when people opposite come in here and say that they need more information to make a decision, more information to know how they are going to vote on this issue, that is simply not the case. We know that is not the case because even today, if we go to the Liberal Party website, we can see that this is their policy. Page 1: ‘The coalition will cancel the NBN,’ regardless of everything else. So do not come in here and say that you need more information. Do not come in here and say that you need an examination. Your mind is made up. I have raised this countless times in this place and outside, asking about this. Surely your mind is made up, because it says it in your own policy. Not one person on that side has contradicted me on this issue. Their policy clearly states it is to destroy the NBN.

We have heard talk about how prices for broadband are coming down. They are not; they have been going up. We remain one of the most expensive countries in the OECD for broadband. I ask again: after 12 years of thinking they could look at this issue and after 18 failed plans, what did they do? No-one opposite has answered me on the issue of their broadband rankings per electorate. I hate to break it to you, Member for Cowper, but your electorate is still the 20th worst electorate in Australia for broadband access. He has the chance to make it better and he should take it. To date, nothing that the people opposite have proposed has worked and yet they come in here and say they have got a better plan. No, this is your plan.

For the benefit of those opposite, let us have a bit of background in telco 101. The network architecture is made up of a number of layers. At the top you have the retail level with the applications and the retail services. At the bottom you have the wholesale network layer. The way you engender competition for consumers at the top is to make sure that the wholesale level is competitive. That is exactly what the NBN is. You engender competition for consumers at the retail level by effectively regulating the wholesale level.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member opposite is yelling out. I have one four-letter word for him: ACCC. The ACCC is the regulator in this area. Everyone who is going to be a retailer on this network will get the same wholesale price—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

His electorate is one of the very worst. I will gladly give him the ranking of his electorate. The people who are able to get the retail benefits are the access seekers. If they get the same wholesale price do you know what that means? It is really interesting. It means that they can compete on price and non-price quality for people called end users. They can compete on getting better retail pricing. They can compete on innovation. They can compete on service delivery. The whole price and non-price competition regime depends on getting the wholesale level right.

Of all people, the member for Wentworth comes in here and bangs on about the issue being the lack of income. Firstly, what would he know about lack of income? If you want to talk about affordability and how this will benefit consumers, I suggest those opposite get a Gregory’s and come out to Blacktown and Mt Druitt to see communities that are crying out for transformational change in health, education and social inclusion. This is what they have been crying out for. Do not just take it from me. I have stood up in this place and gladly given examples of people in my own electorate who want this to happen. It is not some flight of fancy that has been made up. Believe or not, people actually want superfast broadband to transform their communities.

You have to ask why broadband services are so expensive and why we are so bad in the world rankings. It is a price and non-price problem. It is also a failure of facilities based competition in Australia. Those opposite rant about how we should have competitive networks that the market will deliver, but the market has not delivered—the market has failed. For us on this side, when the market fails we step in for the good of the end user. We see when market failure occurs and we say, ‘Governments need to do something about it.’ This is what we believe in.

I am waiting for a few things from the other side and they are welcome to let me know. I am still waiting for them to enlighten me on what they did for broadband pricing in 12 years. Not one of them has been able to answer that.

This motion talks about consumers and I will mention again that there are two levels of consumers: there is the individual end user and there is the retail end user. At every single stage in the NBN implementation those two groups of consumers are protected. As I have said, the retail level is protected by the ACCC regulating a wholesale price. End users are protected because as consumers they are getting, amongst other things, a raft of benefits that went through the other night as part of the new regulatory regime.

There are also the accompanying reforms in universal service. How many inquiries did we have into the USO that produced no substantive benefit in Australia while those opposite were in government? There is the customer service guarantee and priority assistance. All of these things are being improved for consumers.

Do not take it from me; take it from ATUG, which is one of the leading consumer telco organisations. I will read one of their suggestions about the NBN to the Senate inquiry in 2008:

• End User Choice—network design is central to competition and choice … When infrastructure competition is not possible, services competition based on open access and service equivalence at a wholesale level must be ensured.

Guess what? That is what the NBN is. So to come in here and say that the consumers of Australia are not being served by the NBN is a complete farce. We have not only many individuals but also many businesses telling us that they want the NBN and that they need high-speed broadband in order to compete on a global level and to make distance irrelevant. For those regional members who come in here and simply interject but who have never participated in this debate, I say to them that they should go back to their communities and see that the tyranny of distance is alive and well when it comes to broadband.

We had the member for Cowper also say that our grandchildren are going to curse us for the NBN. I would tell him the exact opposite: over the break, go back to your electorates and speak to some young people—

Government Member:

Not the young Nationals; people under 50.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, not the young Nationals; we need people under 50. Go back to your electorates and speak to young people because in a few years they are going to be writing theses about this period of Australian history. They are going to talk about the dinosaurs who sat opposite and did not want high-speed broadband.

In no other country in the developed world producing high speed broadband networks have we had people in a parliament speaking against it so fervently for the sake of destroying it. You wonder why Singapore has managed to develop the way it has. You wonder why Korea has been able to do it. You wonder why all these countries have been able to take their economies forward, taking jobs from young Australians. It is because they understand the importance of the NBN. What we need to ensure in a global labour market is that young people have access to the NBN to be able to compete with everyone else. If you don’t like young people, go ahead and don’t like them; we on this side do. (Time expired)