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

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

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

This motion is to establish a joint select committee which will monitor and report on the construction, deployment and operation of the National Broadband Network throughout its life. This is the largest infrastructure project in our country’s history. It is being built without the benefit of a cost-benefit analysis, notwithstanding the government’s repeated claims that such analyses are absolutely vital for the proper construction and management of major infrastructure projects. Indeed, the government went so far as to establish Infrastructure Australia, a specialist body, precisely for the purpose of identifying and prioritising projects of this kind and providing cost-benefit analyses for them.

This joint standing committee is particularly vital given the government’s determination to prevent the NBN being even considered by the Public Works Committee. It is not interested in having any scrutiny of the NBN. It is not prepared to have it referred to the Productivity Commission for a cost-benefit analysis, and when after pressure from the Independents the Prime Minister backed down and produced a document yesterday described as a summary of the business case for the NBN, it did not contain any financial statements at all—no profit and loss figures, no cash flow statement, no balance sheet. There were 36 pages of warm words and a few numbers given out of context—numbers which I might say both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, seemed to completely misunderstand. We know that internet access prices have been coming down substantially year after year for the last decade but this document excludes from the promise of lower prices the basic service—which we understand to be a 12 megabit per second service—and that will inevitably be the service that the majority of households take up. The document that the Prime Minister was so proud of yesterday contradicts what she has said and what the minister has said about the NBN providing lower prices.

This committee should be supported by the crossbenches and also by the government, because the government in its deal with Senator Xenophon yesterday said it would support the establishment of a joint select committee to monitor the NBN. If it was fair dinkum about that commitment, if it really believed in ongoing scrutiny and oversight of the NBN by the parliament, it would support this motion. This motion does exactly, apparently, what the government has said to Senator Xenophon the government would do. I believe the government, having promised Senator Xenophon a joint select committee, is going to vote in this House today against this joint committee that we are seeking to establish.

The parliament is, so we read in the press, about to pass the NBN legislation in the Senate. It is going to do that without having seen a full business case, without the Prime Minister as of yesterday at least having read that business case, without the Treasurer, charged with the nation’s finances, having read the business case and without the parliament and the government having the benefit of any cost-benefit analysis. At no stage has the government asked the question: what is the most cost-effective method of delivering universal and affordable broadband? Every member of this parliament, and I believe all Australians, agree that we should have universal and affordable broadband. The question is, what is the most cost-effective way of delivering it? There can be no question, however, that the NBN is the most expensive way of delivering it—absolutely no question at all. Yet the government—having proceeded without any due diligence, without any scrutiny and without any reflection on the need to look after taxpayers’ money and bear in mind the many other claims on taxpayers’ money and the many other types of infrastructure that require support—has opted for the most expensive route and in doing so has trashed its own commitment to economic responsibility in terms of subjecting infrastructure projects to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

This committee cannot undertake a cost-benefit analysis but it can at least provide ongoing scrutiny. I commend the motion to the House and I commend it in particular to our friends on the crossbenches. If the government were serious, if the government were genuine, in its commitment to Senator Xenophon to establish a joint select committee on the NBN, it too would vote for this motion.

Question put:

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