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

I move:

That the Public Works Committee Amendment Regulations 2010 (No. 1), as contained in Select Legislative Instrument 2010 No. 173, and made under the Public Works Committee Act 1969, be disallowed.

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

Can you tell us the detail of what that means?

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

See if you can repeat it. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport is enjoying a little bit of mirth because of all of the details in this motion, but at the heart of this is a very grave matter of accountability. The government says that we want to delay the National Broadband Network, that we want to frustrate the NBN. There is nobody in this House more committed to the universal availability of affordable fast broadband in Australia than I am. The coalition is as committed as the government is to the speedy availability, where it is not currently available, of fast broadband on an affordable basis. The object of the policy is completely bipartisan. There is no material disagreement between us on this point. The issue, however, is simply the fundamental one which I come back to again and again—and I fear I will come back to again in the future—and that is financial responsibility and accountability.

When this government came into office in 2007, it said that it would not undertake or fund any major public infrastructure project without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. What does a cost-benefit analysis involve? Let us just reflect on that for a moment. A cost-benefit analysis in this context means no more than this: identifying your objective—and for this purpose, all Australians should have fast broadband at an affordable price. That is the objective. The cost-benefit analysis seeks to identify the most cost-effective way of achieving that, stacking the various options up against one another and working out the one that delivers the service most expeditiously and at the least cost to the taxpayer. It is no more than fundamental, basic common sense. So when the government came in and made that commitment to doing a cost-benefit analysis on major infrastructure projects, it was widely welcomed.

They established a specialist body, Infrastructure Australia, an expert body with distinguished people from the private sector on it, and the public sector, I might add, with the express role of identifying major infrastructure projects around Australia, prioritising them, and performing cost-benefit analyses. If the honourable members have regard to Infrastructure Australia’s website, they will see there that they have their whole cost-benefit analysis set out. It is very detailed and very careful.

That is all, in a nutshell, we have asked the government to do. We are not trying to get into an argument about this technology or that technology—you can make all of those cases and people will take different views. The truth is that broadband in the future will be delivered, just as it is today, over a variety of technological platforms depending on the needs of the particular user, their location and the applications they are deploying. The real issue is: what do we need to do to deliver this objective—fast broadband for all Australians—and how do we do it at the least cost to the taxpayer? That is the fundamental question.

You would think that a government that came to office with the policy of doing a cost-benefit analysis for any major infrastructure project would not hesitate to do one for what is the largest public infrastructure project in Australia’s history. We are not talking about small change here. The total expenditure by the government on this project will be $50 billion. How much of that is netted off by revenue will depend on the performance of the network. Needless to say, the company’s business case, insofar as we have seen it, is based on some very optimistic assumptions. I say without any criticism of Mr Quigley or the staff of the NBN that all of us are familiar with the melancholy experience of commercial life, that every business that goes bankrupt began with a highly optimistic business plan. None of them started off with a business plan that said that they were going to go broke. They all said they were going to go gangbusters. Sadly, all too often, they do not. This involves a huge expenditure and huge risk on the part of the Commonwealth, so a cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly appropriate. We have argued that that should be undertaken by the Productivity Commission. That would be very well employed to do it, but if the government was prepared to have Infrastructure Australia do the work, I am sure that they could do it with equal or comparable effectiveness. When the minister gets up to speak in a moment he will take half a paragraph out of an Infrastructure Australia report in which the members of Infrastructure Australia, I think you could say, genuflected respectfully in the general direction of the idea of a national broadband network without actually giving any opinion on the cost-effectiveness of this particular proposal.

The government have never been able to answer the challenge of their failure to do this work other than to accuse the opposition of being Luddites or opposed to technology or addicted to wireless or stuck in the dial-up era, or some other curious slur to sling against us. That failure to undertake that work leaves this parliament in a very, very difficult position. We are literally going into a huge investment almost blindfolded. As parliamentarians we do not know, we do not have the information to know, whether this is the most cost-effective way of undertaking this exercise. We do not know whether there are better alternatives. We all have views on that—some of us have views that are more informed than others—but we do not have an authoritative objective, a rigorous study that identifies what those alternatives are. Yet they are spending more money on this project than our country has on any other infrastructure project in our history and we are doing that at a time when there are huge claims on our government and our governments for investment in public infrastructure. We are just about, it would seem, to raise a $1.8 billion levy to fund infrastructure for flood reconstruction. If money is so short that we need a levy to raise $1.8 billion, why are we spending $50 million without a cost-benefit analysis?

We know that there are substantial existing telecommunications assets in the ground, presently working and with many years of life ahead of them, which can deliver fast broadband on a fixed line platform to Australian homes. Indeed, even if you buy the rather spurious proposition that the entire copper customer access network is defunct or out of date and rendered obsolete, the HFC network passes 30 per cent of Australian households and that can be used for fast broadband at speeds equal to, if not greater than, those promised by the NBN. These are all the critical issues that need to be examined.

While the government can choose not to refer it to the Productivity Commission for a cost-benefit analysis, in the normal course of events this project would come before the Public Works Committee. The Public Works Committee is a committee of this parliament established 100 years ago to oversee reckless government spending on public works. The objects of the Public Works Committee Act are, for example, to enable better decisions about major projects, given that large projects have financial, social and environmental impacts on local areas and the community at large, and to provide objective scrutiny of the various different options for delivering a project.

I grant you, the Public Works Committee is unlikely to be able to do as rigorous a job of cost-benefit analysis on the NBN as the Productivity Commission could, although it could seek expert advice and conceivably could ask the Productivity Commission to assist it. But the act—and this is an act that is a century old—requires the committee, for example, to report on the stated purpose of a work and its suitability, the cost-effectiveness of the proposal, the amount of revenue it will produce if the work is revenue producing, and the current and prospective value of the work.

Looking at the NBN, this is what the Public Works Committee would do. It would identify: what are we trying to achieve? Presumably, the answer to that would be universal broadband at an affordable price. It would then seek to ask the question: is this a cost-effective way of achieving that agreed object? It would then examine the amount of revenue. Is this really a commercial project? Is this genuinely going to produce revenues to offset the massive Commonwealth government investment? And—and this is a particularly important one—it would look at the current and prospective value of the work, because the value of the work is a very material issue for the government. The government is, for the time being, working on the financial fiction that the dollars that it is investing in the NBN and that it is taking from cash—borrowed cash, of course—are being replaced, following the investment, with an asset equal to the amount of cash invested.

There is nobody, not one person, in the telecommunications world who believes that this investment will be worth anything like, anything approaching, the level of investment by the Commonwealth in the NBN. The consequence will be that at some point there will have to be a massive write-down. The National Audit Office will require the government to take a hit, and that will have to go through the budget. But that, I suspect, is some time off.

One can recognise why the government does not want the Public Works Committee to do its job. The Public Works Committee would, if it were doing its work, seek to answer the very questions that the government is trying to avoid having addressed. The rather dispiriting irony of all of this is that the government goes to great lengths to prevent the Public Works Committee examining this project.

As a member of the Public Works Committee, I found myself up in Brisbane considering a Commonwealth government project—a public work—of $50 million. In other words, it is of a value 1/1,000th the size of the NBN. The NBN will involve expenditure of $50,000 million or $50 billion. This was $50 million for vehicle sheds, some tarmac and some classrooms for the reception, inspection and deployment of new wheeled vehicles for the Army—important work but not the biggest project ever undertaken. Nonetheless, it was our duty, because it was more than $15 million, to look at it. The Department of Defence turned up—uniformed officers and bureaucrats—and described how they had undertaken a cost-benefit analysis. That is what they had done for a $50 million project, yet this government—so reckless—is determined, if this regulation is not set aside, to prevent the Public Works Committee doing that job on this, the biggest public infrastructure project in our country’s history.

The minister will say in a moment that they have a better idea and that they have a joint committee.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Husic interjecting

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

Well, you do not have a lot to say in your defence, so you may as well be brief. He will say that they have a joint committee that is designed to supervise the NBN or keep an eye on the NBN. But the joint committee’s terms of reference are very different to the Public Works Committee. They do not provide for the investigation of the cost-effectiveness of the proposal. They do not provide for the committee to look at the stated purpose of the work and its suitability for the purpose. In other words, the committee is based on the assumption that the NBN is a given, that the decision has been taken and that the only role of the parliament is to get six-monthly reports about how much money has been spent, without any ability to influence or calibrate or redesign or change the way in which this project is being rolled out.

The honourable member there, the member for Chifley, is shaking his head. He has had a distinguished career in the telecommunications trade union sector. Nonetheless, he would be the first to recognise that there are billions of dollars invested in telecommunications and that it performs a great task for Australia but that every investment carries with it an opportunity cost.

This is the fundamental point: whether you are stuck in a traffic jam because there is no public transport or the roads are no good, whether you cannot get your kid into hospital because there are inadequate medical facilities, whether the schools are inadequate, whether your water supply is inadequate—all of these are legitimate claims on the public purse for infrastructure. Every dollar that is spent on the NBN that is in excess of that which is required to achieve the objective of universal, affordable broadband for all Australians—every dollar that is spent in excess of that objective—detracts, as Treasury Secretary Ken Henry said, from Australia’s welfare. That is why he has said again and again and, indeed, why the government echoed, in the days when we thought they were fair dinkum about this, that a cost-benefit analysis is required.

The Public Works Committee was established by our forebears in this parliament a century ago to supervise government investment in infrastructure and endeavour to ensure that it was not wasteful or reckless. That Public Works Committee today is being excluded from doing its duty by a government that is unaccountable, reckless and determined to spend this money regardless of whether it is needed to achieve the policy objective which we all share. The Public Works Committee must be allowed to do its job. If the Productivity Commission were doing a cost-benefit analysis, there might be an argument for not having the committee involved. But the Public Works Committee is there to do a job and it should be allowed to do it. It is only a government that is afraid of the facts, afraid of its recklessness being exposed, that would seek to exclude the committee from examining this gigantic project.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

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

The government does not support this motion. While I was listening to the member for Wentworth address this motion, my mind went back to when I was the shadow minister for water and the member for Wentworth was the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. In an address one January, the then Prime Minister announced $10 billion, done on the back of a serviette, for a national water plan which not only did not go to the Productivity Commission or the Public Works Committee; it did not even go to cabinet, it did not go to Treasury and it did not go to Finance. There were no costings—nothing, zip, absolutely nothing.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How much?

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

Ten billion dollars. So the member for Wentworth comes to this issue with a bit of form. He also has form in trying to undertake his task—which he was assigned by the Leader of the Opposition—to ‘demolish’ the NBN. That is the task that he was given. This motion today is another opposition tactic to delay the NBN rollout.

The regulations in place are an interim measure until the bill is passed. Without the proposed exemption, NBN Co. would breach the Public Works Committee Act and be liable for potential criminal penalties if it commenced a public work with an estimated cost above $15 million before a long series of processes had concluded—a referral to the PWC, examination and report by the PWC and agreement by the House that the work could proceed. The process of referral to the committee would have a high compliance cost and inhibit NBN Co.’s flexibility. The exemption reflects the fact that NBN Co. operates in commercial markets and will roll out networks in response to market conditions. This is why a similar exemption has been granted to Australia Post and why exemptions were previously granted to Commonwealth owned carriers such as Telstra, AUSSAT and the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation—all with bipartisan support, supported by both sides of this chamber as a common-sense approach to what is necessary for a government owned entity.

NBN Co. will remain subject to full parliamentary oversight. The Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network produced five reports. NBN Co. appears at Senate estimates three times a year. There have been hundreds of answers to questions on notice. We have a House of Representatives committee and, immediately after this debate, there will be a motion proposed to establish a joint committee on the NBN. Both will provide additional transparency and oversight of the NBN. Furthermore, NBN Co.’s annual report is tabled in parliament.

The motion moved by the member for Wentworth today is designed simply to delay and destroy the rollout of the NBN, to the detriment of end users. That is why it should not be supported. The fact is that we have released already a large amount of material on the NBN: the summary of the expert panel report, tabled 23 October 2009; the McKinsey-KPMG implementation study, with comprehensive financial analysis, released on 6 May 2010; NBN Co.’s 2009-10 annual report, tabled 29 October 2010; and the NBN Co. corporate plan, statement of expectations and ACCC advice on points of interconnect, released on 20 December 2010. There has been significant involvement by the parliament and the community for many years. Now we have two parliamentary committees to scrutinise the NBN, the proposed joint standing committee as well as the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications.

Quite clearly, this motion moved by the member for Wentworth will only have a delaying impact. That is why it is being moved. The fact is that it is totally inconsistent with the attitude the coalition had over many, many years with regard to other instrumentalities, such as Australia Post, Telstra, AUSSAT and the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation. It is about time that the opposition stopped playing these political games under the guise of wanting transparency and acknowledged the inconsistency of their approach.

If they were fair dinkum, the motion moved by the member for Wentworth would include, for example, Australia Post now. He is the shadow minister for communications and I do not see that occurring. The fact is that this is simply yet another step in the tactic to delay the NBN rollout. It is something that the government will not support because the government is determined to bring communications in Australia into the 21st century and make us a more competitive, more productive economy. I urge members to oppose this motion.

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 on this motion because we have a very important issue at stake here—that is, the accountability of public funds that are going to be provided by hardworking Australian taxpayers. It is quite interesting when you look at the scale, the width, the breadth of this project and the issue of cost benefit. Generally, when you look at the internal control measures that you would put in place to supervise and manage a project, those measures should be commensurate with the size and scale of that project. We have in this case the largest government infrastructure project in the nation’s history and yet we are going to provide that project with a far lesser level of scrutiny than that normally accorded to much smaller projects.

It is quite astounding that we would be going into this project without a proper cost-benefit analysis. It is one thing to flick and tick, to ensure through audit processes that the funds are disbursed in accordance with appropriate accounting standards and so on and so forth. But the most important thing to do in a project of this scale is to ensure that we have the expenditure proposal right, that we are getting the maximum value for money and that the technology we are investing in is going to deliver the best outcomes for the taxpayers who are providing it.

One thing that is absolutely missing from all of this is transparency. We see through all of the reports this veil of secrecy that the government wants to cloak round the NBN so that it cannot be properly scrutinised, so that the Australian people will not know that this government is driving them down a very dark road indeed—a road that is going to lead to a massive capital loss on behalf of taxpayers. It is going to lead to a massive loss in value—a loss that is made not by the Australian Labor Party but by the Australian taxpayer. It seems astounding that we would not have a cost-benefit analysis for this project. When you look at the business case you see secrecy everywhere. Only 160 pages of the 400-page NBN Co. business plan were actually released. Why is that?

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is commercial-in-confidence.

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

Commercial-in-confidence —everything that the Australian Labor Party does not want people to know about this project is commercial-in-confidence. We have the member for Chifley chiming in there. Everything that people are not supposed to know is commercial-in-confidence. We look at issues such as cherry picking that are coming up in the legislation before this House. Why should a project of this magnitude—if it is as good as it is supposed to be, if it is going to deliver the overwhelming benefits that are supposed to be delivered—need to be protected from competition by competing technologies? Why does it need to be protected from competition with Telstra’s copper line network? Why does it need to be protected from competition with the HFC network? Why does it need to be protected from alternative fibre operators who might be operating in competition with the NBN?

In fact, that very same business plan, shrouded in secrecy as it is, indicates that the return falls to very unacceptable levels. From what I would say is a very miserly internal rate of return of seven per cent—which is pretty much the best case that the government dare put its name to—it falls down to five per cent, hardly a return that would be prompting an investment of this magnitude in a project of this magnitude. A return of five per cent would not even cover the interest on the project, and you actually have to protect it from competition.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Husic interjecting

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

The member for Chifley continues to interject. His mates down at the ETU are probably revving him up.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are.

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

I am sure they are. The situation is very clear. This project should be properly scrutinised. This project should have the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee. This project very much needs far more scrutiny, not less scrutiny. It is interesting to note that the Public Works Committee was actually formed by the ALP and Prime Minister Fisher, yet we have this government attempting to avoid scrutiny.

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

One hundred years—Andrew Fisher would turn in his grave.

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

Yes, Prime Minister Fisher would turn in his grave to see the deteriorating integrity on the other side of the House. It is a vitally important issue that this project be subject to not only scrutiny by the Public Works Committee but a proper cost-benefit analysis. Before one more dollar is spent there should be a cost-benefit analysis. This government refuses to do that. They will be condemned by history for the waste of taxpayers’ money that is to ensue and that is why it is important that this House properly consider this motion.

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

There is one question before the House today. That question is whether the default in our public policy, which is that significant pieces of public expenditure should as a standard and routine practice be subject to the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee, ought to apply to the National Broadband Network. That is the question we are considering here in the House today. In other words: should the parliament, should the legislature, should the people’s representatives have the opportunity to scrutinise a particular project which has been put forward by the executive branch of government?

As we ask ourselves that question, let us just ask a little bit about what you might expect would be the characteristics of a project which would appropriately attract the scrutiny of the people’s house. If, for example, the government came forward and said, ‘We are proposing the biggest infrastructure project in Australia’s history,’ would you think it was a good idea that a project of that magnitude ought to be subject to the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee, the routine, default, standard procedure employed in government in Australia for many, many years? If you saw that the project involved the expenditure of an enormous amount of money, $41 billion of taxpayers’ money being put at risk, an amount which the most elementary calculation will tell us is over 10 per cent of the budgeted annual expenditure of this Commonwealth government—if you saw that an amount of this magnitude was proposed to be spent, would you say to yourself, ‘This looks to be a good candidate for being subject to the routine, standard, business-as-usual, ordinary mechanism of oversight and scrutiny by the people’s house’? I think you would say that that was a good candidate.

Would you say that a project was a good candidate for scrutiny by a committee of the House of Representatives if you discovered that the proposed financial arrangements for this project involved the Commonwealth incurring a weighted average cost of capital of over 10 per cent? The source for that number is the corporate plan of NBN Co., issued publicly in December last year. If you saw at the same time, from reviewing that corporate plan, that the rate of return to be earned by this project—which this government considers it is a good idea to allocate $41 billion of taxpayers’ money to—was seven per cent, you might start to ask yourself some questions and say, ‘This appears to be a particularly good candidate for scrutiny by the Public Works Committee, the routine, standard, default, business-as-usual mechanism by which the parliament maintains scrutiny over public works to be carried out at the instruction of the executive government.’ You might very well also say to yourself: ‘This is extremely interesting. When I compare a weighted average cost of capital of over 10 per cent with a rate of return of seven per cent, what do I find? One of the most basic propositions of corporate finance, and that is: if your rate of return is less than your weighted average cost of capital, you are losing money, you are vaporising taxpayers’ capital.’

So the net present value of this project is heavily negative. And that alone might very well be enough for this House of Representatives to say: ‘Actually, we’re not too enthusiastic about this bright suggestion from government that this project ought to be exempted from the normal mechanisms of scrutiny and oversight. Actually, we’ve seen quite enough to think that alarm bells ought to be ringing. Actually, we think it would be a very good idea if there was the capacity for the House of Representatives, the people’s house, to exercise independent scrutiny and oversight of this project because, quite frankly, what we’ve seen gives us very little confidence that the executive branch of government has this thing under control. On the contrary, it is clear from the papers they have issued that they are vaporising taxpayers’ capital at a remarkable rate.’

You would also see as you looked at the papers which have been released by the executive branch of government in relation to this project that even that paltry rate of return of seven per cent, which they have the temerity to suggest to the Australian people that their money ought to be allocated to, is based upon a series of highly unrealistic assumptions. You would learn, for example, from the corporate plan issued by NBN Co. just before the end of last year that the current rate of penetration of wireless households is slightly over 13 per cent. You would also learn that that rate has risen quite sharply in the last few years. If you were to look at the trajectory at which the rate of wireless broadband homes is increasing, you would think that it was highly likely that that rate of penetration would increase, particularly having regard to the fact that it is the policy of the Gillard government—a policy not contested by this side of this House—that it will shortly auction off spectrum in the 700 megahertz band and that the telcos, should they be successful in acquiring that spectrum at auction, will use it to deliver 4G wireless broadband. So you might very well think that it was likely that the proportion of wireless-only homes was only going to increase. You might again think that the answers which have been provided by this government to those questions are wholly unsatisfactory and give you and, more importantly, taxpayers no satisfaction or certainty at all that taxpayers’ money is being spent wisely. And you might particularly think that when you turn to the page of the corporate plan which states that it is assumed the penetration rate of wireless households will reach only 16 per cent by 2025, notwithstanding the fact that it has risen from four per cent to 13 per cent in only a few short years.

There are a host of reasons why any objective observer looking at this project might say that the ordinary, normal, business-as-usual scrutiny mechanisms which apply to major public works under the act, and have applied for many years, ought to apply in this circumstance as well. You might also turn your mind to the political background of this project. What was first proposed was that $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ money would be committed to this and it would be a fifty-fifty joint venture with a private sector company. We later learned, in 2009, that that promise, that proposal, that project, was being scrapped, junked, because Labor could not deliver it and it was being replaced with a proposal to spend $43 billion on this project—that should ring some very serious alarm bells. At least we were assured at that time, by the then Prime Minister Rudd, that all $43 billion was not going to come from the public purse because there was going to be significant private sector involvement as well. Then, in May 2010, we learnt that that had gone by the board as well and it was going to completely funded by public sector investment—that was the recommendation in the implementation study. Now, we learn that it will be funded by $41 billion of public money.

We heard previously from the minister that there were no grounds to suggest that the ordinary arrangements ought to apply because there had been plenty of scrutiny, and he instanced the implementation study. But he did not mention the fact that the implementation study, having been provided to the government in December 2009, had been dropped by this government in May 2010—three short days before the budget. What kind of commitment to openness and scrutiny is that?

The question before this House is a very simple one: is this a project which is of such little moment, which raises so few issues of substance, which ought to trouble the taxpayers and citizens of Australia to such a little extent that we ought to waive the normal, default arrangements under which the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee would apply? It is very clear, from even the most cursory examination of the circumstances around this project, that the opposite is true. If ever a project deserved the bright light of scrutiny through every mechanism available to this parliament as the people’s House, on behalf of the taxpayers and citizens of Australia, it is this project, and that is why we moved this motion.

Question put:

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