Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, to questions without notice asked today relating to superannuation and the Future Fund and to broadband.

We had an extraordinary revelation on the front page of the Australian Financial Review today. What we saw this morning in the Australian Financial Review and what we saw yesterday from Senator Helen Coonan on Insiders was Senator Minchin and Senator Coonan cutting the Treasurer loose. Last week we saw the Treasurer’s quite hysterical performance in trying to attack Labor’s proposal to give this country a national high-speed fibre-optic network which would deliver 12 megabits minimum to 98 per cent of Australians. In a hysterical attack, the Treasurer, Mr Costello, made all sorts of allegations. We saw it all—tomb raiders, bear in the honey pot, all of the hype, colour and movement that Mr Costello displays inside the chamber but not anywhere else where it requires backbone. We saw Senator Minchin and Senator Coonan cut and abandon the Treasurer, Mr Costello.

Senator Minchin refused point-blank to guarantee that future surpluses would be going into the Future Fund. This is a complete repudiation of the Prime Minister’s position, the Treasurer’s position and his own position for the last 18 months—a complete backflip. That is what this government has been reduced to because it has been exposed as not having a plan for the future and not having any idea how to address the needs of the Australian community. It has become so arrogant and so lazy that it just dismisses voices it does not agree with.

We saw that happen today with Senator Coonan. You can always tell when the government are running on empty. You can tell when they know they have been caught out. There were insults, personal insults, from Senator Coonan. There were the two hoary old chestnuts: the ‘unions are running the Labor Party’ and ‘we are paying off Labor Party debt’. We know they are in trouble. This is a government that proudly boast that they have spent $4 billion getting broadband up to speed. They boast that they have 17 schemes—and I read them all out last week—for $4 billion. What have we got to show for it? Rubbish broadband with half of Perth on dial-up, Adelaide struggling, and great swathes of country and regional Australia being forced to rely on second-class services. This government has spent $4 billion on nothing more than National Party photo opportunities, and Senator Macdonald and some of his ilk in the Liberal Party are very jealous about how many photo opportunities the National Party have got.

At the weekend we had Senator Coonan demonstrating again her complete lack of understanding of her portfolio. She announced last week on Lateline and again yesterday, ‘I am personally involved in the negotiations.’ People have asked her: ‘What do you mean by being personally involved? Tell us more.’ Of course there is silence from her and her office. They do not want to confess that they have no idea what they are talking about.

Today we had the claim that we are ahead of South-East Asia and the Pacific. Fantastic! Let us go home and tell our children that we are beating Niue, Nauru and the Solomon Islands. Let us beat our chests a bit more. This government is demonstrating that it really does believe that the Great Wall of China was built by the Emperor Nasi Goreng just to keep the rabbits out. That is what that mob over there believe. They just do not get it. They have lost the plot. They are so arrogant and so out of touch they do not want to get onboard with a productivity-enhancing, health services enhancing and education-enhancing $30 billion improvement in productivity in our own country. They are just economic vandals who have turned their backs on this community. They are allowing Australia to slide into a broadband backwater and we are falling further and further behind. That is why this mob just do not get it. They cannot stand up. It is a pity that Senator Nash and the National Party did not have the backbone. (Time expired)