Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to questions without notice asked by Senators Ronaldson, Birmingham and Cormann today relating to the national broadband network.

Today we have seen that the revolution is well and truly off the rails. The new government came to power saying they were going to bring a revolution, saying they wanted a revolution—to take that great line from the Beatles. They promised us a digital revolution; they promised us an education revolution. Last week Senator Wong promised us a DER, a digital education revolution. We have a whole range of new acronyms for the revolutions. But we have learnt today, as we have over a period of weeks and months, from Senator Conroy that, in particular, the digital revolution is off the rails. The national broadband network is not going to deliver what Labor promised in the way they promised.

It is worth rolling back—another of those great Labor phrases—to March last year to consider what it was the then Labor opposition were promising. With much fanfare Mr Rudd and Senator Conroy announced the new national broadband network. They announced $4.7 billion in funding, a figure plucked from a Telstra briefing paper. They announced that plan and it was going to be a fifty-fifty equity arrangement with the successful bidder. It was going to be using fibre-to-the-node technology. Construction was going to begin by the end of this year. It was going to have a successful tenderer chosen by about the middle of this year. And it was going to provide increased access to some 98 per cent of the population and do so at lower prices.

These were all the grand promises, and it sounded like the plan was well developed. It sounded like there was a plan and it sounded like the government had some idea of what it was seeking to achieve. But as time has gone on, the parameters on nearly all of these levels have changed. Nearly all of them have changed. The timing has slipped out considerably. The government said initially it would look to close tenders some time in the middle of this year and make a decision in time for construction to begin by the end of this year. Here we are at the end of June, at the halfway point of the year, and the starting time on the tender process has not even begun. It has not even begun, because Minister Conroy realised he had to provide some basic information to try to make this a somewhat fairer playing field. He had to provide some basic information to the potential bidders. So he pushed some legislation through this place, to which the opposition acquiesced and allowed to go through in a timely manner to fit with the minister’s timetable.

But then what? We are still waiting. The minister says he will give potential bidders 12 weeks from the provision of all information to get their bids in. So there will be a 12-week closing date from when all the information is provided. But the information has still not been provided, Minister. It has not been provided by the minister. We have to ask why. Why is it taking so long? Why can the minister not meet the timelines that he set in opposition and is now failing to meet time and time again. The reality is that the likelihood of construction commencing on the national broadband network, as promised by the minister and Mr Rudd, by the end of this year is now virtually zero. It would be worth while if the minister could come into this place and fess up to it—fess up to the fact that their time line is not going to be met.

We look at the ownership structure. It was black and white. It was going to be a fifty-fifty equity arrangement. Now it is open to all types of arrangements. It could still be equity. The minister says that is preferred, but he has opened it up to a range of other equations, recognising that the cost could be as high as $25 billion. So the $4.7 billion only gives you about 18 per cent equity in that equation. It does not even get you close. The cost is way out, the structure is way out. The technology was black and white. It was going to be fibre-to-the-node technology when the minister, as the shadow spokesman, announced it last year. Now, once again, we are open to all manner of technological outcomes. The minister today, once again, confirmed from the request for tender proposal that he was open to all manner of options in this. It shows the government have no idea where they are going on this. They are changing policy on the run. They should be ashamed, and the minister should fess up to it. (Time expired)