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

You have identified two different aspects of it. The first aspect is the reporting plan. As I said, that is very cunning; it looks very benign. The issue, as I described it previously, is that it actually will undermine the rollout, which I do not think is the intent, to be fair. I think that it seems very benign. The second issue is the black spots, and that is a very legitimate point. As I have indicated in a couple of the comments that I have made already, we do have a program that ACMA is conducting. I am more than happy to provide a full briefing of where that is at to anybody who is interested in it, because this is an absolutely legitimate issue.

I again indicate to you the complexities of this challenge. The transmission black spots can only be identified with the cooperation of the free-to-air networks. As you can imagine, if you remove the incentive, as the first part of this seeks to do, you again undermine the capacity for everyone to be straight up. We are more than happy to provide full briefings and ongoing information about how the black spots are being identified and what we are doing to work with the free-to-air networks to solve them. I have no problem at all with doing that, and I am sure that we could find a mechanism without having to go down this particular path to achieve the objective that you are concerned about. I am happy to engage in a conversation with you, and I offer that to Senator Minchin as well. This is a genuine issue where there are genuine technical complexities. But, again, those complexities will be made worse if these amendments are passed because what they are about is giving leverage in a debate. Let me be clear about this: there is a great desire for the expenditure of money to solve some of these problems, and it would be fair to say that some stakeholders would prefer not to spend that money themselves. They would prefer you and I to authorise the Senate and the parliament to spend that money. So there is a significant undercurrent to try to press the black spots issue so as to make taxpayers cough more money up than they otherwise would—money that should rightfully be paid by the individual stakeholders. What they are seeking to do with a benign amendment like this is create controversy so as to put pressure on the government to hand out more money.

Again, you should understand the nature of the complexities here, and I am sure you do—you have been involved in politics for a long time. Any concession on the first part that I have talked about will undermine the effect of the rollout program into the future. I am genuine when I say that. As for the second part, I am more than happy to provide more information on transmission information to you and to sit down and work out how we can provide more information to ensure that we are addressing these issues. As I am sure you would understand, any minister for communications who went to his colleagues and said, ‘Look, I am about to switch off 20 per cent of your television screens in the area that you really care about’ is not going to stay minister for communications for long. As much as Senator Minchin says that he is trying to look after my interests, I have to say that I am not convinced. If your issue is around transmission black spots information, I am more than happy to sit down and work through something that will deliver the information that you are interested in without having to go down this path. That is absolutely critical to the successful delivery of this entire program across the whole country.