Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

That is right, again. It is non-stop. It is a totally irresponsible amendment. It threatens the funding source for the government’s NBN. Broadband is a critical enabling technology that will change how businesses serve their customers, how government delivers services and how citizens collaborate in the future.

I am following this very closely because I live in an area—the Forth Valley in Tasmania—that did not even have mobile phone reception until two years ago because of the nature of the terrain. So I am particularly interested in this, as one who lives in rural and regional Australia and has experienced the difficulties of ensuring adequate technology in the area in which I live. I know many others in this country—perhaps for different reasons, not just the nature of the terrain—have experienced significant frustration. The whole point of this is that we are providing funding to ensure that my colleague Senator Conroy gets on with the job of dealing with these issues.

On 13 November the government introduced the Nation-building Funds Bill 2008 into parliament. The bill establishes three separate funds: the Building Australia Fund, the Education Investment Fund and the Health and Hospitals Fund. The bill and the associated transitional provisions abolish the Communications Fund and transfer the balance of the fund into the Building Australia Fund. Other funding can be transferred by relevant ministers. The Building Australia Fund will be used to provide the government’s contribution of up to $4.7 billion to the national broadband network.

As I say, the previous government spent years trying to get this right and failed. Judgement was cast on the opposition by the Australian people at the election, at least in part for their failures in this area. There were other reasons too, I accept. The Liberal opposition are here attempting the outrageous stunt of trying to gut a large part of the funding from the election promise we gave and which we intend to implement. We have only just got to first base on implementing the election promise and they want to knock one of the legs from the stool that enables us to progress this very, very important issue. It is simply outrageous and it is just another example of the generally negative approach to a range of issues we have seen from the Liberal opposition since their ‘transition’ from government to opposition.

We have had a debate and we accept—at least at this point of time—that we have not been able to influence the chamber in respect of a range of governance and oversight matters, but if this is passed it will have very severe ramifications for the future of the NBN program, for the reasons I have outlined.