Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

What we are seeing tonight is really quite a disgraceful performance by the government. In my view the government is treating the Senate with utter contempt. Today we saw in one form or another all non-government senators combine to pass the government’s legislation but with amendments which substantially and considerably improve these government bills. Variously with the Greens, Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding, the coalition has passed amendments to these bills which radically improve the transparency attached to the government’s dealing with the taxpayers’ billions of dollars and radically improve the accountability of the government to the parliament and to the people of Australia for the expenditure of those funds.

I point in particular to the proposed joint committee of oversight of these three particular funds and the reporting mechanisms that these amendments imposed on the government in relation to expenditure from these funds. They are all very sensible and very common sense amendments to ensure transparency by this government in its dealings with billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds.

One of the most significant amendments that has been carried by the Senate was to prevent the Labor Party raiding the Communications Fund established by this parliament. The Communications Fund was agreed by this parliament, with the support of the Labor Party, as a mechanism to set aside from the sale of Telstra—a sale which the Labor Party opposed to the bitter end—some $2 billion in perpetuity to ensure that the earnings of that fund, some $100 million a year, would be available in perpetuity to ensure that the telecommunications of rural and regional Australians were constantly capable of being improved in response to the reviews of the Glasson inquiry. That now, as proposed by the Labor Party, is all to be swept away.

The $2 billion would not be there if the Labor Party had had their way. If the Labor Party had had their way Telstra would never have been sold and there would have been no $2 billion. As a result of the compact, as Senator Boswell quite rightly said, that our government reached between rural Australia and the government, we sold Telstra and to ensure that rural and regional telecommunications would be constantly improved, we took $2 billion of the sale proceeds, put it in the Communications Fund and we locked it away from the ravages of future governments by guaranteeing in perpetuity that fund with the earnings available, as I said, to ensure the improvement of telecommunications.

The Labor Party has hypocritically and cynically taken that $2 billion and then they are going to destroy the Communications Fund and put the $2 billion towards their national broadband network. The whole country knows what a farce and a joke and a cruel hoax this national broadband network is. Today we have already seen just the administration costs of it blow out by 100 per cent. The government set aside in the budget $10 million to pay for all the legal fees and the consultants and everything else to administer this project. Today in the additional estimates they provided another $10 million to do that; a 100 per cent increase to $20 million to administer this. Where is that going to go? To the lawyers and the accountants on this mythical national broadband network, the construction of which was meant to commence by the end of this year, in 27 days. What a joke!

That is what is going to happen to the $2 billion set aside for rural and regional Australia. It is to be blown on this national broadband network. I can guarantee rural and regional Australians are not going to see anything from the national broadband network. Not only that but the government has cancelled the OPEL contract, which was a guarantee by our government to put $1 billion towards providing high-speed broadband to rural and regional Australians. One of the first acts of this government was to abolish that OPEL contract. It was an outrageous act and a complete slur, a complete contempt on rural and regional Australians by this Labor government. So country Australians should be absolutely disgusted with this Labor government in its actions so far on telecommunications.

The fact is that the Senate has passed the government’s bills. We are not blocking these bills. We have passed these bills with amendments. And what has this arrogant government done? Tonight it has simply rejected all the amendments. I do not think there is one amendment that this government has been prepared to accept—‘No, we don’t want any of that; who cares about the Senate?’ For 60 years the Labor Party wanted to get rid of the Senate, and I think most of the Labor Party still want to get rid of the Senate. They have treated it with utter contempt tonight.

I regret to say that, on balance, it is the coalition’s position that we will not insist on these amendments. We know very well what the government will do if we vote here tonight to insist on these amendments. The government are so obsessed with spin. They do not actually make decisions; they just do the spin. They will assert, falsely and contemptuously—through the media machine that the government run—that the coalition has blocked these infrastructure bills. The government will spend the next two months falsely asserting all over the country that we are responsible for denying infrastructure funding to every road, bridge and port in the country, simply because we have sought to improve these flawed bills of the government.

We are not going to let the government get away with that. We are not prepared to let the government run that fallacious argument. It is utterly fallacious. We are not going to be cornered by the Labor Party on this issue. I guarantee to the Labor Party that the coalition will attack this Labor Party all over the country for the next two years for the contempt with which it is treating rural and regional Australia in relation to telecommunications. It is utterly disgraceful. I want to confirm tonight that a re-elected coalition government will guarantee in perpetuity $100 million each and every year to be taken from the budget and invested in rural and regional telecommunications. That is a commitment that I have authority to make on behalf of the coalition. When we are re-elected in some 18- to 20-months time, every year, in perpetuity, $100 million will be set aside in the budget to be invested in improvements in rural and regional telecommunications.

So it is with considerable sadness and regret that I confirm that we will not be insisting on what I think is a very good package of amendments which would have substantially improved this bill. What we are seeing tonight is the government treating rural and regional Australia with utter contempt, which everyone living outside metropolitan Australia should never forget—and not forget at the time of the next election.