Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise briefly to summarise the Greens’ position on this—in particular, our deep disappointment to see the Liberal Party backing down on the amendments about the joint committee to assess the expenditure of these funds. That was really something that we could have put through tonight.

I will speak just briefly about the Communications Fund. I have a great deal of sympathy for the position that the Nationals have found themselves in. A commitment was made as a consequence of the third stage of the privatisation of Telstra to put aside a fund that would essentially be paying for rural and regional telecommunications in perpetuity. They are quite correct to point out that nothing that is in the current request for proposals guarantees any kind of quarantining of the $4.7 billion worth of funding for the communities that we are all very concerned about, where telecommunications are extremely patchy. In some places, you cannot even get dial-up, let alone broadband. There is nothing in the request for proposals that says that all Australians will be getting this kind of coverage. In fact, the bid that Telstra has put in has not even got to the 98 per cent benchmark that the government set in the RFP. They have said, ‘Maybe 80 or 90 per cent—take it or leave it.’ We all know who would be left out of that proposal.

What we are left with, essentially, are the consequences of the privatisation of an essential service. It was extraordinary to hear Senator McGauran standing up and celebrating having achieved all their goals, because we took a national carrier with a universal service obligation, a public utility regulated by parliament, and we turned it into an aggressive, vertically integrated corporation that is looking after the interests of its shareholders before it is looking after the public interest. Telstra has said to the Australian community, ‘We will not be making these investments into rural and regional communities, because the investment does not stack up.’ A public utility does not necessarily have to do that. So we are stuck with the consequences of this privatisation.

I want to talk briefly about the Communications Fund and where that would be leaving us were it to be left where it is. There is a Communications Fund of $2 billion in perpetuity, of which we would be taking off about $100 million a year, for rural and regional telecommunications. It has been estimated that to roll out the national broadband network on any decent scale will cost about $10 billion—half from the federal government and half from somewhere else. At the rate of $100 million per year—which, pro rata for my state of Western Australia, would be the equivalent of about $10 million a year—it will take about 100 years to reach the scale of the investment that has been proposed to roll out the national broadband network on any reasonable scale. That is why we are not supporting the amendment to quarantine the $2 billion and to keep the Communications Fund as it is. Essentially, that blows 50 per cent out of the Commonwealth funding for the national broadband network as it currently stands, and the Communications Fund as it is does not achieve the function that the Nationals are trying to achieve. A hundred million dollars a year at that rate is quite simply not going to provide us with the services that we are looking for.

The Greens believe that the national broadband network should be rolled in from the edges, not rolled out from the metropolitan markets where people are already well served. That is, I think, going to be the main game: watching where the request for proposals goes and making absolutely certain that the government holds the line and does not accept any weakening of the minimum target of 98 per cent, making sure that broadband really is for all Australians. I am afraid that I do not believe at this late stage that cutting the national broadband network Commonwealth funding in half is a way of achieving that.