Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

with Mr Rudd, the Prime Minister, probably sometime between complaining about the lack of food and berating the airline stewardess. Senator Conroy is full of broken promises, he has given false hope and he has had demonstrable failure at every turn. Those are the three trademarks of Senator Conroy. Now we have his most audacious plan yet. It is a plan that sends the wrong message to every significant player that is thinking of investing seriously in Australia. With the stroke of a pen and a press conference Senator Conroy said we will change the laws to advantage the government to make sure that a legitimate private enterprise, with 1.4 million shareholders and 30,000 employees, cannot go about its business.

On the one hand Senator Conroy is saying, ‘This is an old technology and Telstra needs to ditch it.’ On the other hand he is saying, ‘It’s technology that we want to put into our yet to be formed NBN telco,’ the telco which Senator Birmingham said is spending thousands of dollars every week doing nothing. In fact it is paying its CEO $40,000 a week when it has no revenue, no real plan, no employees and no customers. It is trying to get an outdated technology from a company that is providing employment to 30,000 Australians.

This sends a very wrong message to investors in Australia. It sends the wrong message to those who think competition should be allowed to reign free. As Senator Minchin said, broadband access is an area where Telstra is not the dominant player. So what is the agenda behind this? Unfortunately, I think it is once again a desperate clutch at power by a desperate government. It is desperate clutch at trying to reassemble some sort of control over the debate around telecommunications in this country.

The debate has raged all around Senator Conroy while he has fiddled. He has fiddled while Rome has burned in this case. He has failed in his broadband tenders. He has failed to protect taxpayers’ money. He has failed at every step. The problem we have is that this is going to be a very dangerous precedent, a precedent that offers very little opportunity for significant companies that want to come to Australia or are concerned about making major investments in Australia. It is an investment on whose path Senator Conroy has committed the government and it will perhaps leave the government exposed. It will leave the taxpayers of Australia in a position where they may have no alternative except government supplied services. That is wrong. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.