Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I agree, Senator Mason. There has been $500 million in solar panel cost blow-outs; $1.4 billion in Medicare and another $1.8 billion in pharmaceutical expense blow-outs, not to mention the GroceryWatch debacle, the 2020 summit, ridiculous levels of overseas travel, and of course, the big daddy of all cost blow-outs, the National Broadband Network. This was originally planned to be approximately $5 billion of government investment, give or take a little because the Prime Minister also likes to round up these massive sums. But the government decided on a whim, having botched the tender process, to fund a $43 billion infrastructure spend without any consideration, any rigour or even any back-of-the-envelope scribbling at all. Regardless of the merits of the policy of fibre-to-the-home, it is dangerous, reckless, and arrogant to commit so much taxpayers’ money without due diligence.

Telecommunications is a highly complex, quickly-evolving sector of the economy that is crucial to our future prosperity. If you are going to make a massive investment of taxpayers’ funds to drastically alter the landscape of the nation and the sector, there needs to be economic modelling, business plans, analysis of demand, analysis of future innovation and a raft of other investigations to, as best as possible, safeguard the public’s money. Sadly, this is all appears to be too much hard work. This government prefers to fly by the seat of its pants and claim that even if everyone is attacking a proposal then it must have achieved a compromise. It would be very good sense for them realise that sometimes when everyone attacks you it just means you are wrong.