Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Conroy, the minister for Optus—I am sorry, I was just reading the Age newspaper—the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Is the minister aware of comments attributed to News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch during an interview with Terry McCann that if the government’s $43 billion National Broadband Network is to be sold off to private investors as promised then the government will have to ‘be prepared to write off half the cost openly upfront so that investors buying it could have a chance of a return’? Is the government prepared to write off taxpayers’ billions upfront in order to attract future buyers? If not, isn’t it possible that NBN will never be privatised or will have to be sold off by a future government at a fire sale price in order to rid itself of a debt laden white elephant?