Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the third report of the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network. I would like to pick up on the discussion relating to the extension of this committee that Senator Fisher chose to mention in her remarks as well. I think it is very important to reiterate when talking about the continuation of this Senate select committee in its current structure that it was a committee set up when the coalition had the majority in the Senate. Therefore, this committee is structured in such a way that neither a government senator nor indeed a crossbench senator need be present at this select committee for it to be able to conduct business. I believe it was certainly the preference and there was some consensus earlier—although that has obviously changed—to transfer effectively the consideration of the ongoing implementation of the NBN to the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts References Committee as recently re-established by the Senate. Alternatively, apropos the discussion about select committees that has occurred with regard to other extensions to date, even the noncontinuation of this committee and the re-establishment of a select committee would afford better representation and a fairer structure of the committee than one which was generated under the auspices of the coalition having complete control. That would have been more respectful of Senate proportionality and our capacity to participate in this particular committee. That said, it is so resolved that the committee will continue.

I would like to take this opportunity to add my remarks on the report. I do not believe you can characterise the committee as apolitical, but I believe the sentiment that Senator Fisher was trying to convey was that there was a great deal of cooperation on behalf of all participants in an effort to get the best possible picture from all of the evidence. I do not think, however, that can be characterised as apolitical per se, because government senators have produced a minority report. We only agree with one of the recommendations of the majority report. That one recommendation was a very constructive one encouraging the government to invest more on and pay more attention to the sorts of applications that we will be able to access and use on a high bandwidth universal network once the NBN is built.

As Senator Fisher described the majority of the other recommendations related to demands for more information. The recommendations equivocated between demanding more action and criticising the government for having not done enough and reasserting the opposition’s claim that no legislation should proceed until more information is received. This is both unreasonable and contradictory in the presentation of those recommendations, and government senators do not believe that those recommendations are a fair summary of the evidence presented. It is true that there were pros and cons in the evidence presented, as you would expect, but I think that the majority report recommendations as prepared by the opposition are largely in tune with the opposition’s political strategy to obfuscate the progress of legislation associated with Labor’s National Broadband Network policy.

Perhaps that is never clearer than in the explicit recommendation that the current bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009—which Labor and certainly our Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, have argued is required to pass the Senate as soon as possible to make sure that the competitive playing field is a fair one through the period of the development of the National Broadband Network—not proceed. So our primary comment as government senators is that there appears to be a contradictory message contained within the majority report. On the one hand it is, ‘Hurry up and get on with the job,’ and on the other hand it is, ‘Hang on. Don’t do anything until more information has been provided. Don’t do anything with the legislation needed to improve competition and consumer protection and don’t do anything until this particular committee has been provided with information that in large part the government has concluded is both unreasonable and tied to the political strategy to obfuscate Labor’s plan to build the National Broadband Network.’

In closing, I would like to thank the secretariat of the committee. Technology related issues are often quite complex and challenging when it comes to preparing a report. I would also like to thank my fellow members of the committee. It is always fascinating and interesting to me. I would also like to join with the chair, Senator Fisher, in thanking all of the witnesses who appeared to give evidence. Many of them have appeared more than once, given this is the third report of this committee, and I for one, as do all other members of the committee, appreciate the time and commitment of all of those providers of submissions and of evidence at the hearings around the country.