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

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to questions without notice asked by opposition senators today, relating to Mr Mike Kaiser and other matters.

Only in a government led by Mr Rudd could two ministers who have so clearly demonstrated their incompetence, carelessness and confusion continue in office. We all know now that Mr Garrett should not be in the position that he is in. But quickly Senator Conroy is overtaking Mr Garrett as the minister who should do Australia and his government a favour by resigning from office. Today we have had a very clear example of Senator Conroy’s unsuitableness for the job that he currently holds as the communications minister.

Can you imagine the minister, who of course employed Mr Quigley as the NBN chief, sidling up to Mr Quigley and saying: ‘Oh, look, there’s a mate of mine in the Labor Party in Queensland who might be good for the job of government relations person. I don’t know what you’re offering for the job, but perhaps you should have a talk to him’? Can you believe that Senator Conroy did not have any idea of what the salary might be when he recommended Mr Kaiser for the job? Certainly no sound or reasonable person could possibly believe what Senator Conroy has said about that.

In spite of Senator Conroy’s clarification after question time, it is incredible that a government with this sort of operation would allow 40 per cent of its jobs not to be advertised—not to be open to selection in the normal manner. As Senator Minchin pointed out with his question, this company is paying wages on average in the $350-$400,000 market, and the people being appointed are not being properly assessed, unless you class membership of the Labor Party—membership of the upper echelons of the Labor regimes in Queensland and New South Wales—as a qualification for the job.

It interests me why a government company wholly set up by the government needs a government relations man at a $450,000 salary. The company is the government. Why does it need a government relations person? I would love Senator Conroy to explain that. In addition, not only has Senator Conroy failed with those insider jobs in NBN Co. but the NBN is grossly out of time. Nothing has happened apart from a sod turning up in Mount Isa that will mean nothing. The legislation that Senator Conroy told us was so critical to deal with before Christmas last year did not even reach the Senate chamber last year. We are in the third week of the Senate’s sitting this year and still we have no indication of when that bill will be brought before the Senate.

We then saw the scandal almost of Senator Conroy’s ski holiday in a flash resort in the United States, where he met with one of the major free-to-air television networks and not long after that, low and behold, there is a $250 million gift to those free-to-air TV companies. For all these reasons, one would think that Mr Rudd would have some concern, some real sense of risk, about the efficacy of this minister, as with Minister Garrett. It seems that the NBN saga goes from bad to worse. Senator Conroy promised us the implementation study before the end of February this year. We are waiting. We are getting close to the end of February. We learned just recently at Senate estimates that that study—which will explain everything, as Senator Conroy has said before—may not ever be made public. On all these grounds, Senator Conroy should do the right thing by his government and by Australia and resign.