Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The mockery, derision and jokes from the other side of the chamber really underline their approach to an issue that is going to affect 1.4 million Telstra shareholders and 22 million Australians. It goes to the very heart of the competence of this minister. If you look at his management track record, he is meant to be a right-wing factional boss from Victoria and he was so incompetent that he had to merge it with the hard extreme Socialist left faction in Victoria and now plays second fiddle to his mentor, Kim Carr. You are a second-fiddle minister. There is no doubt about that and we know it, because your handling of this affair has been appalling and abominable. Whilst we are talking about this and sticking up for the people of Australia, you are there making jokes and laughing about people’s ties. You need to pull your socks up because you have failed at the most basic level of supplying the appropriate information so that this Senate can decide and discuss and debate this very important legislation. That, might I say, was cobbled together on the back of an envelope to spend $43 billion. You and your mentor, Kim Carr—no, he was not there, it was your other uber-boss, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd—between complaining about air dryers and sandwiches, you and he came up with a plan for a $43 billion tax spend that you have not even got prepared. You are not even prepared to table the implementation study.

At any level, putting aside your disgraceful partisan politics in this, you can only consider the Australian people would turn more from their government when they are going to spend $43 billion of taxpayer funds. They are going to try and offload half of that commitment to an unsuspecting telecommunications industry, and they have not even got the gumption to tell us who is going to miss out, where it is going to start and who is going to be included in this timeframe. They want us to decide on this important legislation without the adequate consideration of the documents and the information that the government has brought to their attention. The question can only be why. What are they trying to hide? Are they trying to cover something up? It is a reasonable series of questions the Australian people deserve to know the answers to. And when those questions are put to the minister, what do we get? More derision, more guffawing at the impertinence of those on the other side to question the very fabric of this minister’s intentions.

I have a concern: after wasting $30 million on their first tender process, which failed, and now spending a further $25 million dollars on an implementation study, which they are not prepared to share with the Australian people or the opposition parties, who are expected to hold a government to account, this government is trying to hide from the light of scrutiny. They are like cockroaches under a fridge—when you move the fridge, the cockroaches scurry everywhere. There is one master cockroach and we all know who that is, and there are junior cockroaches. We have an example of one in Minister Conroy. I do not like to cast aspersions but he is scurrying from the light of day, he is scurrying from scrutiny and transparency. He knows that his policies are deeply and desperately unpopular, not just with the Australian people but on his own side as well. We know that because this man wants to spend billions and billions of taxpayer funds on a broadband system but he will not tell us where it is going to start, where it is going to finish, who is going to miss out and how it is going to work. He is not prepared to tell us that and he is going to spend tens of millions of dollars trying to slow the internet down by filtering, which I know is deeply unpopular. He is facing a lot of grief from Senator Lundy and others who are rebelling against him. We will see how this goes.

It is an extraordinary minister who is so unconfident in his own ministerial portfolio that he is not prepared to put forward the documents which are necessary for a reasonable and rational decision to be made. If we cannot examine the documents, if we cannot make a reasonable assessment on behalf of the Australian people, we have to say no. That is what Senator Minchin’s motion is about—suspending standing orders so that full scrutiny can be applied. (Time expired)

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Minchin’s) be agreed to.