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

It was only five minutes of ranting? Your rantings have been concise, Senator Conroy! I understand that you did not even indicate why you would not be releasing the implementation study. I will give you a reason: I suspect that the implementation study says that this is a lemon—that this will not work. You simply cannot raise the sort of income you will need from the NBN Co. while making it affordable to Australians who might have to hook up to it. The whole thing is an absolute shambles, Senator Conroy, and you know it. How many backflips have you done so far? Remember we were told that the request for tender process ‘affects everything; we’re going to get good responses here and there will be people lining up to do it.’ What did you do? You made the mistake of having a bit of a fight with Telstra, so you excluded them from it without thinking, and then, having excluded them, you realised that you could not do it without them. This is a shambles to the nth degree, and it will continue to be a shambles whilst this government is in charge of it. I again plead with Senator Conroy, if he is interested in getting the consumer bits through, to split the bill, because the opposition will certainly not be supporting this draconian confiscation of property without compensation.