Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What about giving us time to look at it, Minister? If you have got it, Minister, how about giving the parliament and the Australian community time to look at the implementation study. This is an implementation study that you have spent, Minister, some nine months gestating. Will you give us nine minutes to look at it? Let us look at it another way: it took some $25 million of Australian taxpayers money to get it; will you give us 25 minutes? Give us a minute per million dollars. Give Australian taxpayers a minute per million dollars to look at it, Minister.

Minister, who is going to answer the ‘Who is going to get what’ under your $43 billion National Broadband Network plan? When are they going to get it? How are they going to get it? And how much will it cost them to get it? At the moment, there remain way more questions than answers. There are so many more questions than answers. The National Broadband Network—the NBN—is starting to sound more and more like ‘No body (k)nows’. Forget NBN aka National Broadband Network because it is looking like NBN aka ‘No body (k)nows’, least of all Minister Conroy; NBN aka ‘No body (k)nows’, least of all Rudd Labor. Yet, for that pleasure, Australian taxpayers are going to foot some $43 billion.

The opposition cannot support this bill, particularly if the provisions in part 1 of the bill are retained where a gun is held to Telstra’s head. Minister Conroy well knows that the Australian people, in a battle of David versus Goliath, will happily back David. Rudd Labor is punting on that, but what Rudd Labor is forgetting in that punt is that the Australian people also believe in fairness. In fact, they vehemently dislike unfairness and they are not going to like a gun to the head.

There is no case for the bill. That is a part of why Labor did not take the bill to the election. It is bad for shareholders, it is bad for rural and regional Australia and it is only to prop up the National Broadband Network. And it is premature. The consumer measures in the bill are not scheduled to hit the deck, the consumer rubber will not hit the road, until July 2010. What is the hurry, Minister? In particular, what is the hurry, Minister, when you are sitting on the $25 million taxpayer funded implementation study?

What is the hurry, Minister? What is the hurry, Minister, and why the bill, when at the same time the government releases an exposure draft of the NBN Co. bill that suggests that the minister will have the discretion to allow this taxpayer funded company—this government company—to go wholesale and retail? There is a bit of legislation that will allow the NBN Co. to do exactly that which Telstra is being told it cannot do. It is being told, ‘Cut out or get cut out,’ at the same time as the government is proposing to seek licence to give the government-sponsored company the right to be bought in, if you like, and to stay in. I think the Australian people will work out pretty quickly, Minister, that that ain’t fair. There is no need to consider this bill before we see the taxpayer funded implementation study. There is no need to consider this bill now, given it will be quite some time before the proposed consumer measures start operating. There is no need to consider this bill before we see the implementation study and there is no need to consider this bill before you, Minister, can convince the Australian taxpayers that ‘NBN’ stands for something other than ‘no body (k)nows’—least of all Rudd Labor and least of all you, Minister.