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

Senator Marshall is guffawing over the other side. That is his intelligent contribution to this debate. We know that Senator Marshall represents the extreme hard Left of the Labor Party—and he is starting to laugh because we are sticking up for 30,000 employees at Telstra and for the 1.4 million Telstra shareholders!

What we should be laughing at are the claims made by Senator Conroy when he was opposition spokesman for telecommunications. He was out there saying that the coalition’s plan for wireless internet would not work. He made outlandish claims such as: it was going to open garage doors, it was going to turn microwave ovens on, and it was going to make chickens produce hard boiled eggs. He made all sorts of ridiculous claims because he did not support a wireless network. Yet, now, what is he doing? He is threatening one of our largest companies, with 1.4 million shareholders and 30,000 employees, by withholding wireless spectrum, which he previously said was hopeless and would not do anything.

The concerns that arise from this bill go to the very heart of how our government should interact with the economy. I know that there are many on that side of the chamber who have differences with me on that point—it is surprising, but there are. It is logical that markets should function as efficiently as they possibly can, but that has been lost on this government. The government has taken step after step and measure after measure in order to interfere in the efficient operation of our economy, and the results are there for all to see. There have been hasty schemes, there have been bungled schemes and there have been hapless schemes. All of those words could be applied to this government. It is hasty, it is bungling and it is hapless. The insulation program is an ongoing debate. Millions upon millions of dollars have been wasted and people’s lives have been lost as a result of this hasty, bungled and hapless government program.

We have seen the same thing occurring at the schools level with the Building the Education Revolution program. Again, millions upon millions of dollars have been wasted through hasty, bungled and hapless schemes. What about the $900 bonus that went out to people? Dead people got it and people living overseas got it. What has happened to all those billions of dollars which have now gone to places that we know not where? There is now no actual impact and benefit to the economy from that bonus. There has been no long-lasting investment. It was simply a hasty, bungled and hapless scheme, as were Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch and all of the other schemes.

But perhaps the biggest and most hasty scheme that we have seen is the proposal before us today: a $43 billion taxpayer spend that was conceived on the back of an envelope—because there was no plan. There was no in-detail or in-depth study of it. The government has come to the conclusion that the scheme will not work unless it can bully, cajole or bribe Australia’s biggest telecommunication company to participate in it. It does not have to stack up on its merits. It just has to be part of the vision thing that this government wants to pursue and highlight. The government is prepared to do anything to make that happen, even if it is unnecessary or unworkable.

We should not be surprised that words like ‘blackmail’, ‘extortion’, ‘thuggery’ and ‘bullying’—describe it as you will—have been applied to the bill before us. We should not be surprised at the conduct of the Labor government because we have seen this sort of bullying, blackmailing, extortion and thuggery before. We have seen it repeatedly from Labor governments at state and federal level. It comes down to this: this government is just a reflection of other Labor governments, where bluster, the threat of intimidation and coercion mean more than actual substance. If the government were happy to rely on the substance, they would have had a business plan, not just a plan to employ mates at $450,000 a year. Mike Kaiser is now the king of communications at NBN Co. The minister’s mate has a $450,000 a year job, without it being advertised or put under any competitive pressures. It is $450,000 to communicate on behalf of a company that has no business plan and has had no significant employees or operations. It was just an idea. It was an idea that was probably cooked up on that ill-fated plane flight when the Prime Minister attacked a poor stewardess over a substandard sandwich, or was it when he was in Afghanistan attacking his aides for not having a hairdryer available. Whatever it was, it was probably around that time that they cooked it up.

I come back to the principle. Telstra shareholders—the mums and dads of Australia who relied upon government to look after their interests and who relied upon this government when it said to them that they would get a better deal—have been deceived. The government has failed. This legislation is an attack on Telstra shareholders. There is no question about that. If Telstra do not agree to do what the government wants, their commercial viability is at risk. If Telstra agree to it, they have to be part of this government’s plan, which is unviable without Telstra’s participation. The plan actually compromises Telstra’s existing business case.

It is very tough for any business operation, particularly one as big as Telstra, to manage its commercial direction when that is based on the whim of government. And the whim of government was not just about cooking up the $43 billion plan; it was also about the government pursuing its original internet broadband plan. This original plan went through a tendering system that cost millions upon millions of dollars—I think it was around $25 million—and it was spectacularly unsuccessful. At the time it went out to formal tender, I remember Senator Conroy standing up in here, defending the fact that Telstra had put in a one-page submission—and I will stand corrected on that—which was not officially a tender document, and berating us because we were concerned about whether it was a tender or not.

If a $4 billion dollar spend is not going to work very well because this government cannot make it work, what makes this government think that a $43 billion spend is actually going to work better? If $43 billion is their estimate, based on what we have seen of their school hall blowouts, their insulation bungling, GroceryWatch, Fuelwatch and all these other schemes that have probably had a bit more thought put into them than what we have got before us, that $43 billion is likely to turn into $50 billion or $60 billion or maybe even more. The Australian people will be paying for this for decades and decades to come because it will remain on the government’s balance sheet unless they can blackmail and coerce Telstra and other organisations into it to off-load their scheme.

Excusing all the bungling of this government, if they had stuck to their knitting and said, ‘We want to build a broadband network and it is going to be a wholesale provider,’ they could perhaps manage to justify it at some level. But what we have seen is more tinkering around the edges, more thuggery and bullying where they have threatened to go into the retail space. This government appear more intent on recreating their own Telstra and winding back the clock. I know they have wound back the clock on industrial relations. I know they have wound back the clock to Gough Whitlam’s exorbitant spending operations and debt levels. I know they have wound back the clock in so many areas where Australia had previously benefited from advances, but now they seem to want to wind back the clock in telecommunications. They want to control everything, just like Mr Rudd controls what his ministers can say and do, just like Mr Rudd and his kitchen cabinet turn up and tell cabinet ministers what is going to happen and the sheep meekly go along with it.

It is disappointing that with something as serious as this and with so much money at risk we have not got a minister who is actually prepared to stand up and say to Mr Rudd and the others in the kitchen cabinet, ‘There are lots of flies on this; there are too many flies to fix.’ Rather than realising they are in a big debt hole, they just keep digging, trying to tweak it and change things. These are the characteristics of a flawed government. They are the characteristics of a government that are really managing things for the immediacy of today. They are not that concerned with the future; they are more concerned with getting another election win under their belt. There are a number in the Labor Party, as we read on the weekend, particularly in Senator Arbib’s New South Wales Right, that are intent on replacing Kevin Rudd with Ms Gillard. This fusion between the Right and the Left in the New South Wales Labor Party is really quite astounding, but it comes back to principle and it is clear there are very few people of principle in decision-making positions within the Labor Party.

The coalition does want to see adequate broadband, particularly for regional and rural Australia. I remember when we were in government we implemented a program for the Yorke Peninsula, which was assisted by a great South Australian company called Internode. We were providing wireless broadband, the same sort of broadband that Senator Conroy discredited and laughed at, which he now coincidentally wants to implement.

Broadband for Australians is an important thing, but it is a question of at what cost and to what benefit? In other parts of the world there are private companies that are actually expanding their broadband networks. We are seeing a massive investment by Google in some states and cities in the United States for a very, very fast broadband service. Telstra could provide the same here if it wanted to and was allowed to get on with the business that it is in, but it is being compromised by this government. If this government were serious about it, they would let the commercial operations produce the commercial networks that they want to see and the government would focus on providing cost-efficient fast broadband access for those areas that the commercial networks would not be pursuing. This could have been done at a reasonably efficient cost and with a long-term plan in mind that would have accommodated the increasing advances in wireless spectrum, the same sorts of spectrum and technologies that were laughed at by this dinosaur of a minister for communications. He laughed at them, yet they would now provide a viable, efficient and cost-effective alternative. Instead of doing that, the government goes for the whole pie. They are trying to claim it all. They are trying to put pressure on a company that 1.4 million Australians have a shareholding in. They are putting pressure on and threatening the very jobs of 30,000 Australians, and their families will suffer under this bill.

It will not surprise you to learn, Mr Acting Deputy President Marshall, that the coalition is opposed to this bill. It is opposed to it because it compromises what I believe to be the role of government. It compromises the integrity of our system. It compromises the interests of Telstra shareholders and Telstra employees. It compromises the future debt burden and the ability to repay a rapidly escalating government debt by the Australian people. We are prepared to compromise and, if the government were prepared to compromise on providing broadband services to the Australian people, we could come up with a very effective solution. The problem is that this government is intransigent. It is not interested. It trots out the five amigos and says that this Senate is obstructionist. No, this Senate is representative of the will of the Australian people. It represents the interests of everyday Australians that this government is more interested in riding roughshod over. The coalition wants to look after Australia’s future communication needs, but we also want to balance it against Australia’s future debt obligations. That is why we are opposed to this bill.