Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the NBN document with regard to an urgency motion that the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Mr Tanner, saw fit to move in the House this morning. The motion spoke about not putting the sites that have been chosen for the NBN to the Public Works Committee for scrutiny.

I have been a member of the Public Works Committee for five years, and I am now deputy chair. The Manual of procedures for departments and agencies, which the committee actually reviewed in this morning’s meeting, states that all Commonwealth expenditure on public works should be scrutinised by parliament—that is, referred to the committee. However, subsequent sections of the act provide that, under certain circumstances, a work may be exempted from scrutiny. One of the grounds for exemption is that of urgency. And I quote here section 1.44:

... agencies should write to the Committee at an early stage to inform it of the intention to seek an exemption.

Now, Mr Tanner or his office delivered the letter to the Public Works Committee this morning asking for an exemption after the committee’s meeting had finished. And he has form on this issue: in September last year, he again sought an exemption on the grounds of urgency. So, although he pays lip service to the work of the committee, he does nothing whatsoever to show that the government has faith in this committee to have proper scrutiny. As an added interesting point, paragraph 1.45 of the procedure manual states:

As action by the Minister for Finance … is necessary for all exemptions, Finance is responsible for coordinating necessary actions and must be informed at an early stage if an exemption to the Act is being sought.

Mr Tanner’s letter says: ‘Due to the late completion of the preparatory work for the first release sites, including the acquisition of network and geospatial tools, there has been insufficient time to refer the main works to your committee.’ The National Broadband Network has been on this government’s agenda since the government was elected in 2007, and yet the minister for finance cannot even find the time to deliver a letter to the committee in sufficient time for it to do its work.

But Minister Tanner is not the only minister at fault in this. Minister Conroy’s refusal to release the NBN implementation study highlights once again his determination to avoid scrutiny of Labor’s $43 billion National Broadband Network. The threshold at which government projects have to be presented to the Public Works Committee is $16 million. That is a drop in the ocean compared to $43 billion. Minister Conroy refuses to release key documents and he refuses to undertake any cost-benefit analysis. Twice in the last two days we have seen him refuse to comply with a Senate order to release the full report. He has refused to release a scientific study from the CSIRO that he publicly relied on. So the Australian Financial Review released it for him, after a protracted battle to obtain it under FOI, revealing that the document was only seven pages long. Now, even Minister Conroy, who has to read his question time answers from his computer so that he gets not one word wrong, will never, surely, be able to say to us that he did not have time to read a document that is seven pages long—not only that; it used Wikipedia as a key source. His demand that we not speak on his bill is also absolutely bizarre, given that sectors of our community want to know what is in the bill and how it is going to operate.

So last year Minister Tanner bypassed the Public Works Committee with a similar motion, but at least he informed us in writing. But today, and this is no stuff-up or coincidence, when it comes to the NBN, this government is using every trick in the book to avoid scrutiny, and as a member of the highly respected Public Works Committee I take great exception to that. I would like to ask all ministers of this government, keen though they are to avoid any degree of scrutiny whatsoever, to look to what they are expending, see if this is a good use of government money and then allow the Public Works Committee to undertake its use of scrutiny or exemption, as the case may be, and make a reasoned decision about what is the best way to do its work. We do not want ministers standing in the way of— (Time expired)