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

I can barely speak—I am cut to the quick by Senator Polley’s personal attack on me, saying that Mr Howard did not like me as a minister! After appointing me a minister for nine years, I think Mr Howard had a good idea of my failings and my attributes. Mr Acting Deputy President, I can assure you that Senator Polley will not be a minister for nine months, nine weeks, nine days or even nine hours. Senator Polley, if you want to get into people’s records as minister, I will have you on any day, because you will never get there.

I also heard Senator Polley accuse the opposition leader and next Premier of Tasmania of being the runt of the litter. We did not take any notice of that. Coming from Senator Polley, who would take objection to that? Mr Hodgman, of course, is a member of a very distinguished Tasmanian family. Fancy Senator Polley, who comes from a family that seems to trade political posts and seats in Tasmania, having the guile and the gall to accuse someone else of being a runt of a political leader. Perhaps she should look in a mirror when she wants to make another comment like that.

I have been distracted from the NBN Co., and that is unfortunate, because I wanted to refer to Senator Conroy’s comments yesterday in giving his excuses for not tabling the implementation study. He said:

Putting the study together required a multidisciplinary approach and an enormous and sustained effort, together with extensive shareholder consultation …

This is Senator Conroy saying he has had a delay in dealing with this because he had to have ‘extensive shareholder consultation’. You know who are the shareholders of the NBN Co.? Mr Tanner and—wait for it—Senator Conroy. So he had this huge delay consulting with himself! I can understand that Senator Conroy trying to find a brain in the person he was consulting with may have been difficult, but fancy using that for an excuse for delaying the implementation study!

I also came across recently, thanks to Senator Coonan, a report from back in 2008. I think this is instructive in this NBN Co. discussion. I quote from this news report:

But Senator Conroy said the Government would not contribute more than $4.7 billion, no matter whether the proposal was for an FTTN network or FTTH network—

that is, a fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-home network. The report continues:

“Fibre-to-the-home has some wonderful potential but it is more costly and people have got to build the business case; they can’t expect the Government’s going to give more than $4.7 billion,” he said.

That is Senator Conroy it is quoting. What are the facts? A couple of months later he is putting $43 billion into it—not the $4.7 billion that he said he would not go above. And he is saying there has to be the business case made. We have been saying to him for the last 12 months: ‘Where is your business case?’ He would say, ‘Oh, look, we didn’t do a business case but it’ll all be in the implementation study; you can see it all there.’ We would ask: ‘Where are you going to get the money from, Minister? Who’s going to invest in this? You said that private industry was going to have a 49 per cent share in it; they were going to invest in it.’ ‘It’s all in the implementation study,’ Senator Conroy would say. We would ask him, ‘How is it going to make a profit?’ He would say, ‘Oh, it’s all in the implementation study.’

Yet, here we are, on the verge of new legislation, with the company now up and running, and we have certainly not seen a business case for it. It looks like we are not going to see the implementation study. We will not see it because Senator Conroy has to consult with himself. He has to get Mr Kaiser, no doubt, the government relations officer dealing with the government who owns the company, to give him some advice. I know the sort of advice Mr Kaiser could give—ask the courts in Queensland when he was required to resign. This report highlights the farcical nature of the NBN Co. (Time expired)