Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I do not mind the interjections, and I am happy to have the debate any time either in here or outside, because when you check the company documents from as late as yesterday that $100 million was not there. I go back to the fact that the Tasmanian NBN Co. Ltd was established and its first board appointed on 13 August 2009 as a wholly owned subsidiary of NBN Co. The government get lots of publicity, they make these grand statements and they put out a press release saying ‘$100 million injected’—past tense—to make you think that it had already been injected into the company and the money spent, when initially the amount was estimated at $700 million.

I have asked in this place—and the minister will not respond—exactly how much the federal government is putting in and how much the state government is putting in. We do not know. The initial announcement made about this was on 8 April last year. We are nearly at the one-year anniversary, and we still do not know how much money has been put in. This is typical of the waste and mismanagement of this government not just on the NBN Co. and the Tasmanian NBN but also on a whole range of other things, whether it is the pink batts fiasco or Building the Education Revolution—I call it ‘the waste revolution’. We want to know. I would like the minister, Senator Conroy, to come clean and say where that $100 million is. It has not been invested. It has not been injected. He should retract his media release of 1 March and stand up, come clean and apologise if that statement is incorrect. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.