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

You can work it out. All that the implementation study tells us is that it is a very optimistic forecast of what the National Broadband Network will cost. Yet there is still no mapping and no empirical analysis of the benefit of this sounds-good National Broadband Network.

But, if you dare to question the National Broadband Network, you are branded, just as you were branded a climate change sceptic when you dared to question the Prime Minister’s solutions to so-called climate change. If you dare to question the National Broadband Network, you are branded as a National Broadband Network sceptic. Why should you not be so when thus far the only thing that we have seen from the government is the $25 million taxpayer funded implementation study, which is very robust when it comes to how much this thing is going to cost but very light on telling us the benefits?

The implementation study projects take-up rates of between 70 and 90 per cent, so it is suggesting that between 70 and 90 per cent of Australians will take up fibre to the home. For example, it suggests that if 70 per cent of Australians take up the National Broadband Network and there is a small blow-out in costs then the profit—I wonder if it is super profit; no, of course not, because this is NBN Co.—will be in the range of some three to five per cent. The study then goes on to say that if 80 per cent of Australians take up fibre to the home and there is no blow-out in costs then NBN Co. will realise some six to seven per cent in profit. Then it goes even further and suggests that if 90 per cent of Australians take up the National Broadband Network and costs come in—yes, you have guessed it—slightly below par, slightly below what is predicted, then NBN Co. will make a profit of some eight or nine per cent, which of course is not a super profit in the mind of the Rudd government, because after all this is a government that clearly has two standards. This is an implementation study that is very conservative on the cost and totally light on when it comes to benefits.

If you look at the broken promises and the botched delivery of this government thus far, Australians are entitled to question what is looking set to happen with the second round of the National Broadband Network. Let us not forget that today, finally, this government has fessed up. Yes, it is going to break its promise made to the Australian business community, supposedly, about the Do Not Call Register. It sounded good to promise the business community that they would not be bothered anymore if they did not want to be by unsolicited business calls, but the government forgot to do what it promised to do, which was to deliver evidence based policy with a Do Not Call Register. It did not map who was going to benefit from the bill and it did not map at what cost that bill would come. So they waltz into parliament this week needing coalition support to deliver their breaking of their promise but more importantly to deliver ongoing registration for households that want to continue on the Do Not Call Register.

All that waste could have been avoided. The Australian public is entitled to continue to ask the Rudd government what it is going to deliver in terms of the National Broadband Network, how it is going to deliver it, when it is going to deliver it and what they are going to have to pay to enjoy the benefits. They are all the more entitled to ask that when you look at the Rudd government’s record of broken promises, botched delivery, waste and mismanagement.