Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

We have signed ourselves up for an $11 billion gratuity to Telstra. We have ‘come in spinner’ to Telstra. The reason we have done that, the reason our nation is going to go further into hock beyond the $147 billion gross that we currently have outstanding, is that the Labor Party are desperately trying to find a raison d’etre. They are trying to find some semblance of an issue, a fig leaf, to go to the election on and so they are prepared to pay any price, and they paid any price when they paid this. This is the deal made in heaven for Telstra and it is the deal made in hell for the Australian taxpayer, who now has to kick the tin basically for picking up a lease. They have picked up a lease and we are going to pay for it. When they picked up the lease they lost their protection. When we drill down through ‘Universal Service Obligation Co.’ we can see that they have gone out and privatised the guarantee of this chamber to look after Australians. They know when to privatise something. They have privatised responsibility. That is what they privatised. They have privatised public responsibility.

What is the grand amount the government is putting towards this? We see it is $50 million in the forward estimates. What a wonderful day for Australia. We have just been held over a barrel and flogged. This is what has happened to us in this deal and Telstra are grinning all the way to the bank. This is not a purchase. We are not buying a new company here. The government is leasing a hole in the ground and the rent is going to cost it $5 billion. It is handing over the obligations whereby this party sought to protect customers in the universal service obligation. The government is doing that—and then giving what? Fifty million in 2012-13 and 2013-14.

What is in this for Australia? What is in this for Australia is a grinning Prime Minister who can go to the door and say, ‘Because you do not quite understand the complexities of this deal, you’re going to believe me that it’s a good deal,’ just like you believed him when he said that the ETS was the greatest moral challenge of our time, just like you believed him when he  said he was going to have a war on obesity, just like you believed him when he said he would keep the price of groceries down and just like when you believed him in so many of his other false statements.