Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The first place we should start while you are still in the chamber is with the wondrous event where Australia is going to go down the path of investing part of $43 billion to roll out a program that did not even start with a cost-benefit analysis. I note that the key placement of the speech was the NBN. The NBN is a wondrous thing—the largest infrastructure program in Australia—but the first question one has to ask is: what price are we prepared to pay for this? Everybody would love broadband, but at what price? What price do you want to put on it? How much more money do you want this crowd to borrow from the Chinese? How much more money do you want this crowd to borrow from the people of the Middle East? How much more money do you want our nation to borrow so that we can build something that a lot of people do not even really want, already have or have to a lesser degree? This is a complete indulgence. They invested $43 billion without doing a cost-benefit analysis—that is, for those who want further information, they did not work out whether it pays for itself.

Why would they worry about that? After all, it is the Australian people who have to pay the money back. But the cornerstone of the Governor-General’s speech was the money that is going to be spent—money that will be borrowed from overseas and then spent on a dubious project which has the possibility of being out of date before it is even finished. People say that we will have fibre to every house. No, you will not. You are going to have fibre to houses and areas where there is fibre already. They talk about fibre to schools and fibre to hospitals. We do not need to spend $43 billion on that. There is a complete paucity of involvement in crucial decisions and a lack of financial discipline. Any discussion about coalition costings will pale into insignificance compared with where this debacle is going to end up.

You have to remember that the government that sits behind the building of the NBN is the same government that gave you the Building the Education Revolution for school halls. That is the acumen that will be behind this. They are the same people who managed to burn down 190 houses. They are the same people who gave you a record deficit. They are the same people who now give you record debt. These are the people who are going to build the NBN, and this apparently is the cornerstone of Labor Party policy. In fact, it is the cornerstone that apparently attracted the Independents. So this is it. This is the litmus test, and we will see where this nation goes. Many people ask, ‘Why should we spend $43 billion to download movies more quickly? Is that what we are going to get? What is the actual benefit in my life and in my house of borrowing this money? Even if we do get fibre into my house, what is the actual benefit?’

We read in the paper that people have said, ‘Build me a railway line. Build me a road. Build me something that has a real outcome in my life, an outcome for the aggregate capacity of our nation to produce goods.’ If we build lines to the coalfields, if we build lines to deliver wheat, if we build lines for greater intercapital connectivity by rail and by road, we increase the productive capacity of this nation. But you have to ask a serious question: what is this $43 billion investment in upgrading a telephone line going to do for the country? What is the involvement of the incremental increase in speed in the economy?

The other question you have to ask is: why are you putting in this request for the Christmas tree when you do not have the money, when you actually have to go overseas and borrow it? The final question you have to ask yourself is: how much more money do you want to owe to the Chinese? You have to pay it back. They are not giving it to you. How much more money do you want to owe to people in the Middle East? You have to pay them back. God help you if you cannot pay them back. If you had a bad bank manager, that would pale into insignificance compared to not being able to pay back the people that this nation is borrowing this money from.

That was one of the cornerstones and we also heard about this new Parramatta to Epping railway line. I am always fascinated about the Parramatta to Epping railway line because I found out that the first time that they promised it was in 1823. They have been promising it ever since and back out it has come. When in doubt, promise the Parramatta to Epping railway line. Will it get built? No, it will not. What we have to do in this term of parliament is actually put the Labor Party’s hands on the hot plate and see whether they actually do any of these things that they are supposed to do.