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

There are only two ways in which fear is permeating the debate about the National Broadband Network. The first way is that Labor backbenchers have been so fearful that they, as Senator Cameron says, are in a zombie like stance, unable to say what they really think and unable to tell the truth about the National Broadband Network. The second way in which fear is being used by the Labor Party to permeate this debate is the suggestion that anyone who disagrees with Labor’s National Broadband Network plan is, they say, a National Broadband Network sceptic. They attempt to silence through fear. Well, not so. The coalition says, ‘Australians deserve access to faster and cheaper broadband, but not Labor’s way.’

Back to the zombie backbenchers. Senator Bilyk was criticising previous speakers in this debate for not knowing what their constituents want. If Senator Bilyk knows her party’s policy on the National Broadband Network, she is not doing all that well in explaining it. Let’s see what happens with the policy zombies in that respect. Senator Bilyk said—and I would hope that Hansard does not correct this—that the Labor Party’s policy was to roll out ‘speeds of up to 100 megabytes’ to 93 per cent of Australians. If she actually knew the policy that she is supposed to be spruiking with no dissent from her position in the backbench, it is actually to deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits to 93 per cent of Australia—megabits versus megabytes. It might sound like a typo, but there is actually an eightfold difference between megabits and megabytes. Labor has promised 100 megabits and—guess what?—eight bits make up a byte. Bits are smaller than bytes. If Senator Bilyk thinks that her party’s policy is to deliver 100 megabytes, then she had better tell the minister that he is about to spend eightfold more than $43 billion on the National Broadband Network. That is when I start to quake in fear. I hope that the Hansard reflects what Senator Bilyk said: ‘-ytes’ not ‘-its’.

In terms of the National Broadband Network itself, Senator Conroy’s earlier comments to the Senate in the context of the water infrastructure are pertinent:

The government is determined that the investment ... will result in value for money: fit-for-purpose projects which best provide for a viable and sustainable future ... Comprehensive due diligence assessment of business cases is necessary and involves rigorous analysis against technical, socioeconomic and environmental data.

There are a couple of things about that. Firstly, Senator Conroy said to the Senate today that in due course, once the government has received NBN Co.’s business case, it will release ‘a raft’ of information about the National Broadband Network. A raft of information is not the same as the business case. A raft of information from this government is likely to be riddled with holes. Minister Conroy will release information that he is happy for us to see and that he wants the public to think about but he will not reveal the truth, because the government is in the business of not being accountable and of hiding the truth. If Minister Conroy were to do as he said to the Senate the government was determined to do with water infrastructure spending, he would ensure that the National Broadband Network would deliver value for money. Tell that to the Tasmanians who have demonstrated by turning away rather than taking it up—the 10 per cent of Tasmanians who have taken up the National Broadband Network in Tasmania.

Question agreed to.