George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Dougie, you are my favourite socialist but I never listen to you. They were debating the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill. Senator Conroy, with all that command and authority of his portfolio for which he is so famous, asserted again and again, ‘The National Broadband Network is not even mentioned in the bill that’s being debated before the parliament,’ at which point Senator Barnaby Joyce, who knew a lot more about the bill than did Senator Stephen Conroy, tugged him politely by the elbow and said, ‘Excuse me, there it is.’ At that point, Senator Stephen Conroy’s face blanched. As the saying goes, you had to be there. In fact, the National Broadband Network is referred to not once but 62 times in the bill. But this minister is so in command of his portfolio and speaks with so much authority about the issue that he was not even faintly aware of what was in his own legislation.

Today, in answer to questions, including the question from me, Senator Conroy repeatedly asserted, ‘It is not unreasonable for the cabinet to consider the NBN business plan before it is publicly released,’ ignoring the fact that yesterday the Senate resolved to direct the minister to lay that document and another document, the implementation study, on the table of the Senate by yesterday, and he has refused to do so. He is in open defiance and contempt of an order of the Senate.

This minister is in charge of the biggest infrastructure project in Australian history. On the government’s estimate it is worth $43 billion, which in present values is six times the size of the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme and more than 100 times the cost of the Sydney Opera House. Yet this minister is so incompetent that he has become a laughing stock in the industry, a laughing stock among the commentators and a laughing stock among his colleagues—not just coalition senators but Labor colleagues as well, as anybody who listens to the gossip around these corridors well knows. This minister is a lightweight who is in charge of $43 billion worth of taxpayers’ money. Because of his incompetence, he is not fit to be a minister of the Crown; because of his contempt for the Senate he is not fit to be a senator; yet the Australian people have $43 billion, on a conservative estimate, tied up without the parliament even being able to scrutinise the business plan or the implementation study. Furthermore, there is a committee of this parliament, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, whose specific statutory remit is to examine major public works and this legislation contains a provision expressly excluding the NBN from scrutiny by the parliamentary public works committee without establishing an alternative scrutiny mechanism.

There we have it: a minister who defies with contempt an order of the Senate so as to conceal from scrutiny the business plan and the implementation study, who refuses to do a cost-benefit analysis, who legislates to prevent the parliamentary public works committee from scrutinising the program and yet who does not even know what his own legislation contains. Australia is in dangerous waters when a minister with so much public money under his control is so far out of his depth.