Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Of course, that is why the sign-up rate is so low. But I will not continue to answer the foolish interjections of the Labor Party, because they are designed to distract from the fundamental proposition that is before this chamber.

The fundamental proposition is this: that this information is readily available. There is no excuse for not tabling it right now in this chamber. There is no excuse for why it cannot be provided to this chamber other than the gross cynicism of this government and the gross cynicism of this minister in only delivering it after the parliament has risen so that we cannot analyse it and we cannot look through it to see how it matches up with this considerable piece of legislation.

Of course, this morning Senator Joyce did an absolute demolition derby on the minister. In the media the minister tried to say that this legislation did not refer to the NBN. Of course it does—62 times. Minister Albanese refers to the NBN already in the second paragraph of his second reading speech. But the minister who is actually responsible does not even know what is in his own legislation, what his colleague in the other place has said and the consequences of that. The government has claimed, along with the Green alliance and Messrs Windsor and Oakeshott, that this would be a transparent government and that we are now in a new paradigm. I will tell you what is new about this paradigm: that no other government in the history of Australia has treated the Senate with such gross and blatant contempt in withholding information about a $43,000 million infrastructure project.

To think that it has got this far without a business plan and without an implementation plan is spooky enough in itself. But—