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

I take the interjection, Senator Ludlam. Remember they are punching this one back out. Even they say they are going to sell it again. For them to sell it, it has to get a commercial return. If it is going to get a commercial return, you are going to be paying far more for your phone calls than what they put down. This is the reality: even they are not saying that they are going to hold on to this. They believe they can punt this product back out. It is all starting to collapse in on itself. It just does not make any sense. Why would you risk so much of our nation’s money; why would you not just borrow it and invest it in the bank? It is just beyond belief that, on the most basic principles, we will be charging down this path. This is the most substantial capital infrastructure project in our nation’s history not by reason of its merit but by reason of what it is going to cost us.

When people say, ‘Compare it to a hospital,’ you cannot. One is there to save people’s lives; the other is there as an alternative product to products that are already available and, what is more, it could be done at a vastly cheaper rate. These are the discrepancies. As an accountant you would ask: what technical capacities do you have to roll this thing out? I think we need in excess of about 25,000 technicians to work on this. We have, I think, about 8,000. Where are these people going to come from? How is this going to work? Is this something that just goes on forever because we do not have the capacity to actually deliver it in a technical form? These are the sorts of things that we need transparency about and that we need to have laid on the table. Why do we not have this information?

As an accountant you would start looking at the track record of the person who is about to go down this path. You would ask the question: what was your role in previous enterprises and how you have gone so that we get a sense of competency and comfort about where you are and that you are not taking yourselves down a blind alley to be quietly strangled? The government’s competencies are clearly betrayed in the ceiling insulation debacle, where we spent $1½ billion putting fluffy stuff in the ceilings for the rats and mice to urinate on and then spent another billion dollars trying to get it back out again whilst 190 houses caught on fire and, unfortunately and tragically, four people lost their lives. Their competencies were reflected in the costs blow-out in the Building the Education Revolution program—for what purpose we do not know. There was no cost control whatsoever. Their competencies are reflected in the $900 cheques. Their competencies are reflected in the fact that we have just had the biggest deficit in our nation’s history. Their competencies are reflected in the fact that we now have the biggest gross debt in our nation’s history. These are the competencies of this client who wants to build this telephone network—broadband network. Bells are ringing in the Australian nation now. We have people turning up from Mexico saying, ‘This is perverse, where are you people off to?’ We have senior telecom illuminati from Japan turning up and saying, ‘We just don’t know where you people are off to.’

All of a sudden it is starting to dawn on the Australian people that this is not for free; this is borrowed money and borrowed money demands a return and you are not going to get it from this. So you are going to have to try to work out a way to manipulate the process to create a monopoly so that with a monopoly you can demand a return. Who pays for that? It is the same person who currently cannot afford the power in their house. It is the person who cannot afford the food in their trolley. It is the person who cannot afford to keep themselves warm in winter and cool in summer. It is the person who is struggling with the fuel bills. They are the people who end up paying for all of this. It is our job here to protect those people, because those are the basic necessities of life. They are important. People are voting with their feet when this thing is tested. People are not going for the wider suites and broadband nirvana; they are going for the basic service, because cash is king in people’s lives and they want to make sure they protect that.

What is the process in this groundhog day that the Labor Party have presented to us? As I walked out the door, I heard the minister say, ‘It is time for the coalition to tell the truth.’ What a perverse statement. This is all about trying to get the truth out. This is about us in the coalition trying to grab what details we can on behalf of the Australian people to clearly spell out the case of whether this is a prudent investment or an extremely dangerous frolic. There is the frivolous nature that is demonstrated by the minister when you debate him on national television. He talks over you all the time and he tries these oblique sorts of giggling references as if it does not matter. This is other people’s money. There will be some lady at a checkout who will work late into the night to pay tax to pay this debt back. There will be a manual worker laying bricks to pay the tax to pay this debt back. There will be someone in an office who will work late into the night to pay the tax to pay this debt back. They have a right to know what this is all about. They have the right to know how much longer into the night they have to work to pay for this and we have a responsibility to try to tell them. The government have an obligation to be transparent, open and honest and to lay the details before the chamber—before the Senate—and before the parliament for the proper ventilation of this.

This is something that is remiss. This is the crux of the issue, this is why the government are so sensitive about it and here it is: the NBN is the reason the Labor government is in government. That is what they put forward. It is the reason the Independents backed them. The NBN is the key in this house of cards and they know full well that if we pull this card out, if this card falls, the whole show comes down. That is why Minister Conroy was sweating so profusely on television this morning. It is not by reason of the fact that he managed to play soccer, have a shower, put a suit on and come up. It is by reason of the fact that all of a sudden it is starting to become apparent that he is not across the detail and the whole substance of this. The whole reason that led to the government being formed is going to come crashing down around them.

You can always take them to the place where they are weakest, because you take them to the detail. In the details they struggle. In the details they drown. In the details they are found lacking. They are the people with the big brush strokes who cannot get the fine art of the detail right. They never have and never could. When they cannot get the fine art right, what do they do?