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

I can understand why Senator Lundy is emotive about this, because this is the reason the Labor Party are in power. If this NBN falls flat on its face—and that seems awfully likely—then decisions will have to be made about whether they deserve the mantle of running the government. That is the decision that will go back to the people. This is why this debate is front and centre.

If I were on the Labor Party frontbench I would like to be present when Senator Conroy makes his way to the cabinet meeting so I could ask him where on earth this is going. This thing is coming off the rails. People are losing faith in you. We have even got statements now of concern by the Independents and the Greens about the lack of transparency. You lack transparency when you do not want people to understand what you are up to and you are trying to hide the facts. The Labor Party are hiding facts. They are treating the Australian people once more—it is like groundhog day—like fools.

Currently the minister is, for all intents and purposes, in contempt of the Senate. That is how far this thing has descended. He refuses to acknowledge the will of the Senate as conducted by a vote. Why would we have this contemptible approach? Because they are terrified of the transparency and the consequences that will bring to their government. This precarious and unstable process has brought us the NBN, which is starting to look awfully like the school halls program, the ceiling insulation program, the war on obesity, the war against inflation and the other wars and revolutions we have got. It is a reflection of the manifestation of the same approach we saw when they could not even hold their commitment to the Australian people to keep the person who was elected as the Prime Minister. They had to remove him.

This is the substance and the structure of the management critique of the people who are going to build a new telephone company. Whether you like it or not, if you are a taxpayer in Australia you are going to be a shareholder in this. Whether you like it or not, if you are a citizen of this nation you will now have this process forced on you. It is not something that you are desirous of because it will save you. They painted a false and misleading picture for the Australian people at the election and in this point in time they are not able to back it up with the detail.

When are the Labor Party going to deliver the detail that we and the Australian people have a right to know? When are you going to have a minister who understands what is in his own legislation and who is not so flippant and casual with the facts, like he is flippant and casual with the money? When will Minister Albanese in the other place concur with the comments made by Minister Conroy on television this morning? Minister Conroy said this has no relationship to the NBN, but Minister Albanese says it does.

When are you going to be upfront and truthful about the exact implications of section 577BA? If you did not put in that section, those issues most likely would not be compliant with section 51(1) of the Trade Practices Act. If you had been transparent and had not put in that clause, they would not be compliant with section 51(1). Why did you have to say, regardless of what might appear, these things are going to be compliant with section 51(1)? You said, ‘We are going to deem these things to be compliant with the Trade Practices Act,’ when quite obviously they will not be. But you do not know that, because you do not know the details. All you know is the text message that came via your phone. You never know the detail. You never sit back and actually read what you are about to deliver.

We have to make demands of the Senate—and I hope we get the support. Either you support a transparent and accountable government, especially with the largest infrastructure project in our nation, or you do not. Either you respect the value of money or you do not. As an accountant I spent a lot of time with people who did not respect money and I saw those people at the end of the day living in their son’s or daughter’s caravan because they lost their house.