Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Table the documents today; I will give you the debate on Monday. Table the documents today and I will happily debate you on the detail of the legislation all of next week. Give us the information to make sure the debate is as informed as it possibly can be. Do not hide the documents from us. Do not treat us with contempt. Do not treat us like the mushrooms that are fed the proverbial. Empower every member of this Senate to make a fully informed contribution to a debate that comes back to, at its heart, the massive expenditure in Australia surrounding a $43 billion program. This is not something inconsequential, it is not insignificant. This legislation that is proposed is a major reform and it has major implications for one of Australia’s largest publicly listed companies, namely, Telstra. It has major implications as to the way the communications market in this country will work for the foreseeable future and it has major implications for the Australian taxpayers who have been roped in as compulsory shareholders, all 22 million of them, in this great big government experiment. They have all got thousands of dollars on the line, each and every Australian taxpayer. They have thousands of their own dollars on the line in this government experiment and they are going to be asked to pay and pay and pay again, either through a business model that is quite likely to need propping up or through a business model that is going to charge them all higher fees to access the types of services that they want.

We have had many conflicting arguments from the government on this. We heard Senator Collins, when she spoke on the suspension of standing orders, argue that this debate around the telecommunications legislation is not at all about the NBN. We had Senator Conroy, in a speech that was 95 per cent about the NBN, saying that the NBN has nothing to do with the substance of the bill. Senator Lundy also pretends it is inconsequential and incidental, yet she goes on and argues at great length about the NBN. It is either one or the other. Either it is incidental and inconsequential or it is at the heart of the bill.

We can see—and Senator Joyce highlighted it well and truly and Senator Abetz highlighted it too—that the NBN is at the heart of this bill. This bill might do other things, but the NBN is very much at the heart of it. This bill is designed to help drive the NBN. There is no denying that from the government. It is a core part of the bill. We know that because within the explanatory memorandum the NBN is referenced on some 204 occasions. Within the bill itself the NBN is referenced on some 65 occasions. Between the two documents, on 269 occasions the NBN is referenced. It is crystal clear to anybody that the NBN is at the heart of this bill.

We also have Senator Lundy and Senator Conroy trying to pretend that the legislation is all about better competition. I look forward, when we get to the legislation, to hearing from them just how it is that restricting the capacity and the remit of the ACCC to give the usual thorough consideration to the types of deals that the government is trying to stitch up between NBN and Telstra is about competition. Restricting the capacity of the ACCC can only stifle competition. Senator Lundy, who has now left the chamber, need not worry because when we get to the substance of the legislation we will have amendments. We have plenty of amendments, many of them that go to the heart of making sure that we get fair dinkum competition out of anything that is ultimately passed by the Senate.

We had Senator Conroy coming in here and talking about the build on the trial sites that NBN Co. is currently undertaking. He likes to talk about those trial sites and throws about figures of an 80 per cent take-up rate. He throws enormous figures around. What he fails to explain, because this is a part of the deceit of the government, is what that means. What it means is that a householder has said, when the government has come along merrily laying fibre down the street, ‘Yes, I am happy for you to connect that fibre to my home for free.’ That is it. That is all those figures that Senator Conroy gives mean. Nobody has signed up to receive a service and nobody has signed up to pay anything, to download anything, through this fibre. Nobody has signed up to use the fibre in these trial sites. They have just said, ‘You can connect it to my house.’ They do not even know how much it is going to cost because the government has given no price, no plan and no details. Do you know what? That is at the heart of the motion we are debating. Plans, details and costs are the things that would be contained, I imagine, in the NBN business plan. These are the things that retailers in the telco space and users of telecommunications should reasonably and realistically expect to know about. These are certainly the things that the opposition believes we as senators should be entitled to know about before we are asked to vote on critical legislation.

Senator Lundy also throws up allegations and questions, as does Senator Conroy, about our commitment to seeing better broadband delivered in some of the suburbs that they love to name. Senator Lundy was certainly debating Senator Humphries’s arguments for better broadband in key parts of the ACT. I will tell you what: our commitment is to build better broadband services but to build better broadband services in the regions, in the towns, in the communities where there are black spots and to build them in places that are underserviced. This is our commitment. It is not to go and overbuild across the entire country, not to close down existing cable networks and not to close down everything that is already there but to actually make sure that the taxpayer dollars that are used are actually used to deliver services to the people who have got no services at present. You want to overbuild the entire network and you want to overbuild even the member for Wentworth’s electorate, which is extremely well serviced already. I have noticed some Labor members highlighting and waving around maps saying how well serviced the member for Wentworth’s electorate is with broadband at present. I have seen them out there at door stops waving the maps around. It is your government that wants to go up and down every street of Wentworth and roll out fibre. How is that good use of taxpayers’ money? How is it good use to go and overlay and rebuild over the top of something that is already there? That is the plan of your government. You want to do that right throughout Wentworth.