Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I will try to be as succinct, time-wise, as Senator Fisher was.

My position is unchanged from when this matter was debated a year ago. I believe we need to have a structural separation of Telstra. It was a fundamental mistake for Telstra to be privatised and to be structured in the way that it was. It was anticompetitive, it was bad for consumers and it was bad for the development of telecommunications in this nation. We know that there has been market failure when it comes to the whole issue of broadband, particularly in the regions. That is why I supported the suspension of standing orders, so that this debate could be further ventilated.

My position has always been that if we have amendments passed to the structural separation legislation that ensure a meaningful role for the ACCC and for the Trade Practices Act to apply in key areas when it comes to the issue of competition and the public interest—that the NBN is checked vis-a-vis the Trade Practices Act—then I think that we should look at passing that legislation. I also think it is important in the context of this particular bill that there is adequate scrutiny of this project. I cannot understand why the government is prepared to send the whole issue of carbon pricing to the Productivity Commission, but will not let them look at the efficiency and implementation of having an NBN. This scrutiny should not be in the terms that the member for Wentworth, Mr Turnbull, has set out, because I believe they are too narrow. In fairness to Mr Turnbull, I have put those concerns to him and I think he is being quite flexible about having broader terms of reference which look at the issues of the social benefit of having a National Broadband Network, the market failure in regional Australia and the nation-building benefits of having an NBN. I think that if you have broader terms of reference that are not constrained to a mere narrow cost-benefit analysis then the Productivity Commission could add to this debate, could add to the information and could ensure that there is better implementation of a national network.

I have to express my absolute disappointment with the government in relation to the lack of information provided. So far the information we have received from the government on the NBN has been about as reliable as dial-up. It has been slow, it has been patchy and it has been infuriatingly unreliable. It is ironic that this entire debate is about the creation of a world-class communications network and yet the government has been providing Third World standards of communication when it comes to this particular debate.

I think that the government is making a fundamental mistake not to ensure that the business plan is provided to us as soon as possible. However, what it means—and I know that Senator Abetz is listening intently to this, as I listened intently to his contribution—