Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add some brief remarks as well. Seeing as how Senator Abetz’s motion has been contingent on the one that I moved earlier this week, with the support of Senator Fielding and the coalition, that the government put these documents in the public domain, my concerns are very similar to those that have just been expressed by Senator Xenophon. I want to take us back 12 months ago, and the term ‘groundhog day’ has been used a couple of times so far this morning, and not without reason, I think. This motion seeks to delay—and I do not think I am verballing Senator Abetz in suggesting that this is what this motion is for—any further debate on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill or on anything else related to the NBN until these documents are put into the public domain.

Just a little bit over a year ago, a motion was put up to delay that very same bill—although it was dated 2009 at that stage—because we had not yet seen the request for proposals documentation on the four-point $4½ billion NBN proposal that the government took to the last election. So we had a motion in the Senate that would have prevented the government from advancing the CCS bill or anything else related to the National Broadband Network until that request for proposals document had been put into the public domain.The one that we are discussing today did not even exist then. NBN Co. probably only had a handful of staff working for it at the time, and the NBN Co. business plan was not even a glimmer in Mr Quigley’s eye at that stage, so of course the Senate did not propose to hang up the debate on the bill. The Senate demanded it; it was an order for production of documents that went through, and the documents were not handed over. In fact, that proposals documentation requested has not been handed over to this day. The debate is still being pursued. As I think one of the coalition senators—Senator Birmingham, I think—quite rightly pointed out, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy persuaded former Prime Minister Rudd to simply shift a decimal place across, and we came out with something that was worth effectively 10 times more—and we have still never seen the original requested proposals documentation.

The Senate demanded it; it did not get it, and at the time, just over a year ago now, we argued two things. The first was that the two issues were separate. In other words, the proposed structural reform to the telecommunications sector would probably, subject to some other concerns that we had, be good public policy even if we were not proposing to build an NBN. We argued that, even if this proposal to bring fibre to everyone’s home—which obviously was not contemplated then—was not on the table, it was still a very good idea to begin to fix the mess that was caused when the coalition, against the will of the rest of the parties in this place, moved to the third tranche of privatisation of Telstra and sold it, leaving us with this structurally out-of-balance market which we are still dealing with now. We suggested that it would be a very good idea for the debate on the CCS bill to proceed a year ago, and here we are in November 2010 having the same debate, with the opposition seeking to delay passage of that bill based on another document that has come forward and using, in fact, an order for production that the Greens moved.

The second thing that we argued is that deadlocks of the kind which we have seen again yesterday and today need to be broken. The minister has committed, I think, something very serious in denying an order for production of documents of the Australian Senate and effectively thumbing his nose at this chamber. This deadlock must be broken.