Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is on steroids, as Senator Boyce says. The mismanagement and maladministration of this project is going from bad to worse. To think that this government has attempted to bully the Independent senators—the crossbench senators—into a seven-year confidentiality agreement, where they will not disclose information to members of the public, members of their families or anybody else based on a private viewing of that business plan, is a disgrace. It is a national disgrace. It is worse than a joke. I am very pleased that, to date, those senators have not been bullied into going down that track. They are acting in the public interest. To think that the government would even consider a seven-year confidentiality agreement is absolutely appalling.

What evidence do we have either that there was no business plan in the first place or that they are not following the business plan and the project has not been thought through? We have the evidence. We know what has happened in Tasmania. Tasmania was the first state to have the rollout. What happened in Tasmania? We know that in August last year a joint venture agreement was entered into between the federal government, the state government and Aurora Energy, that state’s energy retailer. There was much publicity and much fanfare. They were throwing their arms around making front page stories in all the Tasmanian media and making the news on TV and radio everywhere. They made heroes of themselves: ‘Joint venture to roll out the NBN’. Guess what has happened: it has collapsed. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, has now agreed and admitted to the abandonment of that joint venture. What we want to know in this place is what costs were involved in the joint venture rollout to date, what agreements were made and what terms and conditions were applied to those agreements. We would like to know. The public would like to know.

This has been going on for 14 to 16 months, and now we have been advised that it has been abandoned by Senator Conroy and Premier David Bartlett. Both governments should be dreadfully ashamed as a result of the collapse. Senator Abetz is concerned about that, as are many other Tasmanians. We are not happy. We want to know what the cost of the rollout is in Tasmania, because the minister refuses to answer. He says time and again that it is on time and on budget, but how nonsensical is that, how ridiculous is that, when you do not know what the time lines are and you do not know what the budget is; he simply refuses to reveal it.