Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion is about the Gillard government’s secrecy surrounding the business plan and its total bloody-minded and unacceptable insistence on lack of transparency for the National Broadband Network. Let us start with the business case. The Gillard government is refusing to present it to the Australian people so that their elected representatives in this chamber can utilise that business case in their consideration of the legislation that the government wants this chamber and the other place to consider in relation to the National Broadband Network. Today we learn that the government has commissioned an independent think tank to second-guess the business case. And Minister Conroy tells us today that, no, we cannot have anything in relation to the deliberations of the independent think tank.

Why does the government decide to hire corporate advisers to second-guess NBN Co.’s business plan? It is starting to smack of a government that knows not its way. It knows the ends. But, as the member for Wentworth has said, the ends are not necessarily sufficient to justify the means. Yet this government seems to think that it can get away with that method to its National Broadband Network madness. If the ends are to justify the means, this government is making it up as it goes along: ‘Let’s hire an independent think tank—that’ll buy us some more time.’ Is that what the government is proposing to do with the ACCC’s deliberations on the points of interconnectivity? That is about where the new bits will link up to the old bits? Will the government release publicly, as soon as they are completed, the ACCC’s deliberations about points of interconnectivity and, if not, why not? Is the government going to commission an independent think tank to look at those ACCC deliberations in some attempt to buy further time before the sector concerned gets the bad news verifying their concern that there will not be enough points with which to interconnect in order to sustain competition in the sector? Is that where this government is going to go with yet another important piece in the NBN jigsaw puzzle?

The government opposes a cost-benefit analysis by the Productivity Commission, yet the government has decided that the Productivity Commission is the body most able and most suitable to assess ultimately whether or not the NBN should be privatised. At the same time, the government decided that a House of Representatives committee—a government controlled committee—is the appropriate vehicle to examine the NBN. At the very least, the government seemed by that move to be accepting a scintilla of a possibility that the NBN should be subject to some scrutiny right now, but it hived it off to a government controlled House of Representatives committee to do so. The timing of that announcement was interesting. It was announced late yesterday and by that time the government would have received notice of a motion—it was on the Notice Paper yesterday—that was to be moved in this place today by Senators Ludlam and Fisher, me, to set up an inquiry into the National Broadband Network by the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee. How interesting is that coincidence! It smacks of a government that has recognised, ‘Oh, my gosh, we can’t hold back this entire tide of scrutiny,’ so it sets up a half-baked, government controlled House of Representatives committee that will at least be in some way an antidote to what will one day most likely be a Senate committee set up to inquiry into the ongoing National Broadband Network madness. That is what it continues to appear to be at this stage.

Having conceded that it is appropriate to allow the NBN to be subject to at least some degree of scrutiny by setting up the House of Representatives committee, the government continues to defy each and every attempt by the opposition, the crossbenches and minor parties and the Australian public to have some access to some information that shows there is a method to Minister Conroy’s NBN madness. Minister Conroy defied a Senate order that he produce by yesterday three sets of documents relating to the NBN: the red book, with the blacked-out bits in it so that it can be read; the government’s criteria for choosing every one of the early release sites; and, finally, the ACTU heads of agreement for the so-called enterprise bargaining principles that the minister says will ensure there will not be a wages blow-out in the sector. On the latter, it is interesting, at the very least, that the CEPU has forecast its intention to seek industry-wide wage increases of five per cent per annum over a three-year period. This is telling because it is the CEPU’s membership, plus some others, who will largely be involved in the 25,000-odd jobs that the government says are going to be created in the rollout of the National Broadband Network, not the 400 or so people working for NBN Co. That was the minister’s red herring in an attempt to say there will not be a wages blow-out in the rollout of the NBN.

The wages to be paid to those workers matter most to the cost of the rollout of the NBN. How interesting, then, that what we do know about the implementation study is that, in the budgeted $43 billion spend, the figuring on wage increases in the sectors concerned was some 2½ per cent per year. So the CEPU’s campaign is at best double the figure underpinning the budget in the implementation study for the rollout of the NBN. Is it in conformity with the ACTU agreed enterprise bargaining principles or not? We do not know because Minister Conroy will not give us those enterprise bargaining principles. Given the government’s breach of its promise to female workers to support women in the pay equity test case and given that the government is most likely to be forced to trample on its promise to support low-paid workers in a test case for which it set up provisions in the Fair Work Act, I think that unless the Australian people have seen a copy of the ACTU heads of agreement they are entitled to speculate as to whether or not that heads of agreement shows that the government is also intent on undercutting any campaigns for wage increases in the sectors responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network.

This government has not got the courage to face up to its promises. This government does not even have the courage to tell the Australian people, and in particular the Australian workers that they pretend to represent, that they do not have the courage of their convictions. In fact, they ain’t got the cash for their convictions. That is what it is all about. And unless and until we see the ACTU heads of agreement why would we not think that they show anything other than the government is going to turn their backs on construction workers as well for fear of otherwise not being able to deliver the National Broadband Network on time and on budget.

Give us some transparency, give us some accountability and give us some means with which to judge that the means will in fact deliver the ends. Thank you very much.