Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Feeney is of course quite proud of masterminding the dirt unit in Victoria—he was the state director down there. He would know a lot about it, and I am sure he recognises that having 100 megabytes per second would be of great benefit for him to smear more people on more internet sites. But it is not your job now, Senator Feeney; your job is to spend taxpayers’ money wisely and prudently. It is not to take staffers out of Mr Brumby’s office and put them into the smear unit—$43 billion is being spent in this country with no cost-benefit analysis, no public business case and no scrutiny. This is an extraordinary circumstance and it is something that I know will alarm the Australian people.

I am someone with an open mind about most things—and you know that, Madam Acting Deputy President. I am sure I can deal with this bill before us. The coalition is going to move a number of amendments with respect to things like competition. We want to ensure the normal operation of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. This is the key legislation that protects the interests of consumers and promotes competition. We want to make sure it applies to the NBN, the government monopoly. This government loves monopolies. It loves monopolising information and taxpayers’ money. But taxpayers need to know whether competition is going to ensue with this proposal.

We also want to make sure that the parliament is allowed to disallow ministerial directions to the ACCC regarding the NBN and Telstra deal. We want to make sure that any ministerial direction to the ACCC regarding the criteria for acceptance of a functional or structural separation undertaking shall be a disallowable instrument. We want to make sure this parliament can continue to have a say, so that this government does not have the last word on everything that transpires in this deal.

We also want to remove some of the sticks. There are carrots—there is $11 billion in cash and $100 million a year for eight years to maintain a network that the government is paying Telstra to get rid of, which is quite extraordinary. I remind the Australian people: Telstra is being paid $9 billion in cash to rip out and sell its old copper line network. But what this government has not acknowledged is that it is contracting Telstra to pay the government $100 million per year for the next eight years to maintain that selfsame network, and that strikes me as quite extraordinary. But it is not extraordinary to this government, which only saw that payment as a failing when it was exposed to the scrutiny of light.

We want to remove the gun-to-the head provisions of theTelecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 which provide ministerial discretion to bar Telstra from bidding for next-generation 4G wireless spectrum—‘Separate or you can’t bid.’ This is the same spectrum that Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has been ridiculing as inefficient and ineffective. But why would the government care who buys the spectrum if it is not going to work properly? We want to remove these provisions, which threaten Telstra with being forced to divest its pay television code and/or its 50 per cent interest in Foxtel if it does not voluntarily structurally separate. This use of the word ‘voluntarily’ reminds me of someone’s going to a Labor Party branch meeting and volunteering to vote the same way all the time. That is what happens in the Labor Party—there is no voice of dissent. As Senator Doug Cameron said, and I think he deserves some credit for belling the cat, there are lobotomised zombies on the other side of the chamber.