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

Thank you, Senator Ryan—I will recall that. Senator Ryan interjected, and I know that interjections are disorderly, but his interjection was very pertinent in this case, because the highlight of Senator Conroy’s career was when his mentor, Robert Ray, recognised how talented he was. He referred to him as a ‘factional dalek’ with an inability to see any other side of a position. Robert Ray’s referring to Senator Conroy as a factional dalek— if I recall correctly, he may even have referred to him as a ‘dysfunctional factional dalek’—shows that Senator Conroy has been spending far too much time doing the numbers for his own preselection, getting rid of Kevin Rudd and various things like that and not enough time looking at the integrity of this legislation.

I remind the Australian people once again that I am talking about a minister whose lowlight so far—though I expect there are still lower lights yet to come—was his saying on national television that this bill had nothing to do with the NBN. The bill refers to the NBN 62 times; yet, according to the minister, it has nothing to do with the NBN. What further evidence do we need that we cannot take this government or this minister at their word and that we should not be passing bills like this in an unamended form? That would be wrong.

I want to refer to principle, because some of us hold principle high in the carriage of our duties. I do not think it is right, the previous coalition government having sold Telstra—a fully integrated telecommunications organisation—to the Australian people at a cost of many billions of dollars and to use that money to repay a previous Labor government’s debt, that as soon as Labor gets back into government and is struggling for an agenda it tries to enact legislation which creates another telecommunications monopoly in the hands of a government and which forces Telstra to divest itself of a very big part of its business if it wants to remain competitive in the telecommunications industry.

The principal of this is wrong, and it has been demonstrated again and again that governments cannot run businesses. We accept that governments may fill the void where competition fails, but we should have competition out there; we should have people producing as much as they possibly can and providing as many services as they can in a competitive environment. This government’s proposal will not do that. It will not provide a competitive environment, because the government will set the terms and conditions and the Australian people will not be able to get their money back because of the grubby deal that was done 24 hours ago between the Greens and their alliance partners, the Labor Party.