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

Sorry—the former Prime Minister’s jumbo jet or whatever he was on with Minister Conroy. It was cooked up there because the previous incarnation had failed. We know that. But the Australian people need to know what is behind it. After all, this is taxpayers’ money that has been invested to create a monopoly situation in which this government will be in control.

If anything should scare the Australian people, it is to give this government—an incompetent government riddled with incompetent ministers who still have their jobs no matter what catastrophic disasters they have given us—control of a monopoly situation. That is not good. It is not good for the Australian people.

It is interesting to note that, for all their rhetoric, flourishes and arguments now, Minister Conroy last year in estimates said that he does not support the structural separation of Telstra. This year, he is implementing legislation which effectively makes the structural separation of Telstra virtually impossible for Telstra to resist because of the damage that would be done to their business if it did not accede to these demands by the government. And why should they accede to them? Well, the government is dangling a bunch of cash for them to accede, virtually pushing them into to.

So there are punitive penalties here, such as not being allowed to bid on other spectrum, wireless spectrum, which Minister Conroy has been laughing at and saying it is not a viable alternative. It is quite an extraordinary situation. When he was in opposition I remember him saying that wireless spectrum was going to cause chickens to lay hardboiled eggs, or something equally ludicrous. It was going to cause roller doors to open or microwaves to go off. This is the sort of hyperbole that Minister Conroy is responsible for. But what he will not come up with is some simple facts and figures, something so that we can examine the credibility of this case.

If it stacked up to scrutiny and the assumptions were right and things were good, you could possibly make a case for it. But they will not give us that. They will not give it to us. They want us to take it on face value that this is in the interests of the Australian people. We know what the cost is going to be; we are not really sure of the benefits.

Rather than release it or ask for an independent assessment by someone like the Productivity Commission, they have cobbled together in the last 24 hours a reference to a stacked committee in which they will dominate the terms and the ultimate report. That is not scrutiny. That is not examining whether you are getting good value for taxpayer dollars.

The question ultimately is: what do they have to hide and why do they want to hide it from the examination of this parliament? I am disappointed to note that some of the documents we seek will be released after parliament has risen. Then there will only be six weeks of examination in the next six months in which we can ask questions about this—not that we get many answers from Senator Conroy or from anyone on that side of the chamber.

The Australian people deserve to know. All the time, the clock is ticking, the rollout is continuing and billions of dollars are being spent. We do not know if that money is being spent wisely. In fact, in many instances one could presume it is not being spent wisely. In Tasmania, in order to get people to sign up to the NBN, which is almost compulsory because they are ripping out their copper line networks, they have to give it away for free.

Senator Conroy talked about 100 gigabytes per second. The fact is: very few people are signing up to 100 gigabytes per second, because it costs so much money. Madam Acting Deputy President Troeth, you are from Victoria—perhaps the only people in this country who want 100 gigabytes per second now are those in the Brumby dirt unit, the people responsible for spreading and smearing people on the social networking sites, at taxpayers’ expense. The grubs who trawl through the social networking sites belittling their opposition are probably the only ones. This is what taxpayers are paying for under a Labor government in Victoria. What more can we expect from the Labor government up here with their proven smearing techniques and their dirt units. It is quite extraordinary—