Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010, and, indeed, on a matter of principle that I find quite remarkable, and as the rooster-come-the-goose leaves the chamber, I will talk about his involvement in some of these matters as well. I just want to put into some sort of perspective the nature of the moneys that we are talking about. It is $43,000 million. Forty-three thousand million dollars is what the issue relates to. It is a massive investment by the taxpayers of this country. Of great interest is that it is not just the people who are paying tax at the moment, but the people who will be paying taxes, quite frankly, for the next 50 years.

This is not about today. This is actually about tomorrow. This is about the obligations and the noose that we are putting around the necks of our children and our grandchildren in relation to this investment. We have quite clearly articulated in this chamber, led by Senator Birmingham in relation to this matter, where the coalition stands. We believe that it is entirely inappropriate and unacceptable for this government to refuse to show us the business case—not to show us, necessarily, but to show the Australian community their so-called business case.

This is just going from bad to worse for both the government and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy. The ineptitude that is being shown on all fronts in this matter is, quite frankly, absolutely gobsmacking. The minister needs to stop his confected, nervous laughter, which we have seen a lot of during the week, particularly yesterday when we saw probably the most embarrassing question time I have ever seen for any minister in a long time when his own side could not even bring themselves to ask him a question. They moved around the chamber to ask the most remarkably simplistic and stupid questions of anyone other than the minister himself. There was a fair bit of ABC, Anyone But Conroy, yesterday. The Senate tactics group would have said in the morning: ‘Anyone but Conroy. We are not going anywhere near him because we know they are going to be at him all day and because we know he is completely incompetent. We will ask questions of others and hope that they might be able to bat it away.’

Today’s revelation that we have now got someone else involved in this debate is quite remarkable. The corporate advisory firm Greenhill Caliburn have been asked to review the NBN Co.’s 30-year business plan as well as the 2010-11 corporate plan. Clearly, given the answers that Senator Conroy gave today, he was not involved in this decision at all. He is one of the partnering ministers in this and he was not involved. Had he been involved, he had numerous opportunities today to say that he was part of it. His silence in this matter told as much as we needed to know about this whole issue.

Clearly what is happening—and we have been starting to see a bit of it over the last week—is that the Prime Minister is getting extremely nervous about this matter. She knows that out there are some very significant questions being asked about the $43 billion taxpayer investment in the NBN. She knows that she has had to take some ownership of this matter and she knows that Senator Wong will be the one who will deliver it. Senator Wong will deliver it, not Senator Conroy. Senator Wong has now been tasked with the job of trying to sort this mess out. The fact that they have gone behind Senator Conroy’s back and put in place another group to oversee the overseers is remarkable. When asked if we were going to be able to see the NBN business plan, again we have been told no. So we are not going to see the business case and we are not going to see the outcome of this newly commissioned report.

We had the remarkable admission this morning from the Deputy Prime Minister that he had not read this documentation. It is quite remarkable. This is the Treasurer of this country. It is a 400-page study and he has not had the time to read it. It is quite remarkable. What is cabinet actually doing? I think we know the answer to that—absolutely nothing. It is completely and utterly paralysed. Does anyone in this chamber remember a government suffering policy paralysis the way this government is?