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

Senator Farrell in South Australia may well have seen this. I get back to the comments of the Deputy Prime Minister this morning that he has not read the business case. I quote my colleague in the other place the member for Wentworth, who said at a doorstop this morning:

So we have the Parliament being asked to pass legislation for the establishment of the NBN—a $43 billion investment, no cost-benefit analysis, the largest expenditure of taxpayers’ cash in our history, a business plan that is secret, that is not being revealed to the public, and a business plan that neither the Prime Minister nor the Deputy Prime Minister are able to say that they’ve read.

Yesterday Senator Conroy confirmed that in 14 days neither he nor someone else in the government have managed to read the 400-page report. That is just so ridiculous in its commentary. But someone is not being truthful. I am not going to accuse anyone of lying, but I make the comment that someone or some people are not being truthful in the responses they have given. Can anyone in this chamber seriously look me in the eye and say that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have not read this report? That absolutely beggars belief.

We have been sitting for 1½ weeks. Every single person is in this place. In the other place they cannot leave under the new paradigm, so they are all here. The ministers in the other place most certainly are here. There is a fair chance that the ministers in this place are here. This is a $43 billion investment. Is anyone really telling me that there cannot be cabinet meeting after cabinet meeting to get this matter resolved?

There is absolutely no doubt that this is a delaying tactic to get the government past six o’clock on Thursday night. Blind Freddy knows this is about getting the government past six o’clock on Thursday night, because at six o’clock on Thursday night we do not come back here until the second week in February. And then next year we are only here for 17 weeks. This is a government completely and utterly afraid of scrutiny, a government which has only four weeks of sittings before the next budget. It is an unprecedented sitting pattern. This is a government that is running and hiding until 1 July when their alliance mates who sit up the other end of this chamber, the Greens, have the balance of power.

What a remarkable coincidence that we will sit in the week that the Greens start running the country. Never before in 17 years have I seen us sitting in July. We are sitting in July because this government has rolled over to the Greens. This alliance now runs this country. Even Michelle Grattan made comment about it in the Age, I think it was, earlier in the week, where she talked about the new power of the Greens.

This is not just about some significant philosophical difficulties we have got with the Australian Greens and the sorts of things which the Greens stand for, which my party will never, ever countenance. It is not just about that; it is a far bigger issue. It is an issue about who is going to run this country in the best interests of this country. If you look at some of the new Greens senators who will be entering this place it beggars belief that some of those new senators will be running this country for anyone’s benefit other than for a very narrow group sitting in the far Left, politically, of this country. That is their agenda and that is who they will be representing.

I want to go back to some of the comments in the newspapers, and I also want to refer briefly to the bill introduced by Senator Birmingham today. I want to talk about the requirements in relation to the Productivity Commission. This bill requires the Productivity Commission to conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the NBN and to report back to the parliament by 31 May 2011. I will read from Senator Birmingham’s press release:

The Productivity Commission inquiry will include:

• Analysis of the current availability of broadband across Australia, including the identification of suburbs and regions where services are of a lower standard or higher price than in the capital cities;
• Consideration of the most cost-effective and speedy options by which fast broadband services can be made available to all Australians (particularly those in regional and remote areas and underserved metropolitan areas).
• Consideration of the economic, productivity and social benefits likely to flow from enhanced broadband around Australia, and the applications likely to be used over such networks.
• A full and transparent economic and financial assessment of the proposed NBN.

I have heard my colleagues in the chamber today, Senator Cormann and others, who have been talking about these issues and the lack of transparency with this government. On a number of occasions this week I have heard Senator Bernardi and Senator McGauran talk about a lack of transparency with this government. I have heard all three of those senators take this government to task and question their inability and their outright failure to start being honest with the Australian people.

Why is it that since the election of the Gillard government we have seen anything but openness and transparency? Why is it that the Prime Minister and the ministers in this place constantly refuse to engage the Australian community in open dialogue? What greater obligation is there on a government when spending $43,000 billion than to at least enable the Australian community to have some input into this and make sure that we are spending that money wisely? Let us wait and see what the Productivity Commission says about this expenditure of $43,000 billion. Let us make a decision as a community as to whether this money is better spent than it would be on hospitals, roads and saving Australian lives. Let us make a decision about what way $43,000 billion is better spent.

It is all very well to talk about the information superhighway. But what about some of the highways around this country where people are still getting killed every day of the week? So we have a road network that is still killing people but we are spending $43,000 billion on an information superhighway that has not even had an appropriate parliamentary debate on the back of information that has been provided to the government. This notion that the cabinet will deal with this matter after we get out of here I think is absolutely and totally obscene—completely and utterly obscene.

It is an absolute dereliction of the responsibilities of the Prime Minister to this country. She cannot parade herself in front of the Australian community as someone who has got a new paradigm for how we are going to operate as a government, who has learnt from the mistakes of the past and who will not repeat the lack of engagement of the former and now stabbed Prime Minister Rudd when we have seen exactly the same behaviour from her. Apparently the crime that was committed by Prime Minister Rudd has been replicated by Prime Minister Gillard. So what was the change for? I ask those on the other side of the chamber: what was the change for?