Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

So we do know he is here. Let me see which door he is going to go through to try to drum up support for his position as he just flits through the chamber. Doesn’t that demonstrate the arrogance of this government, the absolute sheer arrogance of Senator Conroy and the whole government? The minister in this important debate cannot be here but, in a display of utmost arrogance and contempt, chooses to walk through the chamber to see some of his mates to try to get their votes. He has the arrogance to show the contempt he holds for the Senate by saying to the Senate, ‘Look, I’m here, but I can’t be bothered participating in this debate.’ That typifies the government, it typifies Senator Conroy and it typifies this whole proposal where you have a group of left-wing politicians, directed by the Greens, telling Australians what is best for them.

Sure, fibre to the home will be good, but copper has been okay and will continue to be okay for a long time. That is why NBN Co. is paying Telstra to keep its copper going in some places. The HFC would provide very fast broadband. We all want mobility, perhaps more than speed these days. Here I am talking in the chamber and I can operate my laptop and my mobile phone at the same time. Neither of them is connected to fibre to the home; they are working on wireless. Who knows what we are going to be able to do in five or six years time. Remember, it will be eight years before this system is in place.

I have diverted myself. I wanted to ask Senator Conroy some questions I gave him notice of during my speech in the second reading debate. I wanted him to put this to bed once and for all. We get all these Tasmanian senators speaking in this debate. They tell me what the internet service providers are charging customers. We heard it is from $49.95 to $89.95. That is great, we have heard a lot about that, but I keep saying to them, ‘Yes, but what are NBN Co. charging the service providers so they can charge the customers those prices?’ My understanding, from questioning at estimates, is that what they are being charged by NBN Co. is absolutely zero, zilch, nothing; NBN Co. are giving it away for free. What sort of an arrangement is that? From what we have been able to find out—it is always very difficult to get information—NBN Co. have spent something like $100 million in Tasmania. What return are they are getting on that $100 million investment? Absolutely zero, zilch, because they are giving it away for free. Worse than that, they are giving away another $300 per connection to get the box connected.

I indicated to Senator Conroy that I wanted to ask him in the committee stage if that is true. I am hoping, as an Australian, that he will say to me: ‘No, Senator Macdonald, you’re quite wrong and Mr Quigley was quite wrong when he gave you that information. No, we are getting a return on our investment.’ But he is not even here to answer the question. Senator Feeney now seems to have given up, he seems to be leaving, but it is good to see Senator Lundy has at least half returned to the debate. But I will have to wait until Senator Conroy deigns to lower himself to attend the chamber and be part of the debate before I can ask those questions. I will put them on notice again. I do want to know the answers.

I have digressed from the amendment moved by Senator Ludlam—but not really, because I have been talking about accessible and affordable carriage service. That is what Senator Ludlam is urging by way of this amendment to the objects, but clearly he is a bit misdirected. The figures I have been given are that, to join up to the NBN, it will cost the individual home owner between $3,000 and $7,000 just to get connected. If you do the simple math on the back of an envelope—$43 billion divided by the number of Australian families or Australian homes that use it; five million is a pretty generous conclusion—you will see that this will never be a commercial operation as we were told it would be in the first place.

This amendment talks about accessible services. We all know that seven per cent of Australians, many of whom I represent in Queensland and in my role as opposition spokesman for remote Australia, will never get access to this fibre-to-the-home service. We have never had the business case put before the Senate and a cost-benefit analysis done. We will never know if it is affordable because they will not give us the detail of the figures. But experts in the field have suggested that this NBN service will be anything but affordable to the majority of Australians.