Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

What I see when I look opposite, Senator Feeney, is a government that has grand visions of ideas and no idea of how to implement them—no idea whatsoever. I see a government that grabs something, scribbles it down on the back of an envelope—$43 billion, 100 megabits per second, fibre to the home—and says: ‘Here we go. We’ve got a policy. Away we go. Now we’ve got no idea how we’re going to push this through. We don’t know whether it is the best thing to do. We’re not going to be responsible enough to test it all. We’re just going to charge ahead with this idea.’ That is not good enough.  It is not good enough for Senator Conroy to get on a plane with Mr Rudd and say: ‘Our broadband policy that we took to the 2007 election—three years ago today—didn’t work. We couldn’t get it to stack up.’ Senator Conroy probably put more time and thought into his fibre-to-the-node 2007 election broadband policy than was put into the fibre-to-the-home broadband policy that he switched to when the first one did not work.

So the vision I have is for government to be responsible and do the hard yards to build a case to justify whether their proposals stack up and make sense. The government are totally unwilling to do those hard yards. They talk about their vision for broadband, but they have done absolutely no analysis or assessment of what is the best way to actually deliver fast, competitive, affordable broadband services to all Australians with value for money for the taxpayer and maintaining competitiveness in the telecommunications sector. They have not done any of that analysis. They have just picked a plan that they think is a winner. That is all they have done—picked this $43 billion plan and said: ‘That’s what we’re going with. That’s what we’re charging ahead with.’ They have done absolutely no robust analysis.

As I said before, this amendment is well intentioned. It is important to remember that we are debating an amendment at present. I know the minister has gone missing, but this amendment from Senator Ludlam is well intentioned. It is about the desire for affordable and accessible services, and that is what we should all be trying to seek. But it is not just about affordable services to consumers; it is also about providing an affordable service for the taxpayer, which is what we as a parliament and you as a government should deliver: decent value for money for taxpayers, not just throwing good money after bad to build services over the top of services that already exist.

I again remind the chamber that this government only a couple of years ago thought that 12 megabits per second was a world-leading service that would deliver everything that could possibly be necessary into the future. It was only when they could not manage to get complying tenders that stacked up with what they wanted for their fibre-to-the-node policy that they abandoned that policy and suddenly came up with a trump card, saying, ‘Actually, 12 megabits per second, even though we advocated it for years, wasn’t good enough and now we’re going for 100 megabits per second.’ It was a double-or-nothing type strategy except that the speed was more than doubled; the speed they suddenly thought people needed was essentially multiplied by 10 times with no analysis to justify either that increase or the cost of the program. It took the cost from $4.7 billion to $43 billion with no analysis whatsoever.

Rather than Senator Conroy being off behind closed doors doing whatever wheeling and dealing he is doing at present with the Greens, Senator Xenophon or Senator Fielding—who have all vanished and are obviously all in the midst of these negotiations—why doesn’t the government just come in here and give Senator Xenophon and the opposition the business plan that the government received for NBN Co. more than two weeks ago, which we have been calling for over the last couple of weeks? For more than two weeks you have been sitting on this business plan. You have defied orders of the Senate to release it. You have defied requests from the opposition to release it. You have defied requests from the crossbenchers to release it.

Senator Xenophon has made that a key condition of his position on this legislation, and it is understandable that he would want to know what is in that business plan. I hope that Senator Xenophon stands by the many comments that he has made very strongly in these past few days about the importance of that business plan—that is, that we do not have a situation where half of the 76 senators in this place are expected to vote blindfolded without seeing the NBN business plan.

Senator Xenophon has made some very compelling arguments, and I hope he stands by those arguments and makes sure that he is not just given titbits of information in a closed-door briefing. I applaud him for the credibility that he has shown to date in refusing to sign confidentiality pacts with the government—confidentiality pacts that, like so many other parts of this government’s policy, shifted from having a seven-year requirement to having a three-month requirement to having a two-week requirement. Senator Xenophon refused to sign those deals, and I hope that he will be convinced not by titbits of backroom information but by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy doing the right thing. The right thing would be for the minister to walk into this chamber and meet the orders of the Senate, which are to produce the business plan so that we can all look at the document and make this debate a far more informed debate than the one we would be able to have without the knowledge of the assumptions of NBN Co., the pricing of NBN Co., the take-up rate they expect and all the things that underpin this business plan. If the minister did that, we would be able to have a good, robust debate and to make sure that we were all informed.

The government should equally table the analyses of this business plan. Senator Conroy should make those available as soon as they are publicly known. I do not know what it is that the government is afraid of here, aside from the fact that the business plan might be able to be attacked—that there may be holes in it and that it may not live up to the many claims the government has made to date.

Most importantly, what Senator Conroy should do, when he finally graces us with his presence back in the chamber for the committee stage of debate on his bill, is commit to a Productivity Commission inquiry into the NBN. He should charge the Productivity Commission with the task of investigating whether this is the best way to achieve accessible and affordable services for all Australians at the lowest possible cost to the Australian taxpayer in a way that preserves and enhances competition across the telco sector.

If Senator Conroy did all of those things, he would fundamentally change the dynamics of this debate. Instead of having to do his behind-closed-doors deals, which he is engaged in as we speak, he could change the fundamental parameters of this debate by walking in here, agreeing to the Productivity Commission inquiry, tabling the business plan and committing to make the analyses of the business plan available. It would be so easy. Yes, there is a raft of other amendments that the coalition, the Greens and Senator Xenophon want to debate, but these are the issues that keep coming up time and time again as the real stumbling blocks in the government’s pursuit of this. They are stumbling blocks because of that vision that we are on this side of the chamber have that governments should behave responsibly and be considerate, careful and thoughtful in how they spend taxpayer dollars.

That is far from what we see from this government, which has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in its botched stimulus program activities around school halls and pink batts and others that I named before. It is because of the government’s track record of wasteful spending, jeopardising taxpayer dollars and jeopardising Australia’s future that, to be blunt, we do not trust them with a program of this magnitude.

At present, the best we have heard from the government as to why Australia should adopt this $43 billion NBN proposal is a ‘trust me’ stance. We have Senator Conroy coming in here and saying: ‘There are lots of global studies that say broadband is a good thing. Trust us, this is the best one to apply.’ That is all we have. ‘Trust me’ is not good enough. When it comes to the business case, we have assurances from the government that the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, and the cabinet will go through the business case with a fine toothcomb. I have seen their fine toothcomb activities before. There has been debacle after debacle and policy failure after policy failure for three long years now. We are not about to just willingly allow the government to embark on another one, because this is not just some small policy; this is the largest infrastructure policy that this government or any government has ever undertaken—a $43 billion project.

Australians will be repaying the cost of this for many years to come if we get it wrong. That is why we need to get it right. That is why we need to ensure that whatever we do in the broadband space is the best possible policy outcome and will deliver fast, affordable broadband to all Australians, at the lowest cost to taxpayers, with a competitive industry. These are the things that we want to see—but I emphasise that there should be value for money for taxpayers.

Senator Cameron can talk all he wants about vision. A government with vision equally needs to be a responsible government, and this government is far from responsible. He talked a lot about having real policy. Real policy involves prioritising; it involves recognising that perhaps government cannot deliver utopia without enormous cost, as in this proposal, to Australians. That is why the opposition has championed real policy options that would target services to regional areas and black-spot areas. Indeed, if the OPEL project that Senator Macdonald referred to earlier had been continued with after the 2007 election, many regional areas of Australia would enjoy faster broadband services today. They would have enjoyed them a year ago; some would have enjoyed them two years ago. We would actually have had services on the ground, whereas instead we are now having this debate in this place because the government is preoccupied with a utopian, politically driven vision rather than actually being a responsible government.

The challenge is there, Senator Conroy. Walk into this chamber, table the business plan and commit to the Productivity Commission inquiry. You can change the dynamics of this debate—but it is up to you. Get out of the room where you are doing your backroom deals, come in here, front up and be open with the Australian people. That is what we want to see. That is what this chamber deserves. It is what all Australians deserve. That might just actually get us a decent, responsible, affordable outcome for future broadband policy.