Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

We are supposed to have competition now, let alone if we have a monopoly situation. What assurances do I have, Minister, that that is not going to happen again? Out of the blue this happened, and it has taken me five or six days to try to resolve this issue. What assurances will we have, and where are these assurances in this document that consumers will have proper access to broadband, because quite frankly it is really not evident at the moment.

Labor started this whole debate on $43 billion but now, from the few words that have been released to Senator Xenophon, it is $49.5 billion. How do we know that that is the end figure? How do we know that it is not going to be $60 billion or $70 billion? If we had a proper business plan and the assumptions were tested, perhaps we might be in a far better position to ascertain that. We hear all these numbers that are flying past. I take you back to the point I made earlier in relation to any business that wants to launch a product or do something and goes to their bank manager. The business plan they present would put whatever they want to do in a favourable light. Minister, if this is such a great thing why don’t you release all the documents so that at least we can see whether those 400 pages—a lot better than what you have given us—actually try to put this in a much more positive light? I think it would be better if the public were able to access that.

Let us look at the situation. We have had years and years of microeconomic reform. We talk about getting governments out of business, we talk about ensuring competition and we talk about making sure that there has been competition out there in the telecommunications sector. What we are now establishing is a new government-owned monopoly. We are using the powers of this parliament to prevent other companies and the private sector from competing with this monopoly. It is obvious, Minister Conroy, that you have been dealing with Minister Carr for too long, because you have been infused with his rather extreme left-wing, noncompetition tendencies. You have been spending far too much time with him. We have worked hard over the years to ensure that we had competition in the telecommunications industry and suddenly this minister is going to reverse—