Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

The Senate is still debating the objects of this legislation. It is timely that Media Monitors have provided me with a story from my home state of Tasmania—which Senator Conroy has relied upon so heavily in relation to the rollout of broadband. This is something that was posted around about quarter past one o’clock today. It is headed ‘First school superfast broadband “not reliable”’. Here we have the hapless Tasmanian Premier up there in north-west Tasmania visiting the second Tasmanian school to be hooked up to this superfast broadband. Great cause for celebration! Unfortunately, just down the road, the first school to be connected says that it is struggling with connection speeds that are less than a third of those promised.

The Principal of Circular Head Christian School, Patrick Bakes, says the internet service provider has been trying for months to fix it. If we think about ‘months to fix it’, it would suggest that it was a problem around the time of the last election. It is, of course, like the three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. You squeaked through the election without having these problems exposed to the Australian public. The principal of the school said, ‘It was sounding to me like it was an infrastructure problem’—an infrastructure problem that had been around for months on end. Do you know what the Tasmanian Premier said? He said that he is not aware of any problem.

It is really great. It is a bit like Senator Conroy, isn’t it? You are not aware of any problem if you do not read your bill, or your explanatory memorandum, or the business case, and then you can honestly say to the people, ‘There is no problem.’ Why? Because you ensure that you are not clothed with any information that might actually make you cognisant of the difficulties that are being faced. This is a problem in the showcase of Tasmania that has now been around for months, unable to be fixed. I wonder who is going to bear the cost of fixing it? We were told that the rollout in Tasmania was coming in under budget. No wonder it was coming in under budget, because they have got only one-third of what they paid for. Of course, one wonders what the actual cost is now going to be. This is the program that the Greens, the Independents and Labor are going to just wave through the Senate over the next 24 or 48 hours—without any concern for what is already happening on the ground. We are seeing what is happening on the ground: things are falling apart. The broadband is not working as promised.

Let us turn to the NBN Co.’s so-called ‘business plan’. It is very interesting, isn’t it? Key conclusions on page 18 state, ‘NBN Co. has developed a rigorous process to ensure an attractive product.’ Could you imagine NBN Co. going to the marketplace with a business plan and saying that they have got an ‘unattractive product’? Of course not. It is just meaningless verbiage.

NBN Co. is so attractive, when they give it away for free in my home state of Tasmania, do you know what the take-up rate is? It is 11 per cent. It is so attractive they cannot give it away to 89 per cent of the population. Those over there in the Senate, the Greens, the Independents and Labor, will be waving it through without citing the business plan and ignoring what is happening in my home state of Tasmania. Broadband is in disarray, collapsing, not working as promised and only being taken up by 11 per cent. Does the business plan reflect the actual on-the-ground experience in Tasmania? Not a word of it. Why? Because it does not suit their cause.

Let us go further into the business plan. On page 33, under the very important heading ‘Risk Management’—and listen to this very carefully on the crossbenches:

NBN Co is seeking to develop a sound system of risk oversight.

They still do not have a risk oversight system in place, yet we are supposed to be passing this legislation in the next 24 hours. They are still ‘seeking to develop’ it. Once they have developed it, once they have told us what it is, we might be in a position to give serious consideration to the plan. Until such time that these fundamental foundation documents are provided to us and the real detailed information is provided to us, it would be an abrogation of our responsibility to support the proposals that have been put to us.

Let me move to an open letter to Mike Quigley, the CEO of NBN Co. Ltd. This is an open letter from the Alliance for Affordable Broadband. They love broadband, they support broadband and they want affordable broadband. They tell us this about the business case summary:

... the Summary appears to raise more questions than it answers.

No investor or lender would lend money to open a milk bar based on a document with this little detail. It continues:

Yet Members and Senators seem to think this suffices to spend over $50b of taxpayers’ money.

They are wrong on that one. There are some responsible senators in this place who do not think it suffices to spend this much money on such a flimsy business plan. They go on to highlight what Senator Macdonald did in his question that the costs are actually higher than they were expected to be. They go on to indicate that the price of the basic package will not decrease over time but is likely to increase. They say:

• the project is only viable if it is a monopoly in the last mile and in backhaul facing no competitive pressure as to price ...

Of course, ‘no competitive pressure as to price’ means no competitive pressure on innovation or efficiency either. These issues simply are not responded to.

There is a whole host of issues raised here, including the one raised by Senator Ronaldson on the missing interest cost. There is no reference in the business plan as to how they are going to pay interest or what the interest will be. It makes the business plan look great. I wish I could have done that when I submitted to the bank to be lent some money to set up my legal practice all those years ago. If only I could have said: ‘Look, don’t worry about interest payments. Do not worry about that but I think we have got a great business case. Please bankroll me, but don’t talk about the interest rate.’ Of course the interest has to be included in any sensible business plan.

This is a real kicker, especially for the Labor Party, who pretend to champion the cause of low-income earners. This is what the Alliance for Affordable Broadband say:

By this statement, NBN Co expects to decrease the real—

whatever that means—

prices for products able to be afforded in homes with higher incomes, yet households on low incomes who can only afford the most basic service will not see any similar improvement in affordability and in fact, it would appear that it is NBN Co’s intention to make this productless affordable over time.

Those opposite pretend to be the champions of the low-income earners. They have a business plan and, not satisfied with the increased cost of living that they are putting on every Australian, they are now going to whack them with increased costs for the NBN as well.

We turn to today’s Australian editorial which says in part ‘the promises that high-speed broadband will improve national productivity’. I assume the minister will not scoff at that suggestion. I assume the government accepts that it will increase national productivity. We do not get a response from the minister, so I suppose that question is still in the ether. That is what he has been saying. The government has been claiming day after day, week after week that the national high-speed broadband system will improve national productivity.

If they are so convinced the NBN will increase national productivity, surely it would be a no-brainer to submit it to the Productivity Commission and have it confirmed. But they will do anything within their power, including doing all sorts of deals with the crossbenchers, to ensure that their claim about increasing national productivity cannot be tested by the pre-eminent authority in this country that could actually put the ruler across that assertion, namely, the Productivity Commission. They will do everything to avoid that scrutiny. Why? I think we know the answer: because they doubt the claims they have been making.

If I had been making such bold statements all the time, week in and week out, and actually believed them, and the opposition said to me, ‘Come on; submit this to the Productivity Commission,’ my response would have been, ‘Be my guest; we will do it for you because we are confident in our assertions.’ The fact that they refused to submit this to the Productivity Commission tells us everything. They are not confident, even in their own rhetoric, because they know how flawed their assertions have been.

This is a major infrastructure project for our country. It deserves proper scrutiny, and it cannot be properly scrutinised until we have the full business plan. I repeat, with great respect to my friend Senator Xenophon: you cannot say that there has been a public release of the ‘full summary’ of the NBN. It is like saying, ‘I’ve got a full half-glass of water.’ A summary, by definition, is not full. Unfortunately, Senator Xenophon has adopted the mantra that, undoubtedly, the Labor Party developed in some sort of focus group. They gave it to Senator Xenophon and he faithfully put it on the front of his media release. I hope I am wrong as to that; I am sure I am. More seriously, we have not been given the business plan, we have not been given the government’s response to the implementation study, we have not been given the Greenhill Caliburn investigation into the business study and we have not been given any opportunity to have a Productivity Commission investigation into this—and so the list goes on.

That which has been rolled out so far in my home state of Tasmania is breaking down as we speak. The Tasmanian Premier, the minister and others pretend they know nothing about it, even though this problem has been in existence for months. Many answers need to be provided by this minister and this government. They have been refusing to provide those answers. That shows that they do not have the robust documentation, the robust support material, that a project of this size deserves.