Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately this speaks of the lack of regard this government has for the state of Western Australia, the state that is providing the greatest level of economic input to this nation. Yet we are going to see most of the communities in the Kimberley denied the opportunity to access this service. We see it in the goldfields, the southeast, and through the southwest, the wheat-belt areas of the state. It is a joke and the two Greens senators from Western Australia will not stand up to it.

I turn again to Senator Conroy who is still not here to respond. On national television last night, Senator Conroy described the Senate as being ‘arcane’. I rushed to learn the definition of ‘arcane’ and it is most interesting. The definition is:

… requiring secret knowledge to be understood; mysterious, esoteric; information—

Senator Cameron will be interested in this—

that is known or understood by a limited number of people.

Inadvertently, Senator Conroy was quite right when he used the word arcane—but it is not the Senate that is arcane, it is Senator Conroy. He is mysterious, secret, hidden, esoteric, cabbalistic with the information. What do we see now? Conroy the cabbalistic, the master of mystery, the archangel of ‘arcaneity’. That is who Senator Conroy is. He is a person who cannot appear, who is hidden. He is prepared to share information with some in this place. He had to be overruled even to come up with this summary of the NBN business plan. What an insult it must be to the Secretary of the Treasury, Dr Ken Henry—I would have thought there would be some respect for him—who said when asked about this project:

Government spending that does not pass an appropriately defined cost-benefit test necessarily detracts from Australia’s wellbeing.

The government’s Secretary of the Treasury is being totally and utterly ignored. I ask of Senator Conroy, in his absence, these questions, and I ask those on the crossbenches and the Greens to reflect on the responses. When the program was piloted in Tasmania, how much did it cost people to connect? Was it free of charge, as we have heard? How much did service providers pay to be connected? Was it free of charge for them? Is it true that even when it was given free of charge, less than 12 per cent of those to whom it was given for nothing bothered to sign up? Of the 11 per cent who signed up, to what use have they put this new technology? Have they simply downloaded videos a bit more quickly or has it been a complete waste? How often have they logged on? All of the interviews I have seen, in luminous places like Midway Point, have been with young people who have used it for computer games and to download movies. What will we get from this facility that will cost 50,000 million dollars plus interest?

I conclude with what I regard as the reprehensible abuse of process in this chamber this morning. To see the Greens party and the two Independents gag debate to the extent they did was an absolute disgrace. I recommend that they go back to Odgers Australian Senate Practice and read chapter 1 which relates to the Senate and its constitutional role as ‘an essential of federalism’. It says the functions of the Senate are:

To ensure that legislative measures are exposed to the considered views of the community and to provide opportunity for contentious legislation to be subject to electoral scrutiny.

Another function is:

To provide protection against a government, with a disciplined majority in the House of Representatives—

In this case, read the majority gained through the Greens and the Independents—

introducing extreme measures for which it does not have broad community support.

All I am doing is reading from the constitutional objectives in Odgers Australian Senate Practice. Another function listed:

To provide adequate scrutiny of financial measures, especially by committees…

I thank you for the opportunity to speak.