Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In the remaining couple of minutes, I indicate that we will not be opposing this coalition amendment. In fact, the longer Senator Birmingham spoke about the need for the Productivity Commission to do a cost-benefit analysis the less I liked the proposal. We have no issue at all with the expertise of the Productivity Commission or what it would bring to the debate. It is the instrument itself of a cost-benefit analysis in the instance of a project such as the National Broadband Network that I think could be quite mischievously misused. There is nothing really wrong with the terms of reference that were proposed; it is what the opposition proposes to do with it. Professor Henry Ergas has done a cost-benefit analysis. The numbers are in. The benefits are $17 billion. That is the magic number they have come up with. So I am not surely exactly what it is that you would be pursuing.

I thank in particular Adam Stone, who has ridden shotgun with me on this bill over a very long time. This is an exceptionally important reform. The Australian Greens would be supporting these reforms to the telecommunications industry. The former government did not have the guts to stand up to the structural asymmetries that they had built in as a result of the privatisation of Telstra. I congratulate this Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, for at least stepping up and attempting to do what has been long overdue and has been in the workings probably for nearly two decades now. We also reserve our position on the substantive NBN bills that will be brought into this chamber post the review by the Senate committee and we very much look forward to having that debate.

At least this government is attempting to do something. There was not a word from the coalition all the way through this proposal as to exactly what its broadband policy is. The spectacle of the coalition, and the National Party in particular, opposing a broadband rollout into regional areas I still find utterly incomprehensible. So we look forward to this debate proceeding. Again, I would like to thank my staff and the folk who have looked after us through the long hours of this debate and I very much look forward to the passage of this bill.