Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

You remember it, Senator Conroy. It was your great policy, which was written for you by your then friends, Telstra, and you fell for it hook, line and sinker. You are moving your head; it should be up and down rather than side to side. You know what I am saying is exactly what happened. We know what it is like in opposition: you do not have many resources, so you grab your advice where you can get it. Telstra were only too pleased to give you a few clues and tell you they could do it in a proper way for about $4.7 billion, which in a way was similar to the OPEL contract, which had been at that time let by the previous government. If your government had not breached its contractual duties, a fast broadband service would have been up and operating in Australia about a year ago. Yet under your scheme we are going to have to wait for about eight years until we get anything closely resembling it.

You spent $20 million on one proposal and then scrapped it. Then you spent another $20 million on something else. You were throwing the money around. It is easy to do when it is not your money, of course, but that is typical of the Labor Party. Then when nothing fell into place we had Senator Conroy come up with the $50 billion proposal at taxpayers’ expense. That is one thing, but at the same time to say, ‘This will be a commercial operation and we’ll get a return on the taxpayers’ investment and there will be co-investment,’ is something else. We do not hear too much about these things at the moment. Go out to the market and see who wants to invest as a partner in this sort of project. Yet, Senator Conroy, that was your original proposal.

NBN was going to be partly government funded and partly funded by the market. Once anyone saw the figures you did not have to be a mathematician to work out that it would never make a profit, particularly if you do what you have been doing in Tasmania and give away the NBN services absolutely free. It will not cost them a cent in Tasmania until 1 July this year. No wonder it is a cheap service to users in Tasmania; they are not paying for it. They are being given it for free. How are you ever going to get a return on your investment if you are not charging anything for the $50 billion investment you are putting into it? Nobody believes it, not even you.

Senator Ludlam is at least honest and consistent about it. He never wants the entity to be privatised as he knows no private entity would ever invest in this because it will be a financial dud. It may work in the end. It may provide very fast broadband. But it will not provide it at a price that Australian consumers or Australian taxpayers will be able to afford. That is clearly why the government and NBN want to leave this little option open to be able to retail their services to certain defined, I concede, consumers.

I want to ask the minister: which government department or large entity does not currently take its broadband services and telephone services from one of the retail service providers? I do not know and I hope I am not giving away any secrets here, but I do not think Defence buy their services. I think they have their own network. That is stuff that is probably not relevant here. I think most other government departments, most big entities, most utilities currently get their services from someone else. That is a question; I am not asserting that. I am asking the minister as it is appropriate to do in this committee stage of the debate where senators, on behalf of the Australian taxpayers, are able to raise these questions. That is a question for you, Senator Conroy. Are there any government agencies not now buying their services through one of the retail service providers?

Having answered that and it will depend on your answer, of course—I do not claim to be an expert on this and that is why I am asking these questions, as is appropriate, as it is what this committee stage is all about—I then want to ask the minister: under his legislation as it stands as of three o’clock yesterday I think it was—we suspect that it is being amended as we speak—could any of those agencies, or utilities or big operations then get layer 2 services from NBN Co. and add to those layer services the additions that the retail service providers will add to provide a service to the general public?

Just to make sure that Senator Conroy understands, the question I am asking is: would those large entities—his department, say, or the Commonwealth government as a whole—be able to take the layer 2 services direct from NBN, add some value to them and then use the service without going near Vodafone, Telstra, Optus, Primus, iiNet or any of the other service providers? Perhaps, Senator Conroy, you could answer those two questions for me to make sure that I understand this appropriately. When you have answered them, I will then move on to say—I will not argue this now; I will come back to this once I have your answers—wouldn’t it be better if some amendments were adopted? I suggest the amendment we have moved, but, if not, then perhaps we and the Greens could get together and prepare an alternative amendment that might ensure that NBN is a wholesale-only company. Otherwise we could get to the situation that I think Senator Birmingham enunciated, and that is that you have a vertically integrated telco, as we have had in the past and which many people have said is inappropriate. Perhaps we could start with those two questions, and then I will refer to our amendment.