Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I am hoping that the minister will deign to respond to these amendments and will outline to the Senate his view on this matter. If I boil it all down very briefly, our concern and the concern of many businesses operating in this space is that, passed in its current form, the government's legislation will simply see a number of businesses go to the wall, unable to provide their type of service to developers because you are setting up NBN Co. as the default provider of fibre services in greenfield sites. The difference, you will know, Minister, is that today Telstra's default requirement is to lay copper. There is at least a value add for developers to think about by having fibre providers come in. There is a value add for the fibre providers as well because they are able to try to sell services through those developments.

Your proposal is that NBN Co. will be the fibre provider. What is the value add for a developer to get anybody else in to do it aside from it happening a little quicker? There is no value add. The value for the developer is to leave it for NBN Co. to deliver the fibre because they get it cheaper. If the minister can demonstrate that somehow they will not get it cheaper under his default provision then that would be a great illumination for the chamber. I doubt very much that he will be able to demonstrate to us that they will get it cheaper through an existing competitive greenfield operator. The government have already sent many other businesses to the wall when they have interfered in market spaces—and it is not your fault, Minister; they were not in your policy area—particularly home insulation, on which I spent a lot of time making inquiries. So many home insulation businesses happily operated effective and successful businesses in the Australian economy. They provided jobs, opportunities, good services and good workmanship to their clients but they have gone to the wall because this government's judgment is flawed on matters of policy and on how they should involve themselves in the operations of business. There is a price to pay for their errors of judgment—people lose money, people lose businesses, people lose jobs and Australia is worse off as a result.

Passed unfettered this bill will see those who lay fibre in greenfield sites lose parts of their market—potentially lose all of their market. In the process we will see a contraction of competition in that space and an enhancement of the NBN, which is already one giant monopoly. We will see a loss of private investment, of private jobs and private businesses. For years businesses have done the innovation and the hard yards, developing their own businesses model which allows them to lay fibre in a competitive way in greenfield sites. They have provided a good service to developers and purchasers alike.

The government are going to pull the rug out from under them and provide a default-free service that will ensure there is no business for the private operators and it will all fall back to you new government monopoly, your 100 per cent government own, 100 per cent debt funded and 100 per cent monopolistic enterprise, the NBN Co.

You did not subject the NBN Co. to a cost-benefit analysis. Minister, I noted in your second reading speech that you wondered why on earth I would want to see it go to the Productivity Commission. I would think they could ask better questions or to a better analysis of the NBN Co.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

I am flattered by your questions, Minister, but the difference between the minister sitting over there, the government he represents and this opposition is that we do not think all wisdom resides among us. We do not believe that we simply know best. You do. It is the minister sitting at the table who, when his $4.7 billion fibre to the node proposal fell over, when he could not manage to get tenderers to meet the requirements for each and could not manage to get that much vaunted proposal, his key policy for the 2007 election of the ground—