Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Xenophon, I absolutely accept you are asking in a genuine sense. You have shown courage in backing the legislation and in rigorously pursuing the competitive angles. I am a little disappointed that you have so little faith in your own amendments, many of which were accepted and supported. You talked about being worried about the 400-pound gorilla. The 400-pound gorilla is regulated by your amendments which were robust, very pro competitive and hotly debated in this chamber. The 400-pound gorilla is regulated properly.

We have never made any apology for the prospect that we are building a wholesale-only monopoly—a fibre-to-the-home network. We are not giving it away for free. NBN Co. have to earn a return. They are not the provider of first resort; they are the provider of last resort. We need to have a provider of last resort or we will end up with hundreds of thousands of homes not connected with a phone system. So we have to have a provider of last resort. That is all we are.

NBN Co. must get a return on its investment. It is not providing anything for free. It has to get a return on its investment. That is its mandate. You have looked through many documents on this. You have discussed this at length, both here and in many other places. We are the provider of last resort which we must mandate; otherwise we will end up with hundreds of thousands of new homes without any communications infrastructure.