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

It seems that the minister is deliberately refusing to answer legitimate questions put to him. Perhaps we should try and get some more members of the Labor Party in the chamber and see if they might be able to answer the questions if the minister either is incapable or is having a little bit of a sulk and does not want to do it himself. I am reluctant to disturb the business of other senators, but if we cannot get a response from the minister then perhaps we need to try and get Senator Lundy into the chamber to see if she could give an answer.

I will hope that the minister may get rid of whatever behaviour afflicts him at the present time and might be prepared to answer questions, so I will try again with the question of what this whole bill is about. Why would any developer of a greenfields site pay a private contractor to do work that the developer of the greenfields site can get from NBN Co. for free? When I say 'get from NBN Co. for free', that is effectively 'get from the taxpayers for free'. That seems to be the question that the minister is too embarrassed to answer. If the minister were answering the question truthfully, this is how he would do it. Senator Birmingham, you are not getting an answer from the minister, so perhaps I can pretend that I am the minister and give you the answer. 'Yes, Senator Birmingham, it is true. A developer of a greenfield site will have two options. Yes, one of the options is that you can get the infrastructure installed in a greenfield site for free if you get NBN to do it. But if you don't want to do that, if you want to get a private contractor to do it, you can do it but it will be at your cost. You will pay for it.' There is the answer, Senator Birmingham, to those two questions.

The answer to the question, 'Why would any greenfield developer engage a private contractor at his own cost when he can get it from NBN Co. for free?' is that I would doubt that he would do it. Perhaps the only reason a greenfield developer might want to get a private contractor to do it is that NBN Co. is so far behind in its so-called rollout that the rollout of fibre and infrastructure to greenfield sites is, like everything else with the NBN, behind the times. Therefore, the greenfield developer may consider that it is worth paying a private contractor to get it in straightaway and then adding that cost onto the purchaser of the greenfield site. Of course, what does that do? It puts up the cost of living. Whether it is buying a house, if the greenfield is a residential one, or whether it is buying a business park, it puts up the cost.

Heaven knows that in this country at the moment the thing that is concerning most Australians is the increase in the cost of living. Every Australian knows that, come the end of October, there is going to be another impost on their cost of living and that is called 'the carbon tax'. It is the tax that, a year ago, before the last election, the Prime Minister promised she would not be introducing under the government she led. The Prime Minister recognised that most Australians did not want a carbon tax, so every member and every candidate in the lower house of parliament bar one made a pledge to the Australian public that there would be no carbon tax under a government that either Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard might lead. Ms Gillard, the current Prime Minister, the temporary Prime Minister, is the one leading the Labor Party at the moment, as I speak; I have not seen the news, so perhaps she has already been rolled. I know Senator Conroy is one of those who is leading the push.