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

Minister, thank you. You can throw all the gratuitous praise, backhanded or otherwise, you like at us. The reality we have here is a government that knows there are problems with its legislation, that knows there will be adverse consequences as a result of this legislation, but is too gutless to admit it. That is the honest thing. I asked the minister whether, as a result of his legislation, businesses would go out of business, whether this bill would put people out of business. He did not have the courage to stand up and give an answer to that. He would not stand up and say, yes or no, this legislation will put private operators out of business. That is the contempt of this government: it will not admit, when it is bleedingly obvious to all, what the consequences of its legislation are. It will not actually tell the parliament and tell the Australian people the honest consequences of its proposals. That is all we are really trying to get out of the minister today. This is not a grand filibuster, whatever the minister may wish to say. We just want to get the government speaking honestly for once to the Australian people. Instead this government loves to speak with a forked tongue. This is what the minister said on 9 December last year:

It has been a consistent feature of the government's policy in new developments that there should be room for competing providers. This continues to be the case.

In practice, it does not continue to be the case. The minister can claim all he wants that freedom and choice remain in the market for people to use competing providers, but we have exposed through this debate the reality that there will be no market of competing providers. Providers will not be able to compete with the government's multibillion dollar monopoly enterprise that will roll the fibre out for free on new developments. Ipso, people will go out of business. Senator Conroy just will not front up and be honest enough to tell the parliament that this will be the consequence of his legislation. If he made it clear and said, 'We know that is the case, we know that is what will happen, but that is what we are doing anyway,' we might actually progress this debate. We might get somewhere if Senator Conroy was willing to openly admit the consequences of his legislation that he wants this chamber to vote on.

Sadly, I acknowledge that the amendments the coalition has proposed in response to genuine concerns of stakeholders are unlikely to succeed. Senator Ludlam has already indicated that the Greens will not be supporting these amendments. That is regrettable, but it is a fairly consistent pattern we see nowadays in the chamber where the government and the Greens agree on what they will or will not support and where changes will or will not be made. That is unfortunate, that is their right, but it does impede the opportunity of the committee to make sensible, reasonable improvements to legislation before it. These amendments will not be successful because of that agreement.

We continue this debate acknowledging that but wanting to see from the government an admission of the facts, an admission of how this legislation will work in reality. That is all we ask of you, Senator Conroy. Give us those facts, give us direct answers to direct questions, and we can move on and you will have your legislation. Sadly, we will see the consequences of it, but be upfront in admitting what those consequences are. That would be the reasonable thing to do. That would be the decent thing to do. That would ensure that you got your bill and we get to move on to the next item of business. Those people who have expressed concerns and know the implications of such legislation equally will know that you understand the implications, that you are not bereft of all knowledge in this space. I do not think you are. I think you do understand the implications of this and the only reason you are pursuing the approach you have taken in this legislation is to prop up the business model for the National Broadband Network. That is a business model that currently way out there on the never-never proclaims to deliver return to government and return to taxpayers. We know that is a long, long way away and, if you do not manage to distort the market through legislation like this, it will be even further away. That is another fact that you will not admit in this debate but should admit—that it will be further away for you to meet the business model of the NBN if you do not destroy competition in the Greenfields space.

The invitation is there, Senator Conroy. Stand up and give answers to questions, as Senator Macdonald so ably did before—give answers that acknowledge that these changes will dramatically change the business model for Greenfields operators, that in dramatically changing that business model all of them probably will go out of business, that jobs will be lost, that competition will be lost and that innovation will be lost. Acknowledge those things and acknowledge that you are just doing it to enhance the opportunities of your monopoly broadband provider, NBN Co. Be upfront, say all of those things and we will move on to the next amendment—that will be that. That is the invitation to you, Senator Conroy. Simply be upfront with the Australian people and particularly with these small- and medium-sized businesses that have been built on the hard work of innovators, of people who built a business based on a market opportunity to provide fibre where it was not otherwise being provided, who have embraced the type of technological change and innovation that this country should be encouraging in the private sector, and that you are going to put out of business.