David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

This matter is extremely serious. There is only one way that a duly elected government in this country can do business and acquire non-government services, products, assets and work—and that is through a tender process. Without a tender process that is full and laden with integrity, government cannot function. The basic responsibility of every minister in our country, in our system, is to oversight and conduct a proper, fair, equitable, transparent, honest and decent tender process. This minister has failed not once, not twice but three times—he has completely botched tender processes. There are very few people in public life who can stand up and say that they have been directly responsible, through their fumbling of the ball, for costing the Australian taxpayer $30 million. Not many people can say that, but Minister Conroy has the ignominy of being able to proudly proclaim that he, through his own fumbling and incompetence, has lost $30 million in the failure of NBN mark I—as identified not by us in politics: the Australian National Audit Office have pinged him! He then dropped the ball on the $36 billion construction tender; it collapsed in April.

This tender is another classic example of his raging, glaring, naked incompetence. This man not only has mucked up a $223 million tender; he has done so whilst under the massive cloud of a conflict of interest. In discussing this contract in estimates he said, 'I have seen the ABC tender proposal; it is a fine tender.' If he knows it is 'a fine tender', when the Prime Minister gave him the guernsey to oversight this thing he should have said, 'Whoa, hold on; I am the responsible minister for the ABC.' But, no, his understanding of public policy responsibility is zero. He is the prince of dunderheads. He is functioning under the most glaring identifiable—