Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Following on from my colleague Senator Birmingham, can I say the coalition of course supports the implementation and continuation of the universal service obligation. The coalition reluctantly recognises the need to rejig that obligation, given that this government seems so bloody-minded as to continue to implement its National Broadband Network. In that context the coalition accepts the need to deal with this legislation.

The problem we have with it is that we simply do not trust the government to deliver, given that it is insisting on creating a new bureaucracy to deal with the universal service obligation and given that there is, arguably, already in place—in ACMA—a body that could be given the task of doing it, particularly given that the new body will not have any incentive to constrain its own costs. It will be funded to the tune of a flat $100 million, with any costs over and above that to be raised by an industry levy. That is, it will be paid for by participants in the industry. Ultimately, those costs will be passed on to consumers. And whilst TUSMA, the new agency, will be constrained by its policy objectives, the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011 gives the minister the discretion to expand the tasks TUSMA has—for example, on a public interest basis.

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network has already recommended that the objectives of TUSMA be expanded—for example, to provide for people with a disability. That may well be a very good cause, and one can imagine the pressure to be put on the good minister—the minister for technology and gadgets—to expand the objectives of TUSMA to cover that. That is but one example of the sorts of ways in which the role of TUSMA may be expanded, with consequent and significant cost implications.

So why don't we trust the government to deliver? When the government first announced a version of its National Broad­band Network dream it was, as Senator Birmingham correctly said, a $4.7 billion promise for fibre to the node. When the tender fell in a heap, that promise was aborted and replaced by the promise that this government is now struggling to implement: the promise of a $43 billion fibre-to-the-home network. But the rollout of the NBN has been plagued by delays, secrecy, overspending and lack of transparency. Just a fortnight ago at estimates we were told that NBN Co. is falling well short of the fibre targets that NBN Co. projected—