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

Senator Ludwig wants to ask if we have bought the copper. As I just reflected, Senator Ludwig, large parts of Australia—including large parts of rural and regional Australia, critical to your portfolio—are in theory going to continue to be reliant on copper services under this proposal for an indefinite period of time into the future. But Senator Conroy went through that $4.7-ish billion contract for NBN stage 1, for fibre-to-the-node services, only, having spent millions of dollars on that tender, to have to abandon and scrap it, having wasted countless hours of government and private sector time, and to come up with a new model that just shifted the decimal place across by one so that we ended up with something closer to a $50 billion proposal. Clearly it was not a big deal to the government, because equally, as we all know, it was all dreamt up on the back of a serviette, or both sides of a serviette, or both sides of an envelope or a drinks coaster, on that famous VIP flight between Melbourne and Brisbane.

Senator Conroy, of course, continued his interesting history with tender processes in the recent Australia Network contract debacle that the government engaged in, which once again saw millions of dollars and countless hours of government and private sector time wasted on a botched tender process that is now the subject of dual investigations by the Australian Federal Police and the Auditor-General's office. But I digress. Senator Conroy has so many problems and debacles that I could not possibly cover them all now, so I shall return to the issue of TUSMA.

The coalition is concerned that telecommunications service providers, and ultimately consumers and taxpayers, will end up potentially paying more as a result of TUSMA and the arrangements in place. TUSMA's running costs will be paid and borne in part by taxpayers, at least over the immediate future, and of course by the telecommunications industry through the levy structure, with the government initially providing a flat $100 million contribution to provide the gap between existing levy arrangements and the expected funding necessary for the new USO arrangements. Of course, the industry levy structure in the future has the risk and the fear that there is a lack of incentive to rein in costs, and that has created fears that many retail service providers expressed to the Senate inquiry: they feared that the hit to industry and the costs to consumers will continue to grow and grow. Perhaps, if the government had conducted proper consultations on this matter, the reform would not have caused the concern in the telco sector that we heard about through the Senate inquiry. There was genuine concern about the consultation process and the government's admissions, effectively, that this was all wrapped up before the final legislation was developed. So we come to this process wanting to support the USO and accepting that a new model is necessary given the government's policy direction but with concerns about the bureaucracy and costs which will be expressed later. (Time expired)