Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to questions without notice asked by Senators Brandis, McKenzie and Birmingham today relating to proposed media legislation and to the National Broadband Network.

In The Castle there is a bloke called Steve who is an ideas man. That is why his dad calls him an ideas man. He has lots of ideas, like a motorcycle helmet with brake lights on it. Steve also has other ideas. Instead of a motorcycle helmet with brake lights on it, he can put underpants on his head. He is an ideas man. That is why we like ideas men. He has some great ideas.

Another idea of his was the NBN. Some of his best ideas have been in media policy. He is just an incredible ideas man. You have to understand that he is across it all. He has got it all worked out: 'It's the Constitution. It's the vibe. It's Mabo. It's the law.' It is the vibe—that is what it is all about. That is what the ideas man is all about.

We are so proud to have an ideas man like Senator Conroy. We are so lucky. Unfortunately, the ideas man is not very Apollonian in his ways. I always think of the ideas man as a little more Dionysian in how he goes about things. We are just trying to make sense of this absolutely chaotic state of the unconstructed. This ideas man has been coming up with some marvellous ideas of late. I want to go through a couple of them.

Removing the reach rules is a wonderful idea by the ideas man. We actually do have diversity in regional areas. We do have the capacity to inhibit centralisation. The ideas man has come up with the idea of basically removing the reach rules so that we can start having centralisation in the regional market.

His latest idea is a rather truncated idea. The idea he dropped on us on Thursday last week was new media laws and we have to vote for it—take it or leave it—by the next Thursday. On Monday we found out that some of the key players, such as Mr Kerry Stokes, do not have any idea what the ideas man is up to. He found out about it only on Monday. On Monday he found out that something that was instrumental to the media market was being devised by none other than his eminence, 'Mr Underpants on His Head', Senator Stephen Conroy.

What else have we got? Now the ideas man has a bit of a problem because his take-it-or-leave-it deal has turned into a 'I'll take anything to get it done' deal. We now find that they are desperately looking around for somebody who might agree with the ideas man. Where are we now? We are a couple of days away from when we find out whether the ideas man's idea is going to hit the deck. I think it will.

One of the greatest ideas of the ideas man is the public interest test. We have absolutely no idea what this is and neither did Senator Feeney last night when asked on Q&A: 'What is the public interest test?' It was so simple: 'It's the Constitution. It's Mabo. It's justice. It's the law. It's the vibe.' That is it—it is the vibe; that is what the public interest test is. Nobody has any idea what the ideas man has dreamt up with this one.

There is a sense that it is actually about censorship. I know why the Labor Party would be so worried. They feel that the media is so biased because the media has pulled them up on some of their great ideas like ceiling insulation when they set fire to 194 houses. That was a great idea! They had other ideas as well. They had the idea of building school halls to try to save us from the global financial crisis. They had the $900 cheques. They had computers for every schoolroom.

Another one of his great ideas is the NBN. That is another brilliant idea. It was an idea that he did on the back of an envelope. No cost-benefit analysis, just a marvellous idea that he took onto a plane with Mr Kevin Rudd, who then became the Prime Minister. And then they had the idea to remove him as the Prime Minister—that was obviously not a good idea—and now we think they might have another idea to move back to Mr Kevin Rudd. This is really chapter and verse of our own version of The Castle, because we have own Steve, our own Mr Ideas man. (Time expired)