Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some further remarks on the Interim report of the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network. This report is an indictment of the NBN strategic review. When announcing the strategic review, the minister said: 'I just want the plain unvarnished facts. We do not want spin. We do not want the company to tell us what they think we might want to hear.' I regret to inform the Senate that that this is exactly what has happened.

The report confirms that the NBN strategic review was undertaken by personnel and advisers hand-picked by the minister with no independent scrutiny or verification of its final report. This stands in stark contrast to the 2013 NBN Co corporate plan, which was based on signed contracts and independently audited by KPMG and Ernst & Young. The minister has been told exactly what he wanted to hear. This is no way to spend $40 billion of taxpayers' money and it is no way to plan a broadband network for all Australians.

This minister's patchwork quilt of broadband technologies will be a financial disaster. Let us have a look at the strategic review. It either ignores or fudges when it comes to the favoured MTM model. The strategic review contains no field data to support the MTM model. It relies on nothing more than international benchmarks and estimates. The committee report finds that the strategic review significantly underestimates the costs of the MTM compared to a new fibre build. It underestimates the costs of having to operate two extra fixed-line networks. It underestimates the costs of having to maintain last century's copper technology. It underestimates the costs of migration processes, of IT systems, of running voice services over a network that NBN Co does not own. Across this mess of a broadband plan, the costs are always at every single opportunity underestimated.

What happens when it comes to the revenues? The committee found that the strategic review overestimates the revenues possible on the MTM compared to fibre. That is right, Acting Deputy President Furner: the strategic review underestimates the costs and then overestimates the revenues. NBN Co's caretaker advice to government made it clear that the minister's plans would not be able to generate the revenues that Labor's NBN would generate. FTTN is an inferior broadband technology. It cannot deliver the same products that fibre can. The same is true of HFC networks—no gigabit services in these footprints; no dedicated information rates; an inferior multitask product; no products that Australians can easily migrate to when they need better quality broadband; and, most outrageously given the promises, best efforts when it comes to download speeds.

Mr Turnbull made great claims that he would guarantee delivery of 25 meg down. What did the chair of his company say in a Senate estimates hearing? 'I cannot give any such guarantee.' What did the new CEO say of NBN Co when asked to guarantee Mr Turnbull's promise? 'I would not put my signature to that.'

What we have here is a fraud on the Australian public—an absolute fraud. It is $40 billion. Those opposite, who sit there chuckling right now, are going to spend $40 billion on a network that you cannot guarantee a download or an upload speed for.