Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was not going to speak on this document tonight, but having sat here and listened to the contribution of Senator Bilyk on the other side, I feel absolutely compelled to do so.

The many accusations that have been made about the minister and the NBN Co and that this was a political exercise I find really quite extraordinary. The chamber has heard this before. This NBN committee was set up in the most extraordinary way so that the committee could be quorate with only Labor Party members in the room. So we had the committee set up without the usual checks and balances that we have come to respect in the Senate. Then they decided they would hold hearings before the coalition had even had the opportunity to appoint senators to this committee, so the first few hearings were held with only Labor Party senators present. Political—and you are accusing the minister and the NBN Co of doing this politically. Then we had a situation where the interim report was handed down to us on the Friday afternoon to be tabled the following week. We spent the weekend looking through this report to get information and to make sure that we could have a sensible response to it, only to find that on Monday morning—after spending our entire weekend doing this—a completely different report was given to us on that Monday morning.

Firstly, I would just like to draw the attention of the house to the fact that to accuse us of being politically motivated is a little bit rich. Secondly, I do not know what parallel universe that some other people in this chamber must be living in, but to be suggesting that what is happening now in terms of the rollout of the NBN is either worse than it was or somehow now our fault when all we are trying to do is to clean up the mess of those that have gone before us, I think, is really, really rich.

What we are trying to do is make sure that the NBN that we deliver to Australians is cheaper, faster, more affordable and that we deliver it sooner. Unfortunately, with the constraints of the budgetary situation that we inherited from those opposite, it makes it extraordinarily difficult because we do not have the credit card mentality. We believe we have to be responsible with the way we spend taxpayers' money. I would suggest that Senator Bilyk should probably take a little bit more notice of what is actually going on out there on the ground and maybe listen a little bit more to what the people are actually saying and take a more balanced approach to how to address the NBN.

Unfortunately, I did not realise that Senator Bilyk was going to get up tonight and make the kinds of accusations that she has about the members and the various aspects of the NBN organisation, because I would have liked the opportunity to respond to those. But I really do think that it is extraordinarily rich that we have that kind of contribution when, to my mind, the only thing that this NBN committee is doing is allowing an opportunity for Senator Conroy to prosecute something that he failed terribly in delivering. I will leave it there, but I will seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.