Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 and the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Amendment Bill 2014. These bills are part of the repeal day package, and they are very minor matters indeed—even smaller than the first round in March of last year. In March, the changes to the Communications portfolio amounted to about $35 million a year—not what you would call a big effort by any measure. This time the savings amount to about $18 million, which is about half the size.

These bills do a number of things. They repeal outdated provisions in respect of the making of e-marketing industry codes and the supply of telephone sex services. They repeal preselection requirements. They make the registration period for the Do Not Call Register indefinite. They streamline notice requirements to improve the operation of the Customer Service Guarantee and enable the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to publish documents on the web rather than in the Gazette. These amendments are not contentious, and they have the support of the industry and of consumer representatives. The best way to describe these two bills is that they are a rudimentary cleaning-up exercise.

However, bundled up in these bills are changes to the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency and the delivery of the universal service obligation—changes that are reflected in the revised Commonwealth agreement with Telstra on the National Broadband Network. On 14 December 2014, the government reached agreement with Telstra on the revised Commonwealth agreements, which included the TUSMA agreement. Labor senators noted that, in a collection of thin media releases, no details were forthcoming from the government on the TUSMA agreement, despite the fact that these deregulation bills were before the Senate. Until these bills were referred to committee, the only detail available to the public and to the opposition on the amendments to the TUSMA agreement was contained in material released by Telstra under its market disclosure obligations. This was also true of the remaining Commonwealth agreements and the definitive agreement. Absurdly, like most of the publicly available material on the National Broadband Network, it is available through the market, not the government-owned company.

Malcolm Turnbull has promised transparency not once, not twice but repeatedly. He said:

Maximum transparency is going to be given to this project.

He said:

But our commitment is, our focus is, to have a much greater level of transparency and openness.

I quote again:

The bottom line is that as far as the NBN project is concerned, the government's commitment is to be completely transparent …

And again:

The main promise, the most important thing we said about the NBN was that we would tell the truth, and we would liberate the management of NBN Co to tell that truth.

Further:

You will be aware that Government policy provides for increased scrutiny and transparency of NBN Co and its activities.

Still further again:

The Government requires a high degree of transparency from NBN Co in its communication with the public and Parliament.

The truth of the matter is that, as with most of the NBN promises, Mr Turnbull has failed to live up to his own rhetoric. Secrecy, in fact, is the order of the day. The government has embarked—

Senator O'Sullivan interjecting—

Sorry, what was that?