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

Thank you, Acting Deputy President Bernardi. Can I take the opportunity to say we will miss you while you are away on the delegation. We will miss you more than others, I suspect!

I rise to respond to the address by His Excellency the Governor-General on Tuesday. I am going to talk on one of your favourite topics, one that I know you are a big fan of, Acting Deputy President Bernardi. In his remarks, prepared for him by the Prime Minister's office, the Governor-General said:

The rollout of the NBN is ramping up and NBN Co has continued to meet its targets.

It was the only moment when silence was broken, as people openly laughed out loud in the chamber. I cannot dob you in, Acting Deputy President Bernardi, by saying that you were one of them. I suspect you might have been though!

On this point, I regret to inform the Senate that His Excellency would appear to have been sadly misinformed by the Prime Minister's office. Under Mr Turnbull's direction, first as the communications minister and now as the Prime Minister, NBN Co, stacked with Mr Turnbull's hand-picked mates, has failed the Australian people. And what stunning failures they have achieved! While in opposition, Mr Turnbull liked to say that his second-rate copper NBN would be built for a third to a quarter of the cost of Labor's proper fibre NBN. This began unravelling in April 2013 when Mr Turnbull promised he would build his second-rate NBN for $29.5 billion in total funding and get it to all Australians by 2016. That is a mere four months away. Other than you, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, could anybody else in the chamber who is on the NBN please put up their hands? There is nobody but you, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi. Three months away and we are all going to have it. What a cracking pace the NBN are going to set the next three months!

But worse was to come. By December 2013 the cost had blown out to $41 billion—that is $29.5 billion to $41 billion—and the time frame had blown out from 2016 to 2020. 'It is just four small years; don't worry about that,' he told everybody. But in August 2015 Mr Turnbull conceded that his second-rate NBN was now going to cost even more, Senator Hinch. I am trying to make sure I keep you awake, Senator. Mr Turnbull had taken it from $29.5 billion to $41 billion, and do you know what the cost today is? It is $56 billion. It was $29.5 billion in 2013 and $56 billion is his cost today.

But it keeps going. When he announced this massive blowout he tried to blame the failures on the previous former government and the former management of NBN Co. But at that point inside the company something broke. People who were putting their heart and soul into building the National Broadband Network could not take the lies that were being told by NBN Co's CEO, by the chief executive, by the minister and by the Prime Minister. So from late last year documents started to emerge that put at Mr Turnbull's door responsibility for the debacle that the NBN has become. Senator Hinch, I know that these are issues which you will have to discuss and debate in the future. In November 2015 a document emerged about Mr Turnbull's acquisition of the old Optus pay TV network—a network Optus agreed to shut down, that they had not invested in, that they tried to sell to me when I was the minister. I said, 'No, thanks,' because I had a report on it and I knew, based on the best advice going, that the Optus network was not fit for use.

This document—this 'official secret', this 'commercial-in-confidence' issue, this 'national security issue', which are all reasons being quoted at the moment by that side of the chamber about why the police should be investigating my staff and people at the NBN—said that the HFC network that Mr Turnbull bought from Optus was not 'fit for purpose'. This is advice from inside the company itself. This is an internal document from NBN Co which completely contradicts the stories being told by the Prime Minister and the minister and told by the CEO and the chief executive when they appeared before Senate estimates. You will expect these people to tell you the truth when they turn up and you question them, Senator Hinch, because the understanding is that if you ask the right question they have to tell you the truth.