Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have to state at the outset my absolute contempt for the contribution we just had from the leading law officer of the land, the Attorney-General. There is absolutely no doubt that Senator Carr made no representation at all about the AFP, so the outrage—this fake outrage—that we have seen from Senator Brandis is completely misplaced and completely misaligned. There was no criticism of the AFP. I want to make that point as I commence my remarks, trying to figure out how we got to this point.

How did we get to the point where the Privileges Committee of the Senate yesterday delivered a report entitled Search warrants and the Senate and found improper interference with documentation about the NBN held by a senator and his staff?

That is what occurred and that is what that report indicated yesterday. We got here because of the disastrous management of all things NBN related since Malcolm Turnbull got his hands on it as the Minister for Communications. Everything to do with the NBN has been one stuff up after another. Mr Turnbull, as Prime Minister, has continued the problem, and I will say more about that as time permits.

But let's have a bit of a look at what was revealed about the NBN company's involvement in the appalling raid at the office of former Senator Conroy and one of his staff members. The Senate Standing Committee of Privileges report yesterday made it clear that there was indeed improper interference. Let me make it clear once again—in case somebody on the other side wants to get up and misrepresent Labor's position—I make no criticism of the Australia Federal Police in relation to this raid, but I do absolutely put on record my disgust with the way in which the NBN Co, with Mr Ziggy Switkowski as chairman, involved themselves in the raid and used documentation to take disciplinary action against two of their own employees. Now, they said different things in their submission to the inquiry. They said that they already had suspicions about one person in their organisation delivering information to Senator Conroy and others, but there was another one that they had no idea about. NBN took action against two of their employees, and one of them was only because of the material they were able to get from Senator Conroy's staffer's home.

And remember when this happened? It was in the second week of the election period last year—a highly political time. NBN Co and the government had to be held to account on many occasions in the lead-up to that election for the NBN failure in the blowout of costs, failures in delays, failures in mismanagement and failures in misrepresentation to the Australian public about what was going on. This was done primarily by Senator Conroy, who, it is fair to say, was an absolute champion for people in Australia who want and deserve a real NBN and not the lemon that is being delivered at the behest of Mr Turnbull both as the minister and now as the PM. People are disgusted, and rightly so, at the failure of Mr Turnbull and his multitechnology mix. People from all over the country—good Australians like those two employees from the NBN—wanted the truth out. They wanted Australians to know what was going on and they provided the evidence. They gave information to people who could make a difference. Australians all over the country are sending in material to us, as senators and MPs, about the NBN's failure. The Australian people actually own the NBN. The minister who sits over there runs the NBN on our behalf and he is doing a very, very bad job following in the footsteps of the now Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull.

The government did not like the scrutiny that they were being held account to. When that raid occurred in the second week of the election campaign, well, I will just leave it to decent, hardworking, thoughtful Australians to join the dots. What was truly breathtaking though was that when the AFP raid happened at the home of Senator Conroy's staffer there was an NBN employee there who with his digital camera took photographs. That is where the real improper interference happened. In the report there is significant detail. I would draw attention to page 16, where the discussion occurs about the NBN Co using that information:

We had previously been identified as having access to one of the stolen documents but had not yet commenced an active investigation against one of their own employees.

The NBN Co is a disaster. They tried to cover it up and this report proves how malicious that cover-up can be. (Time expired)