Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

To continue: 325, 326, 328, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342 and 344. Of course, that isn't tedious repetition, as was suggested by Senator Brockman; it's actually just embarrassing for the government to have an agency that think they are above the standing orders of this chamber. That is actually the problem. No-one on the other side actually wanted to hear all of the numbers of those questions on notice that are outstanding.

Who do the NBN think they are? Remember that committee members were told informally that they wouldn't get any answers until the end of January. In this blithe nonacceptance of the Senate standing orders, the NBN decided they would set their own timetable. We'll get to more of their outrageous antics later on.

Clause 74 of the Senate standing orders provides that a minister has 30 days in which to provide an answer to a question. As at midday today, 16 February 2021—also my birthday, Deputy President—there are 118 overdue questions on notice, lodged via the Table Office, the oldest being 62 days overdue. There are 345 questions on notice which were taken by the communications portfolio in the 2020-21 budget estimates. The committee set the following due dates for responses to questions on notice: 3 December 2020 for the initial hearing and 21 December 2020 for the spillover hearing. Two hundred and thirty-nine questions were taken on notice during and post the initial estimates hearings. Only 59 were returned to the committee on time, and 180 were or are overdue, that being 75 per cent of the questions, and 32 still have not been answered. One hundred and six questions were taken on notice during and post the spillover estimates hearing. Only nine were returned to the committee on time, and 97 were or are overdue, that being 91 per cent of the questions overdue, and 49 still haven't been answered. What this actually shows is a clear pattern of disrespect and lack of transparency and accountability by the minister for communications, Minister Fletcher, and his representing minister in this place.

There are two particular agencies that are among the most egregious in their constant and continued attempts to withhold information sought by me through the questions on notice process. I do not say this lightly. With the exception of the Department of Parliamentary Services, whose constant evasions and obfuscations are masterly—and that is a bit of an understatement—both the NBN Co and Australia Post are perhaps the worst I have ever seen. As someone who has asked many questions on notice—over 11,000 in the life of this parliament alone—I do not say this lightly.

I preface this by making the point that this is in no way a slight on the hardworking men and women in these organisations. Remember that it was the party to which I belong, the Australian Labor Party, and our union affiliates who saw off an attempt by this government and the former CEO of Australia Post to sack a quarter of our nation's posties under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic. It was also the grand vision of my predecessor in this place Senator Conroy that realised the National Broadband Network to give all Australians world-class access to the internet. We've heard from Senator Urquhart some of the problems with that.

We on this side stand up for those workers every day. What we don't stand up for is senior executives at public sector government business enterprises—remember, they take no corporate risk and are remunerated extremely well—stonewalling questions put to them by the nation's parliament on behalf of the people of Australia, just like they were company directors at an annual meeting avoiding the scrutiny of their shareholders. Let me start with the NBN senior executives and board. I discovered through a question on notice that they actually answered that the NBN has 13 employees earning over $500,001, 21 employees earning between $400,001 and $500,000, 110 employees earning between $300,001 and $400,000, and 733 employees earning between $200,001 and $300,000.

Their conspiracy of silence is a disgrace. They do not get to choose to keep secrets from the taxpayer and the parliament. It is disrespectful to the people who are paying their large salaries—the same people who will be paying the bills racked up by this organisation for a long time. No doubt their children and their children's children will also be paying these bills. They are the same Australians who put us here and who expect us to do our jobs. Part of that job is to keep the government accountable and to ensure that there is scrutiny of government departments and agencies.

Labor has even heard that the government maxed out the copper supply in Australia and had to start importing copper from Turkey and Brazil. But let me read you some of the questions on notice that are outstanding in relation to the NBN: 'How many executives received an increase to their base salary in the 2019-20 financial year? In each of the 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial years and the 2020-21 financial year to date has NBN engaged, employed or hired the services of a media personality? If so, who was engaged, employed or hired, for what purpose and at what cost? Please produce a copy of the register of declarations of interest as at 1 December 2020.' Let's just take that last question. You might think that was a fairly easy question to answer. If you were an organised entity and your documents were organised, you should be able to produce that quickly. But, no, we're still waiting for that one.

NBN Co and the government have gone to great lengths to prevent their chief financial officer from appearing before Senate and other parliamentary committees. The one time the chief financial officer was forced to appear, under the threat of a Senate order, the chief executive officer of NBN Co wouldn't allow him to open his mouth and respond to any of my questions that were being put to him. It was a total joke. I also had to insist that the legal counsel of NBN Co come to estimates because, not surprisingly, you have to put in FOIs in order to get NBN Co to respond to anything. They haven't responded to the FOIs either, so we shouldn't get our hopes up. It was a strange performance. The chief financial officer was more reminiscent of a hostage than a senior public executive fronting up to answer questions about the expenditure of public moneys. It was a little like the end of the film Thelma & Louise. As they drive off the cliff, NBN Co's CEO is Louise and the unaccountable minister is Thelma.

As for the performance of NBN Co executives at estimates, it is a masterclass in obfuscation and how not to answer a question. These fat cats at NBN can run, but they will not be able to hide. It is just a matter of time and how bad they want to look in the meantime before this parliament will get the answers to the questions that we seek. At some point they are going to have to answer these pretty basic questions, which are easy questions to answer. But maybe we can assume that their records are not in any fit state for an entity of that size and they can't actually access anything, because there is no excuse for their inability to produce those documents. They spend a fortune on PR gurus who usually defend such upstanding corporate citizens at James Hardie. For example, Australia Post employed Ross Thornton but actually can't seem to locate how many hours he has put in there. That matter is in another lot of questions on notice that we have put to another agency, another government owned business, that is supposedly answerable to Minister Fletcher.

I will go through some of my points. Australia Post employed a PR guru. He has worked for James Hardie and AMP. Let's not forget that AMP, during the banking royal commission, were found to be charging fees to dead people. If you were to look at the make-up of the board of Australia Post, it is full of people who have Liberal Party connections and who are now on what is a pretty prestigious board, the Australia Post board. What we had heard long before we had Cartier watches being purchased for already well remunerated executives were extraordinary stories of the former CEO, Ms Holgate, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars on the corporate credit card, spending eye-watering amounts on fresh floral arrangements and plants for the office at a time when everyone was working from home—so they were putting these floral arrangements into the offices when no-one was there—and the board trying to approve exorbitant bonuses for themselves.

The spectacle of one pampered poodle after another defending the right of a multimillion dollar salaried public servant using public money to buy luxury watches as personal gifts for favoured staff is one that defies credulity. But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. In some ways, I think the NBN situation is actually worse than anything Christine Holgate did. Ms Holgate showed a fundamental misunderstanding of her role, her duties and her obligations as a public sector CEO. There were the Cartier watches, the floral arrangements and the bonuses they tried to approve for the executive team at around about a million dollars each. There she was asserting that Australia Post money is not taxpayer money. Of course, Australia Post is very much a government owned organisation and it actually belongs to all of us. We all use it. It is a part of every Australian's life. Her answers revealed a very unhealthy culture that I fear explained much about the profligate spending culture at Australia Post that the hundreds of questions on notice exposed.

Let me now read some questions on notice that are outstanding in relation to Australia Post. 'Please provide Australia Post board documents, including but not limited to board meeting agendas, board papers and board meeting minutes created between October 2018 to December 2018'—remember, that's October 2018 to December 2018—'which reference or relate to rewards, gifts or bonuses for any Australia Post employee, manager or executive.' We called for documents for October, November and December, and they still can't find them. Then there's this exchange between me and then Australia Post CFO and now Acting CEO, Rodney Boys, who is apparently likely to become the CEO, at an estimates spillover session:

Mr Boys, do you think you will be able to respond to my question on notice, fully, in terms of a breakdown of the expenditure on the office of the CEO credit card? You said you could not answer, because everyone was working at home from coronavirus. We had a brief discussion at the last estimates and you said, 'We could not answer that, because people are working at home,' and we had a discussion about whether you did any online banking—

Remember, this is the CFO of Australia Post—

and whether you were able to do banking when you weren't in the office. Are you going to be able to answer that question on notice properly, and give us a breakdown of the expenditure—

You won't be surprised to learn that we also have yet to receive this information. A large proportion of the answers that we seek here today relate to the NBN's extraordinary entertainment spend, for which the Morrison Government refuses to provide automated reports from accounting software, so I've asked for a breakdown of $874,000 in a financial year. Apparently they are not able to break down that figure. I have also asked for NBN's aggregate of bonuses paid to its executives, whether or not NBN increased staff salaries during the APS pay freeze, NBN's internal FOI procedures given the numerous FOIs lodged by me that have been resisted, requests for copies of Australia Post board documents, and breakdowns of executive-issued credit cards. But in actual fact, today, the Senate seeks an answer to the following question above all: What exactly is this government and the Minister for Communications trying to hide? All the Liberals who sit opposite who were preselected on a mantra of small government and accountability should not be running interference for the spivs and grifters who seek to obfuscate and evade parliamentary scrutiny by refusing to answer questions on notice put to them by the Australian parliament.