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

I rise to speak on the Auditor-General’s report into the management of selected Telstra social bonus 2 and telecommunications service inquiry response programs. You should stay, Senator Fierravanti-Wells; you might learn something. This report from the Audit Office offers a useful insight into the way in which the Howard government—and the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, in particular—spends government money. This report is timely, given the government’s plans to begin allocating money under its most recent telecommunications program, the $800 million Broadband Connect plan. On top of this, in the not-too-distant future the government will begin spending the earnings of the $2 billion Communications Fund. So this report could be expected to provide a good indication of the value for money that Australian taxpayers can expect from these programs.

Unfortunately, the verdict is not good. The report investigated seven programs that directed $250 million to high-speed networks, mobile phone towers and technology ventures. The ANAO found accountability weaknesses in all seven of the programs that it examined. Specifically, the ANAO found risk management problems and inadequate reporting procedures in six of the seven programs. It also found mistakes in setting clear objectives and performance measures in four of the seven programs.

The worse example of mismanagement in this report was the $78 million Building on IT Strengths initiative. This program was ostensibly designed to fund technology ventures in Australia. However, the ANAO report found that, despite a series of warnings on a number of occasions, the initiative directed funding to venture capital groups shortly before they collapsed due to financial mismanagement. In totality, the program was a shambles. Money was spent on projects for which there was little genuine need. Public funds were allocated with inadequate accountability measures in place to ensure that the programs achieved their objectives.

The reason for the accountability shortcomings of these programs should be obvious to anyone who has paid even the most cursory attention to the Howard government’s telco policies over the past 10 years. It was not long ago that this chamber was discussing a report by the Auditor-General into the administration of the government’s Networking the Nation program. The Auditor-General’s report on the Networking the Nation program was similarly scathing. The reason for the inadequate accountability mechanisms in both the Telstra social bonus programs and Networking the Nation was that the government never had any intention of these programs achieving anything. These programs were never designed to respond to genuine needs in the community. These programs were only ever designed to pork-barrel for rural and regional Liberal and National Party MPs. These programs were only ever designed to fund National Party photo opportunities, not to produce real outcomes for rural and regional Australia. The only objectives of these programs were to provide a cover for a press release from the local National Party member or senator claiming to have delivered X million dollars of government funding for their region.

For 10 long years, the complacent and arrogant Howard government has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on pork-barrelling in telecommunications. What do we have to show for it? A series of Auditor-General reports for one; that is for sure. But, when it comes to results on the ground for programs like this, the government’s record is as patchy as broadband coverage west of the divide. After 10 long years of the Howard government’s largesse, rural and regional Australia is still years behind the city. Rural and regional Australia needs a government that is interested in outcomes for the communities, not shameful, vote-buying exercises. That is why rural and regional Australia needs a Beazley Labor government, a government that will deliver real telecommunications outcomes on the ground, not pretend products on the paper of press releases designed to just give a cover for some more traditional National Party and rural Liberal MP pork-barrelling.

Question agreed to.