Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to questions without notice asked by Senators Ronaldson, Birmingham and Cormann today relating to the national broadband network.

Today we have seen that the revolution is well and truly off the rails. The new government came to power saying they were going to bring a revolution, saying they wanted a revolution—to take that great line from the Beatles. They promised us a digital revolution; they promised us an education revolution. Last week Senator Wong promised us a DER, a digital education revolution. We have a whole range of new acronyms for the revolutions. But we have learnt today, as we have over a period of weeks and months, from Senator Conroy that, in particular, the digital revolution is off the rails. The national broadband network is not going to deliver what Labor promised in the way they promised.

It is worth rolling back—another of those great Labor phrases—to March last year to consider what it was the then Labor opposition were promising. With much fanfare Mr Rudd and Senator Conroy announced the new national broadband network. They announced $4.7 billion in funding, a figure plucked from a Telstra briefing paper. They announced that plan and it was going to be a fifty-fifty equity arrangement with the successful bidder. It was going to be using fibre-to-the-node technology. Construction was going to begin by the end of this year. It was going to have a successful tenderer chosen by about the middle of this year. And it was going to provide increased access to some 98 per cent of the population and do so at lower prices.

These were all the grand promises, and it sounded like the plan was well developed. It sounded like there was a plan and it sounded like the government had some idea of what it was seeking to achieve. But as time has gone on, the parameters on nearly all of these levels have changed. Nearly all of them have changed. The timing has slipped out considerably. The government said initially it would look to close tenders some time in the middle of this year and make a decision in time for construction to begin by the end of this year. Here we are at the end of June, at the halfway point of the year, and the starting time on the tender process has not even begun. It has not even begun, because Minister Conroy realised he had to provide some basic information to try to make this a somewhat fairer playing field. He had to provide some basic information to the potential bidders. So he pushed some legislation through this place, to which the opposition acquiesced and allowed to go through in a timely manner to fit with the minister’s timetable.

But then what? We are still waiting. The minister says he will give potential bidders 12 weeks from the provision of all information to get their bids in. So there will be a 12-week closing date from when all the information is provided. But the information has still not been provided, Minister. It has not been provided by the minister. We have to ask why. Why is it taking so long? Why can the minister not meet the timelines that he set in opposition and is now failing to meet time and time again. The reality is that the likelihood of construction commencing on the national broadband network, as promised by the minister and Mr Rudd, by the end of this year is now virtually zero. It would be worth while if the minister could come into this place and fess up to it—fess up to the fact that their time line is not going to be met.

We look at the ownership structure. It was black and white. It was going to be a fifty-fifty equity arrangement. Now it is open to all types of arrangements. It could still be equity. The minister says that is preferred, but he has opened it up to a range of other equations, recognising that the cost could be as high as $25 billion. So the $4.7 billion only gives you about 18 per cent equity in that equation. It does not even get you close. The cost is way out, the structure is way out. The technology was black and white. It was going to be fibre-to-the-node technology when the minister, as the shadow spokesman, announced it last year. Now, once again, we are open to all manner of technological outcomes. The minister today, once again, confirmed from the request for tender proposal that he was open to all manner of options in this. It shows the government have no idea where they are going on this. They are changing policy on the run. They should be ashamed, and the minister should fess up to it. (Time expired)

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know what those opposite do not understand about this. Unlike you, we have one plan to deliver a nationwide broadband network to 98 per cent of Australia. What is so difficult? Unlike you, we have one plan, not 18 failed plans. We have one comprehensive, thoughtful plan. Some aspects of that plan should seem quite familiar to you, because they were presented to your government and you failed to make a decision. You could not make a decision. Out of 18 failed plans, not one bit was implemented, not one comprehensive decision was made and you wonder why Australia is in the mess that it is in.

We lag behind when it comes to broadband access. It is an international disgrace. When people visit this country they do not understand why connection speeds are so slow, why access is so restricted and why it costs so much. We are way behind the eight ball on each of those three conditions and that happened on your watch. It happened absolutely on your watch. Since this government was elected on 24 November, we have worked to implement our plan. On 11 April we released the request for tender. You want to discuss cost; you want to discuss all sorts of things. I do not know of any commercial reality where we talk about how much something is going to cost before the contract has been signed and before the decision has been taken. Maybe you live in a different reality when it comes to those issues. I do not know.

We have put a document out there. We are appealing for as wide an interest as we possibly can, because this is a very important piece of infrastructure. This will be one of the most important pieces of infrastructure delivered to the Australian economy for quite some time. Not only will it move the Australian economy into the modern age, not only will it move our education services into the modern age, not only will it mean that 98 per cent of our population can communicate with one another using digital equipment; it will actually increase productivity and will allow more people to work in varied ways and re-enter or enter the workforce. What is wrong with that? All you can do is knock. You had 11½ long years, more than one plan per year, and you did nothing. In 11½ years you had 18 plans. That is not a legacy that you should be proud of. We have had six months and have one plan, and we are working very hard on delivering that one visionary plan to 98 per cent of the population. You cannot have it both ways. You either get with the program, you get with the forward vision and you work with us and move forward or you accept the legacy and the mess that you left.

You are not prepared to discuss what you did for 11½ long years. All you want to do is come in here and pick holes in a process. That is all you ever want to do these days. It is what has been happening with the budget bills. It is what has happened with almost every piece of legislation in the last few weeks. We do not look back at the 11½ years that got Australia to this point; instead, what you do is you say: ‘That’s all well and good. We’re not going to talk about our contribution to the mess that broadband access is in or the mess that other issues are in.’ You created a number of the issues that we have to legislate to address in this fortnight. But we have one visionary plan, one plan that the government is going to work with the private sector to deliver, so 98 per cent of Australians can access modern, high-speed broadband. That is a plan that we should all be proud of. I know my community, Western Australia, is proud of it.

Under your old regime, parts of the Western Australian wheat belt could not access anything. This plan will move our entire economy and our entire nation into the future. It will allow kids in the bush to access modern education and the most recent information and to have the same standard of teaching and learning as those in the city have. This system will allow for more-flexible working conditions, for women to re-enter the workforce, for people to work from home and for people to be more productive and work around the clock to marry up their work ambitions with their family responsibilities. This plan is actually going to deliver for everyone. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One part of the responses to questions today by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, was absolutely accurate. That is when he said, ‘We are a joke.’ Senator Conroy and, indeed, the whole of the current government are a joke—and, regarding this matter, many Australians now regret having laughed prior to the election.

Mr Deputy President, you will recall that the Labor Party promised to reduce grocery prices; you will recall that they promised to reduce petrol prices; yet we have grocery prices going through the roof and petrol prices at their highest level ever. In the telecommunications area, we were promised that construction of the new broadband network would commence by the end of 2008 and be finished by 2012. No serious commentator, no serious involvee in the broadband industry accepts or appreciates that this can possibly happen.

Labor made a promise; it gave a commitment that the $4.7 billion would be used for a fifty-fifty equity partnership. Those of us who were in the Senate last year will remember how Senator Conroy seemed fixated on the phrase ‘fibre to the node’. What do we find, after the Labor Party has been in power for seven months? All of those promises, like all of their other promises, are thrown out the door. As Senator Birmingham rightly says: according to the Labor Party, the technology these days does not matter anymore. We got quite sick of Senator Conroy, before the election, mouthing about fibre to the node. We suspected that he had no idea what it meant, but it sounded good. It was continually spoken about. Today the Labor Party seems to have gone right off that proposal and is asking to have a look at any proposals that might be put forward by possible bidders.

There is the fifty-fifty equity. As Senator Birmingham very cleverly pointed out in his question to the minister: if it is to be a fifty-fifty partnership, the $4.7 billion of the government’s half share means that the total cost will be no more than $9.4 billion. Even the most conservative commentator or the most conservative insider can now say that there is no prospect of the broadband highway being completed in the time stated and at a cost anywhere near that proposed.

Senator Conroy should now apologise for misleading the Australian public before the election and should admit to the timetable. He clearly knows that the dates he is now giving are impossible to achieve. It would be better for Senator Conroy at this early stage to concede that what he said in this regard before the election was just rhetoric and to give the Australian public some idea of when we might expect a decent broadband service in Australia.

The former minister, Senator Coonan, had a very definitive plan. She had done a great deal of work in forwarding a proposal that would have brought broadband and urgent immediate telecommunications to all parts of Australia. As someone who comes from a rural and regional area, I was delighted that the former government had set money aside and had a plan that would have got decent high-speed broadband to all parts of Australia.

The Labor Party are still in never-never land. They have no real idea of when the broadband network might be started, let alone finished. That means that those of us in rural and regional Australia, in particular, will be left to the mercies of the Labor Party, as we were all those years ago when the Labor government shut off the analog network without any replacement program in mind. You cannot trust the Labor Party with money; neither can you trust them with telecommunications.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, if you think about every significant advance in material welfare or material benefits over the last 200 years, particularly in the context of Western history, you will note that it has been accompanied by two developments: first, a quantum shift in the ability to shift people and package and, second, a quantum shift in the ability to communicate. Just think through the advances that have occurred over the last 200 years: steamships, canals, rail, telegraph, radio and TV, and internet and broadband. Each has been accompanied by or has caused a material shift in economic welfare across—and without any exception—all Western nations.

That is why, in this context of a shift to a new system of broadband, a new system of internet communication, it is absolutely critical that it be gotten right and that it be developed and implemented as a matter of absolute priority. If we take a couple of our major trading nations, we know that in the United States, for example, already 50 per cent of their population, 50 per cent of all homes and businesses, have broadband high-speed communication. In South Korea, a critical major trading partner of this country, the hit rate is currently 98 per cent. Within four years the United States will shift from 50 per cent to 75 per cent of their population having ready access to high-speed broadband communication. Yet, when we turn to Australia, the figures are still, depending on the region, around 10, 20, 25 or 28 per cent of the population having access to high-speed broadband communication, with all of the associated delays and disadvantages that go with a system developed many, many years ago.

So as we come to see what can be done about that we consider two things. We consider the immediate past and the progress that was made then and we consider the immediate future. As previous speakers in this debate have indicated, the previous government, in power for almost 12 long years, developed but did not proceed with 18 sequential and consecutive individual plans for the implementation of broadband around Australia, and each of them was found wanting, was found to be full of pitfalls and shortcomings and could not be proceeded with. As a consequence, there was no ready spread of broadband technologies and the like around this country.

All through last year, the Australian Labor Party in opposition highlighted the need for a broadband policy, the need for government involvement or regulation, the need for a new system. Why? So that we could join the rest of the world, the rest of our major trading nations, and get into the new world of high-speed communication whereby individuals and businesses can create and transfer wealth and develop things that are necessary to go forward for the next 25 years. The then opposition developed a plan to commit up to $4.7 billion of investments, along with associated equity partners, to develop and implement a plan for the spread of broadband technologies across this entire continent, with the net result at the outset sought to be that something like 98 per cent of the population would be covered and would have ready access to readily available broadband technologies—all capital cities, all major regions, 98 per cent of the population. We took that policy and explained it and sold it to the Australian people. What did they do? They said yes.

The Australian Labor Party has a plan for the future. It is going to give us broadband. It is going to give us a way forward whereby we can develop communications and communication skills so we can invest in and expand our businesses, sell more and receive more. The government received advice on the necessity for that policy. The Australian people accepted the argument and said yes. The government’s policy to have an Australia-wide broadband rollout, an Australia-wide broadband layout is the way forward. (Time expired)

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the answers by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy. We had a plan, a plan to ensure access to fast and affordable broadband to 99 per cent of the Australian population—99 per cent of Australian households and small businesses—by the end of 2009. We had a plan to extend fast and affordable broadband to regional Australia. Labor has scuttled that plan. Labor will replace that plan with a vague, citycentric promise of a national broadband network, which will cost Australians an arm and a leg—not just the $4.7 billion that is in Labor’s policy but between $897 million and $1.4 billion in additional costs to be incurred by Australian families.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Mark Bishop interjecting—

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bishop, you have had your go. Senator Cormann is entitled to be heard in silence.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our plan, with a $958 million investment, would have delivered better broadband coverage to almost 900,000 people across Australia. But we have a minister who, after Labor won government, was desperate; he was itching to give the OPEL contract the chop. He could not wait. He was desperate to come up with an excuse and of course he got the advice that he wanted and he chopped the contract that would have delivered better services to people right across rural and regional Western Australia—and I can see why Senator Bishop would be leaving the chamber after interjecting as violently as he did, because he cannot handle the truth when it comes to the impact of the decision by this government on people in rural and regional Western Australia.

It was a cruel blow to rural and regional Western Australia indeed. We now get this constant song, this lazy song from the government that is already starting to become arrogant, that we did not do anything over 12 years, that we did not do a thing about broadband. I can tell you this: between 1996 and 2007 we invested $4.1 billion in better broadband technology and better broadband services. But of course that technology has significantly evolved over those 12 years. Through you, Mr Deputy President, I would remind Senator Ruth Webber that that is exactly what has been happening over the last 12 years, that there has been significant change. We had a plan prior to the last election to bring faster broadband services to 99 per cent of the Australian population. Of course now, under Labor’s vague, citycentric plan, people in regional WA will have to wait until at least 2014 to get access to what will be, even then, less reliable services.

I asked the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy whether Australian families would have to pay between $897 million and $1.4 billion more a year to access high-speed broadband services under Labor’s broadband network, and he looked at me blankly. He did not know what I was talking about. He said, ‘Can you perhaps explain to me what you are talking about?’ Well, I draw his attention to the study by the Centre for International Economics, with offices in Canberra and Sydney, which released the report in June 2008 The Telstra return on a national FTTN network: community impacts. We clearly have a minister that is not on top of his portfolio. When I asked him a very simple question—‘How much is this going to cost Australian families every year?’—he was not able to answer. I urge the minister to have a close look at the Herald Sun article of 5 June, which states:

Consumers and the economy would be $897 million worse off if Telstra builds a national broadband network, according to an economic report.

…            …            …

If the network was to cost $15 billion, a figure used recently by Telstra boss Sol Trujillo, Australians would pay an additional $1.4 billion a year for broadband services.

So there it is in black and white. The minister today, being asked a question, did not even know what I was talking about. This is clearly right at the heart of his portfolio responsibilities. He could not wait to scuttle a plan that would have delivered fast broadband to 99 per cent of the Australian population. He could not wait to tear up the contract that delivered a solid and credible plan to replace it with something that is going to cost taxpayers $4.7 billion to start off with. We do not even know whether it is going to deliver what the government intend it to deliver, because they said, ‘Whatever else it costs, our commitment is limited to $4.7 billion.’ Whether it is $15 billion or $25 billion, they have no idea. I got the impression that the government had not done any serious modelling to assess the impact on Australian families to assess whether their plan had any financial or fiscal credibility in terms of actually implementing it. The study by the Centre for International Economics actually tells us that consumers—Australian families, Australian working families—will be between $897 million— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.