Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion to take note of the NBN Co. Ltd report for the period 9 April to 30 June 2009. Last week I was listening to this debate in the chamber and I have been listening to it today. What I have heard from the opposition is an argument of envy—envy like the green shamrock on St Patrick’s Day. Rather than coming up with reasonable, sustainable arguments on their issues associated with this magnificent policy that Labor have introduced, all those opposite can do is be envious, like they are of our ETS. If you look at their program, you can see that it was going to produce more carbon and cost more. That was their policy rather than—

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right, at one stage they did support our CPRS but then they backflipped into their normal role. Lately, we have heard the opposition’s position on paid parental leave—another example of their envious position on the government’s proposal in this area. And, lo and behold, the opposition’s proposal has been demonstrated as a big new tax. All this week, the opposition’s position has been one of running untruthful, envious arguments against the Rudd Labor government’s successes. We heard them once again today arguing over the Building the Education Revolution—and bear in mind that they voted against it. They also voted against the $42 billion stimulus package that kept people in employment and helped them to hold onto their homes.

There was also a need for the government to inject funds into a depleted school infrastructure program—$16.2 billion. We had to put the funding in to stimulate that part of the economy and also to assist schools. Let us disregard the fact that the opposition will be turning up on the day that the school halls and science programs will be launched. They will be there for their photo opportunity, with big smiles on their faces. They will want to get a photo with the duty senator or the member in the hope that it will be in their local newspaper.

I will now go back to the NBN policy. The government has announced that it will connect 90 per cent of homes, schools and workplaces with fibre-to-the-premises infrastructure that is capable of providing broadband services and speeds of 100 megabits per second. That is 100 times faster than what most people currently have. The remaining premises will be connected with next-generation wireless and satellite technologies, which will be able to deliver speeds of at least 12 megabits per second to people living in remote places in rural Australia who had been forgotten under the previous government for 12 years. That is our policy on the NBN.

If I reflect back to the situation where I had to purchase a desktop PC—it was about 17 years ago when my son was moving through his education—I can still recall the slow connections in those days. Downloading items was always a task. It was as slow as a great-grandmother’s search for an elusive button in the haberdashery store. That is how slow it was in those days. The opposition want to keep us at that pace. They want to keep us in the past. They do not want to accept the fact that we have technology. They will not embrace technology. They are frightened of technology. That is the issue of those opposite. They are frightened of the Matrix. They have been overdosed on the Matrix movie. They have been overdosed on the Robocop movies. They do not like technology. They believe in all those science fiction movies that they watched day in and day out.

Let us have a look at what they thought of NBN, or broadband, when they were in government. They wanted to exclude it to only five capital cities. They did not want to accept the fact that we were in the bottom half of OECD countries for broadband take-up—16th out of 30 countries. They were not prepared to accept the fact that we paid more for broadband—20th out of 29 countries. Australia is the fourth most expensive country for low-speed connections and the fifth most expensive for medium-speed connections in terms of average monthly subscription prices. Those opposite want to keep us in the dark, rather than go where we are heading as a government— (Time expired)

Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the NBN document with regard to an urgency motion that the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Mr Tanner, saw fit to move in the House this morning. The motion spoke about not putting the sites that have been chosen for the NBN to the Public Works Committee for scrutiny.

I have been a member of the Public Works Committee for five years, and I am now deputy chair. The Manual of procedures for departments and agencies, which the committee actually reviewed in this morning’s meeting, states that all Commonwealth expenditure on public works should be scrutinised by parliament—that is, referred to the committee. However, subsequent sections of the act provide that, under certain circumstances, a work may be exempted from scrutiny. One of the grounds for exemption is that of urgency. And I quote here section 1.44:

... agencies should write to the Committee at an early stage to inform it of the intention to seek an exemption.

Now, Mr Tanner or his office delivered the letter to the Public Works Committee this morning asking for an exemption after the committee’s meeting had finished. And he has form on this issue: in September last year, he again sought an exemption on the grounds of urgency. So, although he pays lip service to the work of the committee, he does nothing whatsoever to show that the government has faith in this committee to have proper scrutiny. As an added interesting point, paragraph 1.45 of the procedure manual states:

As action by the Minister for Finance … is necessary for all exemptions, Finance is responsible for coordinating necessary actions and must be informed at an early stage if an exemption to the Act is being sought.

Mr Tanner’s letter says: ‘Due to the late completion of the preparatory work for the first release sites, including the acquisition of network and geospatial tools, there has been insufficient time to refer the main works to your committee.’ The National Broadband Network has been on this government’s agenda since the government was elected in 2007, and yet the minister for finance cannot even find the time to deliver a letter to the committee in sufficient time for it to do its work.

But Minister Tanner is not the only minister at fault in this. Minister Conroy’s refusal to release the NBN implementation study highlights once again his determination to avoid scrutiny of Labor’s $43 billion National Broadband Network. The threshold at which government projects have to be presented to the Public Works Committee is $16 million. That is a drop in the ocean compared to $43 billion. Minister Conroy refuses to release key documents and he refuses to undertake any cost-benefit analysis. Twice in the last two days we have seen him refuse to comply with a Senate order to release the full report. He has refused to release a scientific study from the CSIRO that he publicly relied on. So the Australian Financial Review released it for him, after a protracted battle to obtain it under FOI, revealing that the document was only seven pages long. Now, even Minister Conroy, who has to read his question time answers from his computer so that he gets not one word wrong, will never, surely, be able to say to us that he did not have time to read a document that is seven pages long—not only that; it used Wikipedia as a key source. His demand that we not speak on his bill is also absolutely bizarre, given that sectors of our community want to know what is in the bill and how it is going to operate.

So last year Minister Tanner bypassed the Public Works Committee with a similar motion, but at least he informed us in writing. But today, and this is no stuff-up or coincidence, when it comes to the NBN, this government is using every trick in the book to avoid scrutiny, and as a member of the highly respected Public Works Committee I take great exception to that. I would like to ask all ministers of this government, keen though they are to avoid any degree of scrutiny whatsoever, to look to what they are expending, see if this is a good use of government money and then allow the Public Works Committee to undertake its use of scrutiny or exemption, as the case may be, and make a reasoned decision about what is the best way to do its work. We do not want ministers standing in the way of— (Time expired)

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate this opportunity to talk about the National Broadband Network and what it is going to mean to my home state. Those opposite, who keep knocking it all the time, do not want to look at the benefits that it is going to bring to Tasmanians in terms of opening up, for example, opportunities in education. They do not want to know what it is going to do in terms of benefits to the health system. But we know that, in their state election, Tasmanians are not prepared to risk Tony Abbott, with his history of ripping a billion dollars out of the health system. What we do need to put on the record is that the Tasmanian state Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hodgman, although he is the runt of that litter, is supportive of the National Broadband Network and its rollout. He can see the future benefits that it will bring to the state.

What is really interesting in terms of the benefits the NBN will bring is that people like those opposite, Senator Barnett and co., who come into this chamber and relentlessly rewrite history, knock the Labor government for the way we have handled the global financial crisis, for the decisive action that we took to ensure that Australians kept their jobs. We talk about funding and investing in infrastructure; they had 12 years of neglecting it. They ripped money out of the higher education system, they ripped money out of the health system and they did not invest in infrastructure in this country. They did not invest in training. They did not invest in education. They did not invest in the future of young Australians.

So what have we done? The Rudd Labor government, during the worst financial crisis in my lifetime, the worst in over 50 years, acted decisively. We did not take the advice of Helen Coonan; we did not put our heads in the sand and ‘wait and see’ what happened. We took action, and that action has paid off. Have there been problems? Yes, there have. But when I was out at the Kings Meadows High School in Launceston a couple of weeks ago, opening their new classrooms, I can recall seeing the former Bass MHR, Mr Michael Ferguson, looking very, very uncomfortable, because it was the opposition who neglected education—Senator Colbeck and Senator whatever-his-name-is who is walking out of the chamber and whom nobody in Tasmania actually knows. Michael Ferguson was squirming in his seat because he was embarrassed that we were there to open a facility that that school has been waiting for for a long, long time. I would like to see those opposite, Senator Barnett, for example, go to the Launceston Christian School and tell the principal and the students and the community that their funding will be taken away from them. I would like them to go to the Launceston Grammar School and tell them that their desperately needed classrooms and facilities will be taken away—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. We are discussing this document that I hold—I suspect that Senator Polley has never seen it. It is the NBN Co. Ltd annual report. I am looking through it and I cannot see anywhere a reference to the Launceston school or any other school, for that matter. So I ask, Mr Acting Deputy President, that you bring Senator Polley to order to talk about the document we are on and not about anything else that might come to her mind.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Macdonald. The debate is very wide ranging. The senator has been referring to the report. I would remind her of the report to which she is addressing her comments.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is amazing—you hit a nerve when you talk about the lack of investment from those that are passed, those that are part of history. Senator Macdonald is part of history; just ask John Howard—he knows all about the ability of the good senator on that side. But I am not going to be dissuaded from talking about the real benefits that national broadband will bring to my home state—in fact, to the nation. Those on the other side have no foresight. They have no policy. They do not want to hear about the benefits. They do not want to talk about the investment in our schools and the investment in infrastructure, because they neglected those areas for 12 very long years.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian people were not fooled at the last election, and I do not think they are going to be fooled again by a leader that promised there will be no new taxes. But what has he promised since? A big new tax. Who would he tax? The business community—those that the other side claim to represent in this place. The Australian people will not trust Mr Abbott because the risk is too great—the risk to their jobs, to the health system and to their children’s educational opportunities. The National Broadband Network is part of that. I feel very sorry for the Liberal senators opposite—

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

who come into this chamber relentlessly trying to rewrite history. If they had their way they would deny all Tasmanian students the opportunities that they are now going to have with this investment in facilities which are going to benefit the entire— (Time expired)

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Before I call Senator Macdonald, I will remind senators that, while it is the last day of the session, speakers are to be heard in silence. We have had some latitude, but it is getting a bit noisy in the chamber.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can barely speak—I am cut to the quick by Senator Polley’s personal attack on me, saying that Mr Howard did not like me as a minister! After appointing me a minister for nine years, I think Mr Howard had a good idea of my failings and my attributes. Mr Acting Deputy President, I can assure you that Senator Polley will not be a minister for nine months, nine weeks, nine days or even nine hours. Senator Polley, if you want to get into people’s records as minister, I will have you on any day, because you will never get there.

I also heard Senator Polley accuse the opposition leader and next Premier of Tasmania of being the runt of the litter. We did not take any notice of that. Coming from Senator Polley, who would take objection to that? Mr Hodgman, of course, is a member of a very distinguished Tasmanian family. Fancy Senator Polley, who comes from a family that seems to trade political posts and seats in Tasmania, having the guile and the gall to accuse someone else of being a runt of a political leader. Perhaps she should look in a mirror when she wants to make another comment like that.

I have been distracted from the NBN Co., and that is unfortunate, because I wanted to refer to Senator Conroy’s comments yesterday in giving his excuses for not tabling the implementation study. He said:

Putting the study together required a multidisciplinary approach and an enormous and sustained effort, together with extensive shareholder consultation …

This is Senator Conroy saying he has had a delay in dealing with this because he had to have ‘extensive shareholder consultation’. You know who are the shareholders of the NBN Co.? Mr Tanner and—wait for it—Senator Conroy. So he had this huge delay consulting with himself! I can understand that Senator Conroy trying to find a brain in the person he was consulting with may have been difficult, but fancy using that for an excuse for delaying the implementation study!

I also came across recently, thanks to Senator Coonan, a report from back in 2008. I think this is instructive in this NBN Co. discussion. I quote from this news report:

But Senator Conroy said the Government would not contribute more than $4.7 billion, no matter whether the proposal was for an FTTN network or FTTH network—

that is, a fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-home network. The report continues:

“Fibre-to-the-home has some wonderful potential but it is more costly and people have got to build the business case; they can’t expect the Government’s going to give more than $4.7 billion,” he said.

That is Senator Conroy it is quoting. What are the facts? A couple of months later he is putting $43 billion into it—not the $4.7 billion that he said he would not go above. And he is saying there has to be the business case made. We have been saying to him for the last 12 months: ‘Where is your business case?’ He would say, ‘Oh, look, we didn’t do a business case but it’ll all be in the implementation study; you can see it all there.’ We would ask: ‘Where are you going to get the money from, Minister? Who’s going to invest in this? You said that private industry was going to have a 49 per cent share in it; they were going to invest in it.’ ‘It’s all in the implementation study,’ Senator Conroy would say. We would ask him, ‘How is it going to make a profit?’ He would say, ‘Oh, it’s all in the implementation study.’

Yet, here we are, on the verge of new legislation, with the company now up and running, and we have certainly not seen a business case for it. It looks like we are not going to see the implementation study. We will not see it because Senator Conroy has to consult with himself. He has to get Mr Kaiser, no doubt, the government relations officer dealing with the government who owns the company, to give him some advice. I know the sort of advice Mr Kaiser could give—ask the courts in Queensland when he was required to resign. This report highlights the farcical nature of the NBN Co. (Time expired)

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise tonight to speak on the NBN report. NBN is a very positive story for Tasmania. The rollout of the NBN is on track and starting to deliver high-speed broadband to the first premises in Tasmania from this year. As a senator for Tasmania, I thank the Rudd government and the Bartlett government for their contribution to ensuring that Tasmania is moving ahead. To the retail providers that Senator Conroy announced this week on the Mornington proof of concept test centre—that is Primus, Internode and iiNet—I thank them too for their commitment to Tasmania, for their enthusiasm, for their contribution to the development of the technology and for their investment. For Tasmania, strong interest means competition, more choice and better and more innovative services for the people that live there. But of course we still have not heard the Leader of the Opposition in Tasmania come out and say he will continue to support the NBN rollout in Tasmania. He has previously said he supports it, and I appreciate that he said that, but since Mr Abbott has said he is going to take money out of the NBN we have not heard Mr Hodgman come out and say that he will support it.

What we have heard this week, though, is a whole pile of scaremongering and allegations of corruption in regard to the Tasmanian government which are pretty rich coming from senators representing the party that gave us Robin Gray and Edmund Rouse. Let us face it, those failed attempts to use bribery and to corrupt the political process ended in jail sentences. We know that the Liberal government were unable to even find enough candidates to run in Franklin in Tasmania. They had to get a failed candidate from the Family First party to run. We know she has got the support of Senator Abetz, so she has had a bit of favouritism. They come in here and they talk on and on and ridicule the Tasmanian government, but the Tasmanian Bartlett government is a forward-moving, forward-thinking government and I hope the people of Tasmania acknowledge that on Saturday when they go to the polls.

Earlier this week Senator Bushby, and I am pleased he is here to hear this, did not mind attacking a previous member of the Legislative Council. To my mind, her only fault—if they are going to fault her, and I do not fault her for this—is that she was an extremely hardworking member and supported the people of Pembroke. But, no, Senator Bushby had to come in here the other night and, amongst other disgusting and scurrilous attacks he made on a previous minister, bring her personal life into the debate. It is an absolutely inappropriate way for them to behave. The comments made the other night in regard to Allison Ritchie are scandalous and completely lacking in moral fortitude. Across the political divide, in case Senator Bushby had not realised this, there are a number of politicians who employ family members on their staff. His concern about Allison Ritchie was that she employed members of her family on her staff. In fact, although government ministers cannot hire close relatives, there are no restrictions on MPs. But obviously it is okay if it is on their side! I could name a few but I do not think that there is any point in doing that. This is full of great hypocrisy: they can do what they like but when it comes to somebody in the Labor Party, no matter where, if they are not labelling them with some 1940s communist type label, which shows you how far in the Dark Ages they are still living, they have to have a go at them for something else.

Let me point out the facts about the staff in Allison Ritchie’s office. Allison was the member for Pembroke from 5 May 2001 until 20 June 2009, so she had a number of different staff members, as she was entitled to. She was looking after the people of Pembroke, as I said. During that time she had three people employed who were in some way related to her. Two of these people were actually employed by the Department of Premier and Cabinet and underwent separate processes. Senator Bushby forgot to mention that the other night.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Politicisation of the Public Service.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection. I just find it hard to believe— (Time expired)

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to speak also on the NBN Co. Ltd report for the period 9 April to 30 June 2009. In so doing, in the first instance I wish to respond to a comment from Senator Polley, who was speaking on the same report. As far as I am aware, that comment was one of the lowest personal attacks on the Liberal leader in Tasmania that I am aware of. Calling Will Hodgman the runt of the litter was totally inappropriate. Coming from Senator Polley, coming from anybody, it was entirely inappropriate. I would ask Senator Polley to take the time, perhaps on the adjournment or at a time in the very near future, to stand in this place and apologise on the public record for that comment. If I have got that wrong, I stand to be corrected, but that is my understanding. As for calling Will Hodgman the runt of the litter, he is the Liberal leader, he is a man of credibility, he is a man of substance, and he is leading the Liberal Party. He is—yes, indeed—the son of Michael Hodgman QC, MP, with decades of experience in the federal and state parliaments. To say that he is the runt of the litter is an absolute disgrace.

Senator Polley is indeed from a well-established Labor family in Tasmania. I commend her for that and I commend her family for their contribution to the Tasmanian community. But I am absolutely astounded that she would use those words in this place, and the Tasmanian people would find that incomprehensible and most inappropriate and unfair. I put that on the record right upfront and I ask Senator Polley to correct the record and to apologise for that accusation, because it is totally inappropriate.

With respect to this particular report, I want to touch on the issue of the $100 million Senator Conroy announced on 1 March as having been injected, past tense, into the NBN Tasmania. I have the media release here in front of me. It says:

Media Release

Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy

The headline says:

$100 million injected into NBN Tas as Stage 3 rollout is announced

The first sentence says:

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, today announced the Rudd Government would make an equity injection of $100 million into NBN Tasmania, to facilitate the further rollout of fibre-to-the-home broadband in the State.

I say right upfront that all Tasmanians, and all of us on this side, want better broadband services for Tasmania. We want it and we know that it is going to benefit Tasmanian families and communities. Senator Conroy made this statement where he said that he has injected the $100 million, but when I checked the company documents yesterday—

Government Senators:

Government senators interjecting—

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Could senators please cease conversations across the chamber. We are debating at the moment.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not mind the interjections, and I am happy to have the debate any time either in here or outside, because when you check the company documents from as late as yesterday that $100 million was not there. I go back to the fact that the Tasmanian NBN Co. Ltd was established and its first board appointed on 13 August 2009 as a wholly owned subsidiary of NBN Co. The government get lots of publicity, they make these grand statements and they put out a press release saying ‘$100 million injected’—past tense—to make you think that it had already been injected into the company and the money spent, when initially the amount was estimated at $700 million.

I have asked in this place—and the minister will not respond—exactly how much the federal government is putting in and how much the state government is putting in. We do not know. The initial announcement made about this was on 8 April last year. We are nearly at the one-year anniversary, and we still do not know how much money has been put in. This is typical of the waste and mismanagement of this government not just on the NBN Co. and the Tasmanian NBN but also on a whole range of other things, whether it is the pink batts fiasco or Building the Education Revolution—I call it ‘the waste revolution’. We want to know. I would like the minister, Senator Conroy, to come clean and say where that $100 million is. It has not been invested. It has not been injected. He should retract his media release of 1 March and stand up, come clean and apologise if that statement is incorrect. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.