Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) 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) and the Assistant Treasurer (Senator Sherry) to questions without notice asked by Senators Cormann and Joyce today relating to the National Broadband Network.

It is interesting that we found today that the government’s depth of understanding of their own deal does not even go to the person representing the Treasurer here. Their understanding of the financial implications of what they have been lauding is completely without any sort of diligence whatsoever. A person sitting merely feet away from the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has no idea of what the implications of a lease are, as opposed to what ownership of an asset is.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You couldn’t even ask the right minister!

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the same sort of diligence we got when the Labor Party went forward with its plan without doing a cost-benefit analysis. No wonder Telstra is happy. Telstra should be doing cartwheels.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s no wonder—you didn’t even ask the right minister!

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Marshall!

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Grumpy Gavin. Telstra should be doing cartwheels about this deal because they retain ownership. What we are doing is just handing money to Telstra. They get $5 billion rent on their ducts. We do not own them. NBN does not own them. Telstra remains with ownership of them. It is a brilliant deal for Telstra—and they get to lose the USO, the universal service obligation. They can flick that one out the door. They can flick the protections that we put in place out the door. The protection is gone, money is in and debt has gone up—it is a typical Labor deal. This is a perfect Labor deal. They will just wander overseas and borrow a bit more money from China, a bit more money from Japan and a bit more money from the Middle East to cover up their black hole in funding. But they do not care about this. There is no acumen to this. It is terrifying to see that the person representing the Treasurer, sitting merely feet away from the minister, has no idea about the fundamental financial aspects of this deal. That is something the Australian people should understand about the acumen that sits behind this.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Marshall interjecting—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Marshall, I have asked you continually not to interject. You will have a chance to respond directly if you want to take note.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have signed ourselves up for an $11 billion gratuity to Telstra. We have ‘come in spinner’ to Telstra. The reason we have done that, the reason our nation is going to go further into hock beyond the $147 billion gross that we currently have outstanding, is that the Labor Party are desperately trying to find a raison d’etre. They are trying to find some semblance of an issue, a fig leaf, to go to the election on and so they are prepared to pay any price, and they paid any price when they paid this. This is the deal made in heaven for Telstra and it is the deal made in hell for the Australian taxpayer, who now has to kick the tin basically for picking up a lease. They have picked up a lease and we are going to pay for it. When they picked up the lease they lost their protection. When we drill down through ‘Universal Service Obligation Co.’ we can see that they have gone out and privatised the guarantee of this chamber to look after Australians. They know when to privatise something. They have privatised responsibility. That is what they privatised. They have privatised public responsibility.

What is the grand amount the government is putting towards this? We see it is $50 million in the forward estimates. What a wonderful day for Australia. We have just been held over a barrel and flogged. This is what has happened to us in this deal and Telstra are grinning all the way to the bank. This is not a purchase. We are not buying a new company here. The government is leasing a hole in the ground and the rent is going to cost it $5 billion. It is handing over the obligations whereby this party sought to protect customers in the universal service obligation. The government is doing that—and then giving what? Fifty million in 2012-13 and 2013-14.

What is in this for Australia? What is in this for Australia is a grinning Prime Minister who can go to the door and say, ‘Because you do not quite understand the complexities of this deal, you’re going to believe me that it’s a good deal,’ just like you believed him when he said that the ETS was the greatest moral challenge of our time, just like you believed him when he  said he was going to have a war on obesity, just like you believed him when he said he would keep the price of groceries down and just like when you believed him in so many of his other false statements.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Wong interjecting—

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure the ‘Minister with no responsibility whatsoever’, Senator Wong, will be able to tell us exactly when to believe the Prime Minister. I tell you what you can believe. You can believe those big, cheesy grins from Telstra, you can believe Telstra’s bank managers and you can believe that Telstra has done the deal of the lifetime with the worst Prime Minister in our nation’s history.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great joy to stand up in this debate on taking note of answers and support yesterday’s fantastic announcement by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy; the Prime Minister; the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner; Telstra and NBN Co. on the next step in our rollout of fast broadband in this country comparable to that which the rest of the world is experiencing. I thought Senator Joyce was the person who represented people in the bush, the king of regional Australia in this federal parliament—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And Clive Palmer.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

along with his best mate Clive Palmer, but we will not go there. Is this the man I have heard for the last five minutes suggesting that even people in rural, remote and regional Australia should not have better communications, should not have better and faster broadband and should not be able to dial up and expect to access the world wide web as fast as people can in Melbourne or Sydney? Is this the man I heard criticising this deal that is going to make communications better and faster for the people that he purports to represent? No, this is a man who wants to come into the chamber and ask questions about communications, the best communications deal this country has ever had. The real reason here is that he wants to mask what happened over the weekend at the National Party conference. There was a great double-page spread in Saturday’s paper featuring Senator Joyce—the man of the water, a man of the time—beside the river. He is going to save the Murray-Darling Basin agreement. He is going to be the person who can bucket that water to the farmers who need it in that region. But lo and behold! He spent the whole weekend encouraging the National Party and ensuring that the National Party rolls Tony Abbott’s policy on water.

He does not want to talk about that today. He does not want to talk about the failed policies of the National and Liberal parties over the weekend when it comes to the fact that they cannot get their act together and come up with a program for delivering water and saving the Murray-Darling Basin, as Senator Joyce purported to do before the weekend—‘Let’s disguise that mistake; let’s ensure that we run away, run backwards, from Tony Abbott’s failed plan over the weekend.’ The National Party rules again—the tail is wagging the dog again—when it comes to most of the policies. Instead, he says, ‘Let’s ask questions today about the NBN.’ We are happy to answer questions about the NBN today, but we would actually like questions to go to the right minister. We are more than happy to answer any questions about the NBN. In fact, we would like to spend the rest of the day debating the NBN solution announced yesterday because it is going to be so good for this country. But it really would help if the coalition’s tactics committee could actually sort out who the right person is to answer the question. Is it Senator Sherry? No, Minister Sherry is not exactly the person who had the answers to this question. It is Senator Conroy. So, Senator Joyce, we would be more than happy to answer your questions, but you really have to ensure that you ask the right person.

Let me tell you about the good news for this country from NBN Co. and the Telstra agreement announced yesterday. The heads of agreement announced yesterday included policy reforms that will deliver clear benefits for Australia in both the short and the long term. In the short term, the payment starts the first step and paves the way for our National Broadband Network to be built faster, cheaper, more efficiently and with faster uptake, higher revenues and less use of overhead cabling. Senator Conroy was right when he said today this is not about the copper network of the past, which is where people like Senator Joyce would want to leave regional and rural Australians, but about a fibre optic future.

Under our vision, policies and plan for this nation, the Rudd Labor government is going to deliver a fast broadband network to this country. We are going to deliver the outcomes that people in the rest of the world are currently experiencing. We are not languishing in the past, back in the bush that Senator Joyce would want the people he purports to represent to still stay in. What do you get under us? Under a Rudd government, Australians will more quickly gain access to all the benefits of superfast broadband. But, if I am hearing Senator Joyce right today, it would seem as if they are not going to back this plan either. They do not want Australians to get on board and get superfast broadband. They just want to let them languish in— (Time expired)

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The one thing that became very clear from Senator Conroy’s answers today is that there is in fact no deal between Telstra and NBN Co. to deliver a national broadband network. In fact, Minister Conroy refused to guarantee that there would be a deal this side of the election. This is yet another example of the Rudd Labor government’s ‘all talk and no action’—the ‘spin over substance’ approach to government. We have a Prime Minister under pressure. We have a Prime Minister who is worried about every single Newspoll. We have a Prime Minister who is worried about tomorrow’s caucus meeting. So he was desperate to bring out some positive news. Then what do they do? They come out and present this deal to try and do a deal as if it is this historic achievement. We had Senator Conroy here in the chamber today describing this thing as historic and saying that it is going to take Australia into a new era with delivering fast broadband. It will deliver nothing of the sort. This is all talk and no action.

I need to point no further than to the letter which was issued to Telstra shareholders by Telstra today. It had two very significant parts to it. Firstly:

… a very significant amount of work must still be done on many complex issues …

Further:

… there can be no guarantee—

that the deal—

will progress to completion.

Only later does it say that should a final agreement be reached then it would have to be put to a shareholder vote in the first half of the calendar year 2011.

Senator Conroy was trying to suggest today that of course there was no final deal because it is not going to be put to a vote of shareholders until early next year. Well, Telstra is not going to even put it to a meeting of shareholders unless it has a deal with the government, and so far there is no deal. The only thing we have is a deal to try and do a deal. The second thing we have is a government committing $9 billion of taxpayers’ money to get Telstra essentially to shut down part of its existing business, and another $2 billion in value for Telstra, courtesy of the taxpayer, by the government committing a hundred million taxpayer dollars every year to fund the universal service obligation. This has never been funded by the taxpayer. It has always been funded by the telecommunications companies themselves.

So here we have the Rudd Labor government true to form. What do they do whenever they are faced with a problem? They just throw taxpayers’ money at it. It is a case of reckless spending left, right and centre—which is of course why they have to come up with yet another tax grab in every single budget. This is a high-spending, high-taxing, high-levels-of-debt, bad, old-fashioned Labor government. The Prime Minister knows now that the election is getting closer and closer, even though he was trying to suggest on The 7.30 Report last week that it could be as late as March or April next year. This is a Prime Minister who knows that people across Australia are angry with him. He knows that people are very disappointed by his lack of performance. They are very disappointed in the failure and incompetence that has been delivered by this Rudd Labor government. He is a Prime Minister who is running scared of going to the next election.

The only reason that this non-deal was rolled out was that it would be in time for Newspoll. He is a desperate Prime Minister who wanted to be able to point to something positive. He wanted to have a win. He wanted to put something out there that looked as if he was actually achieving something. But, if you go past the detail, all you can see is that there is no deal at all. The only thing that people have agreed to is something they have agreed to for some time—that they will try and do a deal. But still nothing that Senator Conroy has said in Senate question time today can give the Australian people any confidence that there will be a deal between Telstra and NBN to deliver a national broadband network this side of the election. All we have had is the reconfirmation of the absolute obvious. And Senator Conroy even said, ‘Well, that is stating the absolute obvious.’ He did not use the words ‘there is no deal’ but that is what he meant, because there is no deal. All he repeated was what everybody knew—that, yes, NBN and Telstra will continue to have discussions to sort out a whole range of complex issues. But there is no guarantee it will progress to completion.

The minister says ‘if this’ and ‘if that’. Well, I hope the Socceroos win every single match between now and the World Cup final. If they do, they will be world champions, but if they do not they will not. (Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It may come as a shock, but there is one thing on which Senator Cormann and I agree: I hope the Socceroos do well too. There you go, Senator Cormann. You and I have agreed on something for the first time in quite a few years.

I relish the opportunity to stand up and make my contribution to this debate. Thankfully it is not broadcast because, as much as we cherish the opportunity to speak on behalf of our state and our country, some of the contributions have been very, very misleading. Before I go on to talk about the great announcement yesterday by Minister Conroy, I must say to you, Mr Deputy President, that I have known you well and that I am aware of your commitment to rural and regional Australia over the years—and I have had the pleasure of working with you closely on a number of occasions—and I have to remark that I think we are losing track of a couple of things. One is that this national high-speed broadband network was a clear Rudd Labor government commitment prior to the last election. This is not something that we have just pulled out of our hats.

When we went to the 2007 election we made it very clear to the people of Australia that they had choices. We made it clear to not only city dwellers but rural and regional Australians that they definitely had some very clear choices between, at the time, the Rudd Labor opposition and the Howard government. We said very clearly that we would roll out a high-speed national broadband network to 98 per cent of Australians. Australians had a lot of choices and one of the choices was to go with us and see that happen or stick with the Howard government after 12 years where nothing had happened. This is what is so annoying.

We also hear other statements about spending and comments that this is not going to deliver anything. This is truly going to deliver a fantastic opportunity for all Australians in rural and regional Australia and in the cities. It gets a little bit annoying when we hear some of those statements. I am in touch with many Western Australians, Mr Deputy President, as you are with South Australians, in the weeks when we are not here. We have to continually remember that this country, this world, has just come through the greatest financial challenge since the 1930s. With all due respect, it is easy for those opposite to push that aside. They do not like to admit it, but if we had not taken those quick and decisive actions, as we did with the national infrastructure stimulus packages, this country would have gone into a technical recession.

We still see daily on our TVs what is happening in Greece and other parts of Europe. We have not come out the other end flying at this stage. We are still not out of the woods. I know that is a corny cliche, but we really are not out of the woods yet. So I applaud Senator Conroy’s announcement yesterday of the $11 billion deal with Telstra to assist in rolling out the National Broadband Network. I want to quote a paragraph from an article in today’s Age by Mr Mark Davis and Mr Ari Sharp. I think the first paragraph really does say it in a nutshell. It says:

Telstra will hand over millions of customers to the federal government’s new national broadband network and close its ageing copper and cable networks in an $11 billion deal that will fundamentally reshape the communications industry.

It goes on to say:

… the deal will allow the new services to be rolled out faster and more cheaply while delivering up to 10 million customers to the new government-owned business.

Ten million! There are 10 million Australians out there who will have access to faster broadband. For small businesses, for students, for pensioners or for whoever, what a fantastic initiative! It really is sad that those opposite take every opportunity to slag off, bag, carpet—whatever you may call it—any initiative that we come up with.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because they fail: pink batts, CPRS!

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Cash, from Western Australia. I will be telling every Western Australian that you do not want rural and regional Western Australians to get access to fast broadband networks. Thank you very much. (Time expired)

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deal or no deal? There is no deal yet. This deal with Telstra could take years to be signed and sealed. As to the delivery, that could be many, many years beyond that. What this announcement is clearly designed to do is mask the fact that there has not been one new megabit delivered under the Labor government’s National Broadband Network thus far. It is designed to obscure the fact that any new service is years and years away and it is designed to obscure the fact that the government cannot substantiate how much it would cost consumers to access the National Broadband Network if it were ever to come to be.

Where is the value for money for taxpayers when what we have and all we have—and the government’s announcement tries to stop us talking about this—is an implementation study based on certain assumptions? If those assumptions are proven true then the implementation study says that, in theory, the National Broadband Network can be built. But the implementation study is splendidly silent as to which of its assumptions in forecasting a profit for NBN Co. of between three per cent and nine per cent will actually come about. The implementation study does not predict whether it will be the profit assumption based on lower demand than predicted and cost blow-outs or the rosy prediction that results in a nine per cent profit.

The implementation study says that if the best of possible worlds unfolds then the NBN can be built. What the implementation study does not do is say when the government will respond to it. They have been silent on that as well thus far. I guess yesterday’s announcement was also designed to obscure that. What the implementation study does not, under any circumstances, do is a cost-benefit analysis. It does not show, even if this thing can be built, whether it should be built and whether it is for the public good. The government have steadfastly refused to do a cost-benefit analysis. What does the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy tell us? Mr Daryl Quinlivan has said, ‘What is the point of doing a cost-benefit analysis of a policy that the government has already decided to implement?’

NBN Co. is in the process of providing the government with its business case. Senator Conroy told us at committee hearings that, even once it is done, the Australian taxpayer cannot have a look at NBN Co.’s business case. He said:

You are not going to be privy to them today, tomorrow, or next week or after we receive the business plan.

That is pretty good for taxpayers looking to see what is proposed as the business plan underpinning a company essentially funded by them to deliver the government’s National Broadband Network!

Yesterday, we heard Minister Conroy try to say that this deal, which is not a deal, is value for money to the taxpayers. Minister Conroy tries to say it will save the taxpayers money, but when we ask ‘how much?’ he suggests that this information is commercial and in-confidence. What confidence can the taxpayer have that there would be any value for money for the Australian taxpayer in this deal were it ever to come to pass? Thus far, this is a government that demonstrates spectacular lack of value for money. Look no further than Building the Education Revolution. Why should Australian taxpayers be reassured by this minister suggesting that the information as to value for money is essentially commercial and in-confidence? It is: ‘We know; trust us; she’ll be right; you can’t see the figures.’ It is deal or no deal. Even if there be a deal, this does not bode well for the Australian taxpayer and does not bode well for the country.

Question agreed to.