Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate notes the Gillard Government’s failure to undertake a cost benefit analysis of their National Broadband Network plan to ensure the most cost effective delivery of competitive broadband services to all Australians in a manner responsive to our future needs.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is once more very interesting to note exactly where this nation is going and the incompetence before us in the guise of a government. It is quite peculiar where we have ended up, especially now with what is going to be the largest capital investment program in this nation’s history.

Senator Conroy was further embarrassed in question time today while playing around with his justification and the embarrassing mistakes he made in the media this morning. Early this morning Senator Conroy was claiming with regard to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 that the National Broadband Network is not mentioned in the bill. In fact, it was mentioned 62 times. I had the bill there and, as I opened it up, the word ‘NBN’ and things to do with it were popping up like rabbits; they were everywhere.

Senator Conroy today would not confirm or deny his statements in question time, but he came up with a very different excuse. He said: ‘This bill is actually describing a deal between Telstra and the NBN. It is not about the NBN.’ You almost need to have the wisdom of Solomon to try to decipher that, but from what I can see the bill is about an $11 billion deal between Telstra and the NBN, not about the NBN. That is as clear as mud. That is a piece of cake. It is all clear—nothing to see here. That really sheds some light on exactly how convoluted, confusing and hopeless this minister has become. If this bill is about the deal but not about the NBN then the minister must explain why he invited the CEO of NBN Co., Mr Mike Quigley—who, by the way, got his job without a job interview or without a public process of application for his job—along to announce the deal and why at the press conference Mr Quigley said:

This is a very important step forward for NBN Co …

The minister must further explain why he said in a press release announcing the $11 billion deal between Telstra and the NBN Co.:

This agreement paves the way for a faster, cheaper and more efficient rollout of the—

wait for it—

National Broadband Network …

The Prime Minister in the House of Representatives today got in on the act of incompetence and tried to defend the minister by saying that he is a man who is fully conversant with the National Broadband Network. It poses the obvious question. If what we have seen today in its most classic form is a person fully conversant with his act then I would hate to see someone who is not conversant with his act. Poor Senator Conroy today, as soon as the question came, broke into a sweat. He had sweat pouring out of him because he is under the pump. He is under the pump by reason of the fact of his own incompetence. We have gone so far down this path and he knows that he is hiding something. Why will he not table the business plan? Surely it would cause him less grief than he is getting at the moment. Why will he not send it to the Productivity Commission? We heard him today talking about all these reports and all these sorts of oblique references to sundry reports everywhere else, but when it comes to the most obvious body, the one designed in this nation to investigate these sorts of things—the Productivity Commission—he refuses to send it to them. The only conclusion that everybody can come to is that he has something to hide.

Now we are looking at a process where, even by the government’s own admission and even though they get the numbers wrong every time, they are going to borrow—and it is not them borrowing; it is the Australian taxpayer borrowing—between $26 billion and $27 billion. That sits on top of where we are at the moment, the $170 billion gross that we have already borrowed. This money has to be paid back. They will expect a return on those funds. The return that the McKinsey report says we are going to get from the NBN is six per cent. The bond rate at the moment is only about 5½ per cent. It would be a lot safer to put the money in the bank. Why are we going to the risk of trying to incorporate ourselves as a competitive entity? Actually, we do not want to be competitive because that is another thing.

We see in proposed section 577BA of the Telecommunications Act as amended by this bill that they have applied for exclusion from what was formerly section 51(1) of the Trade Practices Act. In essence the government have basically said that you will be deemed to have passed that act or you will not be held to that part of the act. This is another thing. What we are doing here is setting ourselves up a monopoly. We are changing the legislation to set up a monopoly, and they have always admitted that at some point in time they are going to sell or try to sell the NBN back into the market. You are only going to be able to sell something if it provides a return. A return at six per cent is not going to be very attractive. So how do you change the return? You change the return by jacking up prices. It is very easy to jack up prices when you have a monopoly. It is very easy to make money when you demand that people go on to it by tying up to the mechanism of delivery.

The concern so many people have is that the government were incompetent with the ceiling insulation debacle—they could not get fluffy stuff into the ceiling without setting fire to 190 houses and tragically killing four people. They spent $1½ billion dollars putting it in and then about $1 billion pulling it out. We had a Labor government where, with the Building the Education Revolution program, we heard the rhetoric and ended up with the bill. We know it cost in excess of $16 billion. The taxpayers are being absolutely touched. This is the same government that talked about the war on obesity, the war on inflation and the war on homelessness—all these things were never achieved. This government is now going into the business of telecommunications. They are doing it in such a way—you have to see from the competency of the minister—that it raises serious questions.

The only way to dispel these serious questions is for there to be a proper analysis by the proper body, which is the Productivity Commission, and at the very least the tabling of the business plan. This is currently following this sort of nefarious process that the Labor Party has of talking about transparency but not talking about it now—just as they talked about the release of the Henry tax review but we never actually had the release of the Henry tax review; they kept stalling it and stalling it and stalling it. Finally, it was released and, after it was released, they did not incorporate any of it. There was the guide to the Murray-Darling Basin which was supposed to be released before the election but was never released before the election. Then they miraculously held it back when they were doing negotiations with the Independents and it was finally released on a Friday night at four o’clock after the media had passed their deadline with the media in one room and the politicians in another. Why did they do that? It was because they tried to circumvent a process of transparency. This is what is going on here.

The more we see Senator Conroy not being across the detail, not understanding what Minister Albanese in the other place said that completely contradicted what he said on Sky Agenda this morning, not understanding some of the vital parts of the act and their interplay with the NBN, not understanding that the NBN is actually mentioned in the act—in fact, he categorically stated that it was not in the act, when obviously it is—the more we realise we have no confidence in his capability. Then there is the manner in which he deals with other people’s money. Having good one-liners, happy smiles and a rambunctious nature is a poor excuse for diligence in understanding this incredibly complicated application in this incredibly complicated field. The Labor Party painted a marvellous sunny upland picture of broadband without really understanding and hoping that no-one else would ever bother to inquire. But we are inquiring now because that is our job in this place.

We have always had a strong commitment to communications in regional areas. I remember a couple of years ago now crossing the floor to try to maintain the $2.4 billion that had been put aside for a regional fund. I remember all of the protections in the Telstra bill: the network reliability framework, the customer service guarantee and the universal service obligations. We put $2 billion aside, and with interest we were to have $2.4 billion in that account. After the Labor Party stole that money we got the promise that they would do something in regional Australia. What have we got up until this point in time? Nothing.

Even now, when they are going forward with this and talking about regional Australia, they are dealing with only 93 per cent. I am one of those people who live in the other seven per cent. It is once more not so much a thing for regional Australia but a duplication of services that exist in urban Australia at a price that Australia just cannot afford. If we had the money, we could afford it. But we do not have the money, so we will have to borrow the money. What is Labor’s plan to pay this money back—or have they paid as much attention to that detail as Senator Conroy has to the detail of his own legislation?

A lot of questions have been asked about the competition implications of proposed section 577BA. All these sorts of things are sneaking out via the cracks. Telstra have Minister Conroy where they want him. There is no doubt about that. Telstra have done an incredibly good deal. They have basically leased—not sold—the pits and the pipes and can get them back later if they want them. And, if they do not, they will have done very well out of them in any case. They knew Senator Conroy would do virtually anything to come to a deal, and he did. He came up with a $43 billion outcome.

The fact that it grew from about $4.6 billion to $43 billion alone should have rung bells and people should have started saying that there is something not right here. As an accountant you always look at the possible return. You ask: ‘What do you intend to be the return on this? Do you have the technical capacity to operate this? Do you have experience in this? From where did you draw the knowledge and the business plan to do this?’ You draw on people with similar competencies to the competencies displayed in the program that you wish to go forward. We can see that those with similar competencies, such as the telco tycoons from Japan and Mexico, have serious concerns about exactly what Australia is up to. No, I was being very polite there—they think we are off the planet with the way we are going about this.

Forty-three billion dollars is not something you drop on the floor of a pub on a Friday night. This money will have to be paid back. Our job in politics is to explain to the Australian people that you can provide an outcome without spending that sort of money. It is not that the coalition do not believe in broadband—we do—we just believe in cutting the suit to fit the wearer and not leaving the outcome sitting on the nation’s credit card. In real terms, over 50 years there will be a 450 per cent increase in the price of phone calls. That is without adjusting for inflation. If we adjust for inflation, there will be about a 64 per cent increase in the price.

Let us dispense with the idea that this is about forcing down the price of telecommunications. It will force up the price of telecommunications. People will have to pay for this utility. In their current business case they talk about only a six per cent return. Because they will get themselves in more strife than the early settlers and they will be in debt up to their eyeballs, you can bet your life that, because it will be moved out with the monopolistic attributes that are being inserted in this, ultimately once someone else gets their hands on it they will not ask for a six per cent return. No way. If they want a six per cent return, they will put their money in the bank—or they could become a bank and lend the money out and get vastly better returns. They will drive up the return and you will have to pay it because there is nothing you can do about it. That will just be the way it is.

The reality is they will be driven to that outcome because, unlike when the coalition was in government, we will not have money in the bank, we will have massive debts. The massive debts will then drive the agenda of the decisions that are made. And because those massive debts will drive the agenda, you will not have the option of holding out; you will be forced into the process of a sell-down of assets to try and keep at bay those people to whom you owe money—in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a recipe for a very bad outcome, for something we cannot afford and we cannot prove, and even the Labor government cannot prove because they refuse to be transparent and table the business plan. They refuse to send the assessment of this process to the Productivity Commission. The only reason they refuse to do that, to be honest and go to the nation’s auditor on whether it is a prudent case, is because they know it is not. I could see that by watching Senator Conroy today on Sky Agenda as the sweat just came pouring out of him when he realised his immense faux pas, that he did not understand that the NBN was actually in the act he was promoting and discussing at that time. The most basic understanding was lacking in the most vital way.

If Senator Conroy does not understand that the NBN is actually noted in the act, what other sections has he been unaware of? When we go through it and look at sections such as 577BA it is a concern that they seem to abscond from the process of 51(1) of the Trade Practices Act. What are the ramifications of that? Who is going to tell us about that? We are just not getting the chance to really see this. What is the take-up and what are the actual requirements for people with regard to broadband? We note that, where it has been sent out, they have not got the take-up in the form that they expected. People’s desire to download movies quickly has not been expressed as we initially anticipated. That also goes to the question: are you overreaching? The classic response to that is: for $43 billion, you most definitely are. It is most definitely an overreach.

The Labor Party went to people who knew less than them, because the Labor Party was the holder of the knowledge, and put forward this idea of the NBN as the reason why the Labor Party, when it did not win more votes than the coalition at the last election, should actually be the government. They put forward that idea and they made a warrant that this was a good plan. It is quite apparent now that that warrant is failing the test. Therefore, the Labor Party’s legitimacy as the government is failing the test. Their legitimacy to hold the treasury bench was on the premise that the NBN would be a great delivery mechanism, and other people accepted that. But it is not the case. As this NBN house of cards falls down, the legitimacy of the Labor Party holding the treasury bench falls down with it. That is another reason why Senator Conroy was excessively glowing and sweating on Agenda this morning, because he knows what this means. I would love to be a fly on the wall when Senator Conroy goes to his cabinet meeting as they discuss what an absolute and outer stuff-up today was for the Labor Party.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start my contribution to this debate by thanking Senator Conroy for providing a ministerial statement on the National Broadband Network which provides a progress report on the National Broadband Network project, outlines the government’s plans to settle the outstanding policy and commercial matters associated with the project, and comments on progress with Telstra negotiations. It also talks about how the NBN will fundamentally change the structure of Australia’s telecommunications industry by facilitating equitable access to voice and high-speed broadband services and genuine competition to benefit all consumers and businesses.

The Gillard Labor government is committed to bringing Australian broadband services into the 21st century. We began the task of building the National Broadband Network during our last term in government and we are determined to continue our plans to deliver the National Broadband Network to the Australian people. Those opposite seem hell-bent on doing all they can to delay and destroy this rollout of technology that will connect our rural and regional centres back to our main cities and the wider world, and to destroy infrastructure and technology that is vital for small businesses, healthcare delivery, education and our ability to work cleaner, smarter, faster. But the question is: why?

This definitely is not about the expense of the NBN. This is about the opposition’s desire to demolish the NBN—oh, except for in my home state of Tasmania, where Mr Tony Abbott recently promised the Liberal Party state conference he would keep the NBN there. So that is okay, we can have it there but nowhere else. It is somewhat absurd now to see the Tasmanian Liberal Senate team up here trying to demolish the NBN whilst back home, facing the electors, they admit they want to keep this critical infrastructure.

What is the opposition’s plan to deliver this critical infrastructure to all Australians? Are they hoping to stall the rollout of this infrastructure just to try and buy a bit more time to come up with a plan? Just this morning on Sky News, Senator Joyce himself could not provide an answer when questioned about what the coalition’s actual plan was for Australia’s future broadband needs. All Senator Joyce could say was he wanted to stop government spending. That is a very clear indication that the opposition have no plan for delivering broadband services to Australians. All this cover about handing over figures, costings, reports and inquiries on the project that has been reported on and inquired into will reveal nothing more than what we already know.

We know that the opposition will never be satisfied because they want to tear down the NBN, regardless of the benefits to Australia. Why? Because they are working under direct orders from Mr Abbott to Mr Turnbull to demolish the NBN. It seems they will do whatever it takes to fulfil this objective. We have already seen those opposite call for a joint committee and a Productivity Commission review. We have already had NBN Co. come before estimates three times and we have already had NBN Co. go to several committees. Those opposite had the NBN go to their own Senate select committee—a committee that was extended five times and produced five reports. What more information could a further study over and above those five reports, the estimates answers and the McKinsey-KPMG implementation study furnish to the opposition or to the Australian people?

This is all about delay. It is what they have been doing all along. The most recent calls for the Productivity Commission to conduct a cost-benefit analysis are another tactic for delaying, and we know that because Mr Turnbull himself admitted that even if the cost-benefit analysis came back unequivocally positive and in favour of the NBN he still could not guarantee the opposition’s support for the continued rollout of this critical infrastructure. So, if the report was not even going to sway the opposition’s position, what would be the point in having the analysis conducted, other than to cause unnecessary delay and thwart the government from delivering broadband to Australia? Mr Turnbull knows that the Productivity Commission would take years to do a formal cost-benefit analysis of the NBN because the NBN affects almost every aspect of our economy and society. That is why he asked for it. The longer the rollout is delayed, the more Australia will lag behind the rest of the OECD.

Recently, the Japanese government tried to calculate the economic value of the flow-on effects that a fibre-to-the-home network would have in enhancing the lives of Japanese people. That task defeated them. What was projected, however, was the value that would have been added to the Japanese economy during the period 2010-11 had they completed the fibre-to-the-home rollout by 100 per cent by the end of March 2011. That figure was estimated to be ¥73 trillion. That is around A$900 billion. If you use those same calculations with adjustments for the GDPs of Australia and Japan that figure is around $182 billion. The fact is that the task to accurately calculate the value of the long-term social benefits arising from improved infrastructure is almost impossible. This very fact was conceded by ACCC boss, Mr Graeme Samuel. There are just too many variables and indicia to form a correct calculation. However, what Mr Samuel did say was that in all three economies—those of Japan, Korea and Singapore—the ACCC found ‘a firm and non-controversial belief that the usage of their fibre and mobile networks is generating significant work and is crucial to maintaining and improving national economic competitiveness’.

The modelling of revenues and costs shown in the McKinsey-KPMG report, based on what could be expected from the project, found that the NBN can be expected to repay the taxpayers’ investment with a small return. So let us take a moment to summarise the steps we have taken on the NBN based on the report alone. The government released the McKinsey-KPMG implementation study in full on 6 May 2010. After eight months of detailed analysis, the implementation study confirmed that under a range of realistic scenarios NBN Co. would have a strong and viable business case. It also confirmed that the project could be expected to generate a return of six to seven per cent and that the government could expect to generate a return on its investment to cover its cost of funds. NBN Co. has finalised its three-year corporate plan and 30-year business plan. The company submitted the plan to the government on 8 November 2010. The government is currently considering the document and proposes to make a range of information from it publicly available in due course.

So why do the opposition continue to scaremonger about this investment in crucial infrastructure? It just does not make sense. The hype around the nondisclosure of information is ridiculous. The government have offered some initial briefings on the business plan to the crossbench and the Greens. These briefings will take place next week. The purpose of these briefings is to outline for the Greens and Independents what is contained in the business plan and the document. We want to provide them with some assurances about the viability of the NBN. As the Prime Minister has said, we will make the business plan public, and that will happen shortly, in December, once commercial-in-confidence material has been removed. We are not trying to hide anything. We are just being diligent in the way we manage this critical investment. As our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said this morning in an interview with the ABC:

… whether it’s inside the parliament or beyond, Australians want to see government being careful, being prudent, looking at the details, crossing the t’s dotting the i’s. That’s the kind of government I want to lead.

That is exactly what we are doing with the NBN. We have heard of the benefits of the NBN repeatedly. The OECD and Access Economics have confirmed that investment in high-speed platforms will generate billions of dollars in economy-wide benefits. Not only will this critical infrastructure provide innovations in areas such as e-health but it will promote efficiencies, also generating a fiscal return.

To again refer to Japan, let us consider their e-medicine trials. What we can see is that by using technology, teleconsultation and home recuperation, using metropolitan medicos to service remote regional centres, there is a saving of ¥41 billion per annum. These healthcare innovations reduce travel for patients, shorten hospital stays and also increase income for patients, who are able to get back to work sooner. This is just one example of the benefits that we will be able to deliver to Australia’s health system and to our citizens if we continue with our plan to roll out the NBN.

In light of all this evidence, why are those opposite still not convinced? The National Broadband Network and the proposed reforms to the telecommunications sector will revolutionise the communications market for Australian consumers. The United Nations said:

Broadband is the next tipping point, the next truly transformational technology. It can generate jobs, drive growth and productivity, and underpin long-term economic competitiveness.

Yet we are consistently thwarted in our attempts to deliver this technology to the Australian people. A study commissioned by IBM in 2009 found that the inferior fibre-to-the-node network would conservatively boost the NPV of GDP by between $8 billion and $23 billion over a 10-year period. That same IBM study also found that over a 10-year period this rollout would create 33,000 jobs in an economy operating at less than full employment.

I will say it again: despite all the evidence we have for delivering this critical social and economic infrastructure for the future, the opposition still want to pull it down. Just this morning those opposite have also attempted to stall legislation designed to promote competition in our telecommunications sector and improve consumer safeguards. Taking action to correct the vertically integrated, privately owned monopoly that Telstra enjoys in the Australian telecommunications industry is long overdue. This legislation is not about the NBN, and those opposite should stop misleading the parliament and the Australian people on the true purpose of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 is about a substantive regulatory reform package that will deliver a more efficient and effective telecommunications market with appropriate consumer safeguards. Whilst the separation of Telstra will certainly allow for a smooth transition to the NBN, it is not essential for the ongoing rollout of the NBN. Those opposite are either a bit confused or just trying to distort the issues in the debate. Either way, just to clear it up one more time: the NBN, Australia’s first national wholesale only communications network will support genuine competition in the telecommunications sector and promote better outcomes for Australian consumers.

The reforms to the telecommunications sector proposed in the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 are purely about, as I said, overcoming the vertically integrated, privately owned monopoly that Telstra enjoys in the Australian telecommunications industry. The telecommunications reforms have nothing to do with the role of NBN Co. and its commercial structure. Those reforms are about telecommunications reform.

Now that I have clarified that confusion we can get back to talking about the NBN. The National Broadband Network, as you have all heard, is the largest nation-building project in Australia’s history and will lift Australia to the top of world rankings in broadband access. It will drive major productivity and growth opportunities and ensure our children get the best education in the world. The NBN will deliver high-speed broadband to all premises in Australia, no matter where they are located. Every home, business, school and hospital will be included and no-one will miss out.

Under the NBN, 93 per cent of premises will be connected with fibre-to-the-premises technology providing speeds of 1 gigabit per second. The remaining Australians who live outside the footprint will receive faster and cheaper broadband from the next generation of satellite and wireless technology. This access will be at a rate 1,000 times faster than what many people experience today. The NBN is not a quick fix; it is a solution for the long-term benefit of the country, especially for our rural and regional areas.

The rollout of the NBN is already putting communities and businesses such as those in my home state of Tasmania on the map and ensuring that Australia remains a player on the international stage. As well as improving services, the construction of the NBN is supporting 25,000 jobs every year on average for the eight-year lifespan of the project. I have already talked at length about the McKinsey and KPMG study which confirmed that a high-speed broadband network can be built on a financially viable basis with affordable prices for consumers.

That is right—it has been confirmed that a high-speed broadband network can be built on a financially viable basis with affordable prices for consumers. That is why we are delivering the NBN, because under the watch of those opposite Australia’s broadband speeds lagged behind the rest of the developed world. This government, however, is committed to building the National Broadband Network over eight years.

Can those opposite dispute that this is a large-scale infrastructure project which will deliver growth and stimulus to the Australian economy? Have those opposite ever denied that the NBN is critical for small business, crucial for our future healthcare delivery and vital to ensure the quality of education of our young people, to connect communities, to promote jobs growth and to ensure that we are able to work cleaner, smarter and faster?

In my home state of Tasmania we have already had three towns—Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point—receiving high-speed broadband services for the first time. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, herself came to midway point just outside Hobart to switch on the first customer to the NBN. We now have a take-up rate for a fibre connection that exceeds 50 per cent, and after only a few months. The take-up of these services already exceeds the annual rate that the McKinsey-KPMG implementation study concluded would be needed to make the NBN viable with affordable prices for consumers.

NBN services are delivering previously unseen levels of competition and choice in Tasmania. As I have stated previously, the first five retail service providers who are working with NBN to deliver broadband services are Primus, Internode, and iiNet. Telstra has now also signed on to test its services over the NBN and a fifth provider, Exetel, has signed up to provide services. These packages are extremely competitive. Let me give you a few examples. Internode has released its retail prices. Its entry level is for a 25 megabit per second service for $29.95 per month and an entry level 100 megabit service for $59.95 per month. iiNet is offering a 25 megabit per second service for $49.95 with an introductory offer of free set-up, some in-home wiring and a free ‘Bob’ box. For an extra $9.95 per month, an iiNet customer can get a phone service with 15c calls to fixed phones in Australia. iPrimus has released its retail prices which include a 25 megabit per second service with bundled phone, including all calls within Australia for $89.95, and that includes calls to mobiles. Never before have Tasmanians been able to enjoy such affordable, high-speed broadband services.

In Tasmania we are already undergoing planning for the stage 2 rollout. On the mainland, construction work has begun on the first five release sites in Armidale in NSW, Townsville in Queensland, Willunga in South Australia, Minnamurra-Kiama Downs in New South Wales and Brunswick in Victoria. The government’s plan is for 19 second-release sites to have fibre deployed in 2011 in areas such as Coffs Harbour, Toowoomba, Bacchus Marsh, Casuarina and Geraldton. These are but a few of the 14 new locations and the government is working with NBN Co. on the further rollout to prioritise regional areas.

After all this progress and all this planning, those opposite still want to delay and assess the benefits? There is simply no rationale for stopping the NBN just to backtrack over the same issues that we have already dealt with. The government welcomes transparency, but the continued analysis and scrutiny of one of the most scrutinised projects ever funded by government is without further benefit considering the opposition’s view that, regardless, they still want to tear down the NBN.

Earlier in the year we have seen Telstra and NBN Co. announce that they have entered into a financial heads of agreement. This is expected to reduce significantly the overall build cost of the NBN and improve the business case. Customers are already receiving cheaper and faster broadband across Australia. Yet those opposite want to cut off those services? Perhaps Mr Abbott and his Liberal Senate colleagues should come clean to their Tasmanian constituents and clarify what exactly they plan to do with the existing infrastructure in our state.

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

Having heard that presentation by Senator Carol Brown, perhaps it gives me a convenient place to start and that is Tasmania. Senator Carol Brown has spent some time telling us what great deals you can get in Tasmania. I see a couple of other Tasmanians here too.

Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The state Liberal Party loves it too.

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

Senator Sherry, you have got something to do with finance in the government. Tell me what income you are getting for your up to $100 million expenditure in Tasmania at the moment. What revenue is NBN gaining? This is just the point. NBN has spent I think it is up around $100 million in Tasmania already and they are not getting one cent of revenue. Rather than getting any revenue, it is actually paying people $300 to get the connection box fixed to their house. Rather than getting revenue, it is actually costing them to sign people up. For that investment, that is being given away absolutely free.

NBN Co. are not charging iiNet a cent. No wonder iiNet can give these great deals of $89 a month. Telstra were giving the same service at $89 a month long before this and they were not trying to pay off a $100 million capital investment. Whatever you say about Tasmania—Senator Sherry and the other Tasmanians in the chamber, please interject and tell me I am wrong here—NBN is giving away its services in Tasmania. That is what is wrong with this government and that is what is wrong with the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, who is completely out of his depth on this issue. Please let the record note there are three Tasmanian senators sitting opposite me and not one of them by interjection challenges my assertion that NBN Co. is not getting a cent for the huge investment it has already made.

Of course the retail service providers are giving away attractive packages. Why wouldn’t you give away an attractive package when it costs you nothing to present it? I would ask those who have spoken to tell me what iiNet and the others—iPrimus—are going to charge come 1 July next year when NBN actually starts charging them for the use of the fibre-optic network.

Madam Acting Deputy President, you, I and others have asked time and time again until we are blue in the face at estimates committees when is the real pricing is going to come and what is the real pricing going to be, but always we get a wall of silence. We are told: ‘That is commercial-in-confidence. We cannot tell you now, that is a budgetary issue.’ Typical of this government, and Senator Conroy in particular, there is no information because they cannot stand the scrutiny.

Let me make this very clear. Everybody in Australia—and most certainly the Liberal and National parties—is determined to see a broadband network right throughout Australia. If there had not been a change of government three years ago, the National Broadband Network would be up and running today at a taxpayer cost of something like $5 billion. It would have been there using a mix of technologies and it would have been up and running now at a cost to the taxpayer of around $5 billion. Yet the Labor Party alternative came and made a deal before the 2007 election, promised the world, did a deal with Telstra—and didn’t Telstra quickly work out that you cannot trust the Labor Party in making these sorts of deals?—won the election and came in with their first proposal. We then had three or four other proposals after, you might recall, Madam Acting Deputy President, spending $20 million. It is only $20 million—it rolls off the tongue. It is not my money; it is the taxpayers’ money. They wasted $20 million on their first iteration, then they went to several other iterations and then they thought, ‘We have got ourselves into this mess; let’s try and find someone who can give it a semblance of authority and genuineness,’ so they got McKinsey and KPMG to do an implementation study. That was $25 million again spent. Here is $45 million spent by the Labor Party before the first sod is even ever turned. That is the Labor Party. Look, $45 million just rolls off the tongue. I am doing something now I never thought I would do. I am holding $25 million in my hand. That is the implementation study. That is what we taxpayers paid for. In spite of what Senator Conroy said at question time today, this implementation study says:

The ... detailed cost modelling estimates that the NBN can be built for $42.8 billion in capital costs.

Senator Conroy seemed to be unaware of that at question time when he was talking about a figure of $26 billion. The KPMG report said that, in the best scenario going, the government might be able to get away with a $26 billion capital injection and hopefully private enterprise would provide the rest.

Everyone in Australia wants a broadband network that is nationwide. As I say, had the government not changed three years ago, that would have been up and running now, providing fast broadband to all Australians at an affordable price.

What we object to about Senator Conroy’s NBN proposal is not necessarily the proposal itself but the fact that it is costing $43 billion of taxpayers’ money. As I said in question time a couple of days ago, a mayor in the Gulf Country of Queensland, where I come from, Councillor Annie Clarke, said that the $43 billion splurge is a ‘waste’ to people in that part of remote Australia. She said, ‘What we want is a decent telephone service. We want reticulated electricity. We want a road that will get us in and out of our little town in times of wet.’ If you are going to spend $43 billion, spend it on some infrastructure that actually means something to Australians. Not every Australian needs 100 megabits per second to download all the latest movies from around the world. Very few people want that. I get away with what is on my laptop—three or four megabits per second. It is great. That is all I will ever need. I am not going to want to download all these movies so that I can sit there and watch them. That is the point: $43 billion is being wasted. If you going to waste that sort of money, and this government is pretty good at wasting money, at least put it into some relevant infrastructure.

It seems in this instance that everybody else is wrong and only Senator Conroy is right. Everybody else is out of step; Senator Conroy is the only one in step. Communications experts from all over the world have been coming to Australia. They cannot believe that Australians are stupid enough to spend $43 billion of their money to construct something that private industry could have done itself. I mentioned earlier this week in the Senate the Mexican telecommunications tycoon, Carlos Slim Helu, and the Japanese internet industry leader, who both said that a national broadband network could be built by private enterprise without the government having to dip into its ever-dwindling financial resources. Each week we hear stories of people who have done correct estimates of anywhere between $3,000 and $7,000 per connection to have Senator Conroy’s NBN network connected to homes. Which family in Australia can afford $3,000 to $7,000 to get Senator Conroy’s fibre-to-the-home network installed when, I might say, they are doing it pretty tough at the moment under this Labor government? They do not have that sort of spare cash and they are already getting a reasonable broadband service for no capital cost and a cost per month that I guarantee will be cheaper than anyone will ever be able to supply using the $43 billion National Broadband Network that Senator Conroy is imposing upon us.

If this is as good as Senator Conroy says it is, you would think he would be the first one to get a cost-benefit analysis done. Wouldn’t he be out there being upfront about it? He keeps telling us how good it is, how cost effective it is and how it is going to be brilliant for Australia. Why wouldn’t you go out and get someone responsible and authoritative like the Productivity Commission to do a cost-benefit analysis? Then you could prove to the world that you are right, it is good for us. But Senator Conroy will not do that, and why? He knows that any reasonable examination of this whole proposal will show that it is not value for money and that there are better ways of doing it than renationalising the telecommunications system in this country.

By way of recapitulation to put this in perspective, remember—Madam Acting Deputy President Fisher, you may be too young to remember this; regrettably I am old enough to remember it—when Telecom was a government instrumentality? I even remember when the postmaster-general’s department looked after our telephone lines and whatever communications we had. It changed into a government corporation called Telecom. Remember those days? Particularly out in regional Australia, you would turn the handle of your phone and 15 different people would answer because you would be on party lines. This is the sort of service we used to get when the government last ran telecommunications.

Fortunately, Labor and Liberal governments over time have moved telecommunications into the private area. With the benefit of competition—with that innovation that comes when people are competing to get the best system—we have a telephone and internet system now that you could have only dreamed of even 20 years ago. Even when I first came to the parliament one would not have believed that 20 years on we would have the telecommunications we have now. That is the point: it is changing and improving by the week. Yet Senator Conroy is locking us into his proposal, which many experts tell me will in four or five years be outmoded. I cannot argue about that; I do not know the technicalities; but the experts tell me that what Senator Conroy has done to the Australian people is lock them into a system which will be rapidly overtaken. For that, we, our children and our grandchildren will for decades be paying off Senator Conroy’s financial mistakes and irresponsibility. It is irresponsibility, I might say, shared by every member of the Rudd and Gillard cabinets.

The Senate has conducted a long-running inquiry into the NBN. When the inquiry started in 2008 we looked at the government’s NBN proposal, did a lot of work on it and then found halfway through it that the government had scrapped that and the $20 million that it had already spent and brought in this white elephant. We have had a number of reports and very intense investigations into it. The reports are all there to read, and I recommend them to senators. I also recommend to senators that they have a look at this $25 million implementation study because, as Senator Conroy in his one-line glib throwaways would try to pretend it is not, it is a very qualified implementation study. It certainly was not a cost-benefit analysis, and that is made very clear by McKinseys themselves.

It became clear from reading the implementation study that for this to be viable you would need about a 90 per cent take-up. Even in Tasmania, where they are giving it away, they cannot get to 50 per cent take-up. How are we ever going to get to a 90 per cent take-up? I think Holland and the United States were the two comparable countries, and the take-up there after the initial flush has settled down is at about 40 per cent. At the price it is going to cost Australians—somewhere between $3,000 and $7,000 to connect up—you cannot imagine it is going to be much higher than it is in Holland or in the United States.

The implementation study raised all these issues, but a lot of the assumptions they used were not made available in their study. The study came out on 5 March 2010 and here we are eight months later and we still do not have a government response to this. In spite of us trying and in spite of the Senate demanding that we see the government’s response and the business case that allegedly has been done, and which is sitting on the Prime Minister’s desk, we are being kept in the dark.

I was absolutely amazed when Senator Carol Brown told us about the crossbench senators and the Greens getting a private briefing on the business case. What sort of parliament is this? What sort of show are we running here in Australia in this great land of democracy when the government will show things to some senators but not to others? That in itself is the sort of activity that should be blazoned across the front pages of every newspaper in the land. That is the sort of thing that Hitler used to do. It is the sort of thing that all the tin-pot dictators around the world do: you do not tell your opposition anything but you tell your own lot and the people who are supporting your own lot, like the Greens. If it is good enough for the Greens to see it and for Senators Xenophon and Fielding to see it, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I see it?

Senator Xenophon tells us that he is under no confidentiality constraints, so hopefully Senator Xenophon will be able to tell me what the Labor government itself is not allowing me to see. I think that is the most disgusting, undemocratic thing that has happened in the history of the Labor Party. Good heavens, they are renowned for a lot of backroom deals and undemocratic—fraudulent almost—activity over the years in various states! I will not talk about the Labor minister in Queensland who has just been jailed for accepting bribes of $300,000 or $400,000. To me, this is up there in that category. You say to parliament, ‘We have got information. You have paid for it—you and the taxpayers have paid for it—and we are going to show it to our mates but not to you.’ How undemocratic and how appallingly bad can this government get?

I fear for our country, with $43 billion wasted on a scheme that could have been done for about $5 billion. Telstra are laughing all the way to the bank with the $11 billion they racked off this government in a deal that, as I say, has them laughing. Senator Conroy is clearly right out of his depth in this. I just wish he had the decency to get up and admit it, stand aside and let someone else who may have a better understanding into the chair so Australians are not lumbered with this fixed-in-time system at a cost which will have to be paid off over time immemorial. It is a dog of a system, it is a system that is completely beyond the capabilities of the current minister to handle and I do wish that Senator Conroy would do the right thing, confess to his incompetence and stand aside for someone else.

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

It is great to have the opportunity to follow on from Senator Macdonald because I always find his speeches if not inaccurate then certainly less informative, and they very seldom actually reflect any facts. He has a selective memory.

I am always at a loss to understand why the coalition endeavours to be recorded in history as an obstructive opposition, because in every imaginable way they continually want to be very destructive. They cannot see, nor will they acknowledge, the great benefits of this investment in infrastructure in this country. It is the greatest infrastructure investment in Australia’s history. It is what we need. It is what rural and regional Australians have been crying out for for a long time. In fact, those opposite had 12 years and did nothing. I think they came up with a few plans, and I am not sure now whether they are up to 19 or 20 plans. None of them come anywhere near what the Australian community expect or deserve.

I remind those opposite that it is their colleague Senator Guy Barnett who has lost his Senate seat—unfortunately in some respects, because I do share some views with Senator Barnett and I acknowledge that he has been a worker in the Tasmanian community. Apart from the fact that some within the Liberal Party were out to get rid of him, he also publicly acknowledged that it was the national broadband policy that helped him lose his Senate seat and led to the Liberals doing so very poorly in every electorate in Tasmania. It was actually quite embarrassing in Denison, where the Premier comes from. Our government is of the view that Australia must maintain and improve its standards of living, its healthcare system, its education system and its economy. These are comparable with other countries in the world and we as a government want that to continue to be the case. What are the opposition suggesting? That we go back to living in caves, spear our food and roast everything on an open fire? There is not one reputable authority that does not support the national broadband plan. In Tasmania, we have the Premier of the Tasmanian government, the Hon. David Bartlett, and we have the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Will Hodgman. As I have said, Senator Barnett has already put on the public record how he sees the Tasmanian community being accepting and open to the National Broadband Network. But there are other, technical, experts that are also in accord.

Andrew Connor from Digital Tasmania has been quoted as saying:

They’re calling it risky and reckless … fibre technology has been used for 30 years in telecommunications and now it’s ready for the home.

And as for reckless, the Telco sector and competition has just failed over the last 20 years in Australia and that is why the government needs to be put out this new infrastructure, that’s to get all customers up to the same level of service, not the patchwork of services we’ve got at the moment across the country.

It is not us saying that. Mr Darren Alexander, the TAS ICT president, is well known and well respected by both sides of politics in Tasmania. He said that the NBN was:

… a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Tasmania—

and I will repeat that for the benefit of those on the other side who are shaking their heads—

… a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Tasmania to be at the forefront of the new digital economy in Australia. This in itself has a myriad of opportunities for business and especially SMEs, which is over 96 per cent of Tasmania.

The vice-chairman of the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development complimented Australia on its vision and ambition, saying:

… broadband infrastructure was crucial for economic growth and competitiveness and would ensure efficient delivery of education, health and trade and business services …

Google Maps was a concept developed not in New York or in Silicon Valley but in Australia. Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps, said:

The web means that it doesn’t matter where you are … you can live here in Australia and build products for the world …

Tony Barnett, the director of rural health at the University of Tasmania, says that e-health services could revolutionise healthcare provision in Tasmania’s rural areas. No wonder the Tasmanian people have welcomed the National Broadband Network. Mr Barnett said:

The federal government has done a terrific job and Tasmania has been fortunate to be in the front running in terms of trials.

The coalition is merely playing politics and being obstructive, and these are its most important concerns. It is nothing to do with acting in the interests of Australians, their health, their wellbeing or their economy. I hear the coalition talking about how the people who work at checkouts, in the sun or in small industries—average Australians, as they describe them—will have to pay for this for years and years to come. I am sure those people would much rather be in work than not. The reason they are still in work now, even with the global financial crisis, is that this government took decisive action to ensure that Australian families kept their jobs. If we had listened to those opposite, we would have kept our heads in the sand as their spokesperson at the time wanted us to do. They said, ‘Let’s sit back and wait,’ while we saw the world’s economies collapse around us. But no; we took action. They have the same negative attitude towards the rollout of the National Broadband Network.

Australia cannot afford to slip behind the rest of the world. Back in 2007, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Communications outlook 2007 report found that Australia’s broadband was amongst the world’s most expensive and slowest. Who was in government leading up to that time? It was the Howard government, including many of those on the other side. The OECD report studied the average download speeds for the incumbent telco—in Australia’s case, Telstra—in each of the 30 industrialised countries that are OECD members. What did they find? They found Australia was second from the bottom, beaten by countries such as Poland, Belgium and Mexico. What did the then communications minister, Senator Helen Coonan, talk about at that time? She preferred to talk about Australia’s relatively high level of domain name registration per capita. Wow! Yippee! She was certainly looking at the big picture there! Former Minister Coonan was quoted as saying:

This is an outstanding achievement considering the particular challenges of providing telecommunications access at fair prices over a vast continent with a small population.

Unfortunately, the former minister was somewhat alone. David Forman, chairman of the Competitive Carriers Coalition, said that Australia should be ashamed of its performance. He was quoted as saying:

The countries we are keeping company with [in broadband] are not the countries we should want to be associated with. This is a problem that has been 20 years in the making and it’s only going to get worse … If we measure ourselves in isolation then, yes, prices are falling, but they’re not falling fast enough [compared with the rest of the developed world] and we’re not catching up.

The OECD may have in 2010 talked about the speed of implementation of the NBN, but they certainly did not deny the essential need for the National Broadband Network. They did not deny the enormous benefits of the National Broadband Network to the economy and they did not deny that the wellbeing of the community would be enhanced.

Senator Abetz this morning talked about the lack of need for this development. That is what the coalition wants: to perpetuate the clearly inadequate junk that the OECD has already described as amongst the slowest and most expensive in the world, completely inadequate in any developed country in the 21st century. Senator Abetz also gloated this morning about the opposition to President Obama’s health plan and how the Democrats had had a real hiding in the US midterm elections. This is the attitude of the coalition. Forty million-plus people in the USA do not have any access to health care. President Obama recognised the situation as appalling, but the defeat of the Democrats was what was important to Senator Abetz. Pathetic. All that those opposite care about is politics and to be obstructive. They have no concerns for the real needs of our economy. The husband of one of my staff members’ friends in Washington state recently died of bowel cancer at home with no medical support, no pain relief and no assistance of any form—a shocking way to die. The 40 million are now one fewer. They are the sorts of things that those opposite gloat about. They put politics ahead of people.

The same staff member has done a considerable amount of volunteer work in South America. One of the surprises of his travel was how available and quick the internet was. It was certainly as good as in Launceston, my home base. We are talking about poor countries, populations where between 20 and 80 per cent live below the UN poverty line of an income of less than US$2 per day. Despite that, they have recognised the enabling potential of this technology. Countries like Peru and Paraguay, with due respect, are hardly booming economies, but they can see the need, and yet we are sitting here still debating when Australia needs us to stop the obstructive nature of those opposite and to get on and implement the national broadband rollout.

On 21 October 2010, Akamai Technologies revealed that Australia’s broadband is the 48th fastest in the world. This country now ranks 48th globally. This is what the coalition thinks is reasonable and good enough for Australia. It is not. We, the government, will not accept Australia being third rate. While we sit here and debate what other countries are doing, do you think countries such as South Korea, Portugal, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan are sitting on their hands? No, they are not. As concluded in the article ‘NBN 101: is Australia’s NBN world class?’:

… while the National Broadband Network is an important facet of the Australia telecommunications industry, we are by no means alone in our endeavours, and the types of access some countries already boast can be a humbling experience. With countries racing to beat each other to the next landmark in broadband speeds, though, the NBN or a high-speed network is ever more important in ensuring Australia becomes competitive, both economically from a data-centric and online services viewpoint, on the global stage.

But to turn to what is happening in Tasmania with the rollout of the National Broadband Network: the first-stage rollout has occurred in Tasmania. We have led the way—and Tasmanians are very proud of that—in Smithton, in Scottsdale and in Midway Point. In Scottsdale the vote in the last federal election was the highest vote the Labor Party has received in decades. Why? Because they led the way to have broadband. The business community, local government and residents are all appreciative of that opportunity. They were some of the most broadband-neglected areas in Australia thanks to the former coalition government.

The next stage will include towns such as Deloraine. I know that area very well. It also includes Georgetown, Kingston Beach, Sorell, South Hobart—

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

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

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

Yes, Senator Bilyk—your areas. It also includes St Helens and Triabunna on the east coast of Tasmania. The third stage includes the remainder of Tasmania. It is major cities like Burnie, Devonport, Launceston and Hobart. I have been around speaking to the business communities along with my local member, Geoff Lyons, who also is very committed to this initiative and this investment in infrastructure. We have been talking to people in the local government, business and health. They can see the benefits of the national broadband rollout, but those opposite would rather play politics, be obstructive, not see the future and keep people back. We on this side of the chamber will not allow that to happen.

When we look at what happened at the Liberal state conference in Launceston just recently, we had Mr Abbott going along to the Liberal conference, trying to assure the Tasmanian community, ‘That’s all right; whatever’s rolled out now in Tasmania with the NBN we’ll leave there.’ He said during the election campaign that he was no tech-head, but his ignorance astounds me. This is a national rollout. This is a national broadband. We are not talking about pigeon carriers or playing on drums; we are talking about modern, 21st-century technology. You cannot have a national broadband network if you do not allow Tasmania to plug into the rest of the country. Of course you are then not going to be competitive. But once again those opposite want to keep Tasmania in the dark. The Tasmanian community have said no to that. They have said no repeatedly. If they have not got the message yet, I suggest those opposite who are shaking their heads have a talk to Senator Barnett. He will be able to reassure them about what the Tasmanian community thinks.

I can tell you the packages in Tasmania are far more competitive than they have ever been. For instance, Internode are offering 25 megabits per second for $29.95 per month and a 100-megabits-per-second service for $49.95. We know that the National Broadband Network will be rolled out in other states and we know that people are embracing it, whether they are in Armidale, Townsville, Brunswick or any other rural or regional areas of New South Wales, Queensland, WA or Victoria. The penny has just not dropped with the opposition. The National Broadband Network is happening, it is popular and it is what Australian businesses, health services and individuals want. The coalition’s opposition to this, especially in the eyes of most Australians, is about as irrelevant as they are becoming in opposition. I recently said in the Senate:

The agreement between the NBN Co. and Telstra further enhances the viability of the project. There are huge benefits. The use of the Telstra infrastructure will eliminate the possibility of duplication of infrastructure, with significantly less disruptive trenching and laying of conduits. The progressive migration of customers from Telstra copper and pay TV cable networks to the new wholesale-only fibre network to be built and operated by the NBN Co. will be an orderly transition for Telstra customers. There will be significant benefits to taxpayers: savings and faster construction and take-up rates.

In the long-term, full structural separation will be achieved when Telstra migrates its customers to the wholesale-only NBN and decommissions its copper network. In the future, Telstra and other retail services will have access to a single, wholesale-only network offering access on open and equivalent terms as enshrined in the legislation and overseen by the ACCC. The NBN will create and maintain thousands of jobs as well as creating opportunities for local contractors.

The coalition’s latest obsession with obstructing this development revolves around their claim that the government would not release the NBN Co.’s business plan. Therefore they claimed that debate on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 could not occur. The link was nonsense. I am not going to reiterate what Senator Carol Brown so eloquently put on the public record, but those opposite, in their typical fashion since they have been in opposition, have no foresight. That is why, after 12 years and what—19 or 20 plans, Senator Bilyk?

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

That’s right; I’ve lost count there’ve been so many.

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

I think there were. It has taken a Labor government to invest in this infrastructure. Fortunately, Senator Abetz’s latest attempt to prevent discussion on the CCS bill was defeated. A bit of common sense is needed, something that seems to be in short supply amongst those in the opposition. We as a government are about ensuring that all rural and regional Australians have access to high-speed broadband. I would have thought that some of those opposite—and there are some who have worked in rural and regional Australia and have worked in health—would appreciate the great benefits that the National Broadband Network would bring to our community as far as health services alone are concerned. We can take medical records from bedsides in hospital back to the patients’ homes, their GPs, their specialists and their nursing homes. This is the potential that this great initiative will have.

In summary, the community in my home state of Tasmania has embraced this project. We are all anxiously awaiting the rollout of the future opportunities for local government, business, and tourism operators. (Time expired)

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

The tragedy for Australians is that the $43 billion National Broadband Network is more about what we do not know than it is about what we do know. What the Australian people do not know still, despite the $43 billion spent, is who will get what, when they will get it and how they will get it. Will they get it by fibre to the home? Will they get it by satellite and/or a combination of wireless? When will they get it? And how much will they have to pay for the supposed pleasure of getting it? Those are just some of the critical unanswered questions left in the lap of the Australian people, who are footing the bill for the $43 billion network. Worse than that, these are the Australian people who are de facto bedfellows of this government. At the behest of the government, they are de facto bedfellows of the government in having to fund every dollar of the spend on the National Broadband Network. Out of respect for that investment, what do this government give them? Nothing but contempt and a shroud of silence around the $43 billion investment—so much so that the Australian people would sadly be justified in continuing to think that, rather than signifying a national broadband network, the initials NBN continue to stand for ‘no body (k)nows’.

What do we know? We know that the government has continued to refuse to provide a cost-benefit analysis of the $43 billion National Broadband Network. Yes, the government has, courtesy of the taxpayer, invested some $25 million in an implementation study. Of course, the difference between an implementation study and what would have and should have been a cost-benefit analysis is that an implementation study tells the government how to do something; it does not tell the government or us whether we should do that thing. That is the big difference. The other big difference between an implementation study and a cost-benefit analysis is that a cost-benefit analysis would at least shed some light on the degree to which this proposition might or might not be value for taxpayer money. So what we have instead thus far is an implementation study that says yes, the government’s $43 billion National Broadband Network can be built based on certain assumptions. These assumptions include the number of people that will want it and the amount of money that people will pay for the privilege. At this stage the assumptions are untested and very much unproven.

Given that we do not have the government’s response to the implementation study, we are still left wondering as to the basis upon which the government is proposing to implement the very study that it commissioned at the expense of the taxpayer. Of a business case which we believe exists, of some 400-plus pages, once again we are told that we cannot see it until after this parliament rises. Interestingly enough, some two estimates rounds ago the minister was very keen to let us know that at that stage, when we asked him whether we would see NBN Co.’s business case and, if so, when, he very clearly said that he in effect did not intend to provide a copy of that business case to us or to the Australian public—not then, not once it was done and, indeed, never ever. He has been dragged, kicking and screaming, to the brink of releasing a copy of the business case and is now trying to buy more time to take him out beyond the sitting period of this parliament. He is trying to buy more time with a really cheap bribe to the Independents of a briefing from the government in lieu of a 400-page business case. Please, Minister: if you have not even got around to reading it all by now and working out which bits you want us to know about and which bits you do not want us to know about, how can you credibly expect people like the Independents in this parliament to absorb what they need to know in a cursory briefing—a briefing that the government has had the temerity to offer the Independents and others but not the opposition, at this stage?

Given that there is a whole lot we do not know, there is still some hope that we may be able to discover some of that which we currently do not know, because this Senate has made Senator Conroy subject to an order for the production of documents. Today the Senate made an order that, on Monday, the minister front up and fess up with three sets of documents. So I still live—some may say naively—in hope that the minister will front up and fess up on Monday with , firstly, the red book—the advice to the incoming government—which actually shows the bits of it that are currently blacked out. In particular, he could perhaps shed some light on the concern that the government’s own company, NBN Co., now wants to distance itself from some of the recommendations made in the implementation study. So we look forward to seeing the unexpurgated version of the red book on Monday.

The second thing that we look forward to seeing when the minister complies with the Senate order on Monday is the documents that show exactly why and on what basis the government chose the early release sites: the first stage release sites in Tasmania—the three towns of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point—and the seven second stage release sites in Tasmania, which the minister told us in the most recent Senate estimates were based on engineering criteria. We also look forward to seeing the documents that explain the basis upon which the government chose each and every one of the first and second release sites on the mainland. Interestingly enough, NBN Co.’s annual report, tabled on 25 October—some weeks and a bit ago—indicates, in respect of the mainland, the criteria that mattered. It said:

First and Second Release sites will be used to test the design and construction methodologies.

These sites were chosen using a combination of commercial, construction and local authority acceptance criteria.

That does not necessarily sound much like the engineering advice that Minister Conroy says was used to pick the first set of sites in Tasmania. So we very much look forward to seeing on Monday the documentation that explains which sites were chosen for early release, both in Tasmania and on the mainland, and why. That will also, hopefully, go some way to explaining whether there a difference in the criteria used, for example, between Tasmania and the mainland in respect of sites to get first dibs; and, if so, why and how, if Tasmania is supposed to be the trial of the rollout for the mainland.

The third set of documents that the Senate looks forward to receiving when the minister complies with the order on Monday—and this will be a subject close to your heart, Mr Acting Deputy President Forshaw—is the agreed set of principles for enterprise bargaining, apparently agreed to and signed by the ACTU. That is right, Mr Acting Deputy President: agreed to and signed by the ACTU. And the minister used it in his answer during Senate question time on Monday to reassure this Senate and the Australian people that that would mean there would not be a cost blow-out, particularly in the wages that need to be paid to the workers rolling out the National Broadband Network. He talked about the ACTU heads of agreement as the basis for his reassurance that there would not be a wages blow-out in the rollout of the National Broadband Network.

He also, in that answer, talked about NBN Co.’s enterprise agreement with its workers and attempted to say that that somehow meant there would not be a wages blow-out in the rollout of the NBN. I have a couple of interesting observations about that vain attempt from the minister. Firstly, NBN Co.’s workplace agreement with its workers is exactly that: it covers its workers, some 400 or so of them. They are very well intended and good people but, putting it simply, they are largely desk jockeys—very good desk jockeys, no doubt—when compared with the rump of the workforce that will be required to build the National Broadband Network. In a sense they are but a piddle in the pond of the overall workforce required to build the National Broadband Network. To suggest that the wages bill to be paid to that group of workers is in any way determinative of the wages bill of the entire workforce to roll out the NBN is confused and probably misleading at best.

Secondly, there is NBN Co.’s enterprise agreement with its workers, which runs for some four years. The minister himself has said that the construction of the National Broadband Network will take some eight years. How is a workplace agreement that covers a four-year period any sort of reassurance that there will not be a wages blow-out over a period of eight years—because, whilst it is not the rump of the spending, every little bit of spending matters? Obviously, the money to be expended by NBN Co. on itself and on its workers is relevant in terms of the overall $43 billion spend.

There is the main part of the workforce, for which there is a significant skills shortage and which has to be engaged by contractors in building the National Broadband Network. The minister has relied upon the heads of agreement supposedly signed by and agreed with the ACTU to say that the workforce wages will not blow out in the construction of the National Broadband Network. Given the minister’s reliance on those heads of agreement, there is all the more reason why the Australian taxpayer deserves to see a copy of that agreement. The one thing we do have—the only thing we have, as I have continued to say—which is the implementation study, factored its budget, basically, and its recommendations for the National Broadband Network on an annual wage increase of some 2½ per cent for the workforce rolling out the National Broadband Network. Even NBN Co.’s own workplace agreement, which the minister used in his answer to the Senate on Monday, exceeds that by some 1½ per cent per annum. Even the minister’s own example talks about pay increases of four per cent a year in contrast with the implementation study’s figure of 2½ per cent a year.

If the rumours about the CEPU’s campaign for the workforce rolling out the National Broadband Network is part way correct, it is about seeking wage increases of some five per cent a year, which are clearly double those underpinning the recommendations in the implementation study. This clearly stands to significantly blow out the wages and the cost of the construction sector, particularly if we see realised the concerns of the construction sector that every one per cent increase in the wages bill translates to an extra one point something billion—I think it is $1.4 billion—in terms of the build of the National Broadband Network. There remains much more that we do not know than what we do know about the National Broadband Network.

The taxpayers—who are, I say again, de facto bedfellows with this government, at the behest of this government, and not necessarily willingly so in the build of the National Broadband Network—have to be wondering whether they should hop right out of that bed and have to be wondering why they should not do so, particularly for so long as the National Broadband Network, NBN, stands more for ‘no body (k)nows’ than anything else.

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

We on this side of the chamber know a stunt when we see one and Senator Fifield’s motion is one of the biggest exercises in political trickery and sophistry that I have ever seen. It is just one more of a series of delaying tactics by the opposition. Senator Joyce this morning said that the government will not stand the test of transparency. Well, Senator Joyce, your motives are pretty transparent. If you look at the actions of the coalition in relation to the NBN, there is one question underlying every tactic they engage in, and that question is: ‘What can we do to delay this project? I know: let’s call for a cost-benefit analysis. Let’s introduce a private member’s bill. Let’s set up a joint select committee.’

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For $43 billion, why not?

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let’s do the work that should be done.

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

And in Senator Abetz’s motion this morning they called for the production of documents that are going to be produced anyway—

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Senator Bilyk. Senator Bilyk may be asking some rhetorical questions in her speech, but that does not mean that you get to answer them while she is doing it. Please continue, Senator Bilyk.

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

Thank you. I might just ask those rhetorical questions again in fact. ‘Let’s call for a cost-benefit analysis. Let’s introduce a private member’s bill. Let’s set up a joint select committee.’ The call in Senator Abetz’s motion this morning for the production of documents that are going to be produced anyway is just the latest in a long line of delaying tactics. As the Prime Minister has said, the government will be running a fine toothcomb through these documents. The business plan is a 400-page document full of highly technical information some of which is commercial-in-confidence. We have offered the coalition and the Greens a confidential briefing on the business case and they would be wise to avail themselves of that briefing, but I am not holding my breath about that one, and why not? It is because they have already made up their minds. I was amazed when I heard Senator Abetz this morning saying that the coalition need these documents to make up their minds on the NBN. Senator Abetz, you have already made up your mind. Your colleagues have made up their minds. You have opposed this project from the very beginning and I know you will continue to oppose it. The Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, already made this clear when he gave his marching orders to Malcolm Turnbull to demolish the NBN.

We know from your performance in government that you are not committed to innovation and you are not committed to nation-building infrastructure, because you comprehensively failed to invest in infrastructure over your 12 years in power. Malcolm Turnbull, your shadow minister for communications and broadband, has already said that, if a cost-benefit analysis were conducted and it showed the network had a net benefit, the coalition would still oppose it. Senator Abetz says that the Labor members have had a lobotomy and that our support for the network is somehow blind faith and yet your side says that you will oppose the NBN regardless of the information that is presented to you. If Senator Abetz truly has such an open mind then his party should accept the government’s offer of a private briefing. You never know; you might actually learn something from it. But, even before you have a briefing, you already have the five reports that the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network produced. You have the McKinsey and KPMG implementation study, which shows that the NBN has a strong business case and is expected to generate a six to seven per cent return. There are a whole raft of studies from the OECD and Access Economics demonstrating the benefits of the NBN.

On the issue of a cost-benefit analysis, the idea of conducting a cost-benefit analysis for a technology that underpins applications that have not even been thought of yet is a nonsense—it is an absolute fantasy. Anyone who understands broadband technology knows that when you increase the speed 50-fold then you open up the possibility of new applications that have not yet been envisaged. There are too many unknown variables to conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis of the NBN, and you would have to make a number of heroic assumptions. It is no more than an exercise in crystal ball gazing. Graeme Samuel, Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said that a cost-benefit analysis into the NBN would be a very complicated exercise indeed and:

...if you play around with the assumptions you can end up with a high level of scepticism as to the ultimate conclusions.

In other words, the value of any cost-benefit analysis into the NBN would be undermined by the fact that you cannot guarantee its accuracy. You might as well be reading tea leaves.

Of course, I wonder if that is the next step in the coalition’s delaying tactic. If a cost-benefit analysis was released which came to the conclusion that the NBN was of massive economic benefit to Australia, I would put any money you like on the coalition then trying to undermine the credibility of the report by attacking the underlying assumptions.

Another reason why this suggestion by the opposition is a waste of time is because we already have studies into the benefits of NBN. For example, Access Economics identified that Australia could save between $1.4 billion and $1.9 billion a year if 10 per cent of the workforce teleworked half the time. They also estimated the benefits of telehealth to Australia to be between $2 billion and $4 billion. A study commissioned by IBM in 2009 conservatively estimated that a fibre-to-the-node network—and this is far inferior to a fibre-to-the-premises network like the one we are building—would boost Australia’s gross domestic product by between $8 billion and $23 billion over a 10-year period.

I would like to know, with regard to Senator Fifield’s motion, at what point in the history of the Liberal-National coalition did they decide that every major national infrastructure project needed a cost-benefit analysis to prove its worth? Can you give me one precedent for a nationwide infrastructure project being subjected to a cost-benefit analysis, and what would that analysis involve? Imagine if a full cost-benefit analysis had been done on the copper telephone network before it was rolled out. Can anybody on that side of the chamber tell me how the internet or facsimiles would have factored into the equation when the Postmaster-General took control of the Australian telephone network in 1901.

If governments of the past had adopted the same attitude to major infrastructure projects we would not have a telephone network, we would not have a rail network and we would not have had a Snowy hydro scheme. We would be still communicating in semaphore and using kerosene fridges. Imagine what that would have done for our economy and society, and imagine what it will do if we lag behind South Korea, Japan and Singapore, who already have national optical fibre broadband networks. And can anybody on that side tell me where the cost-benefit analysis was for the privatisation of Telstra under the Howard government? At what point in that process did you consider the costs to rural and remote consumers of having a private monopoly running most of the telecommunications in this country? Of course we did not need a cost-benefit analysis to tell us that this would hurt people in rural and remote areas. We did not need a cost-benefit analysis to tell us that having a private, vertically integrated company dominating the market would not provide real competition for consumers. At least the NBN is going to enhance services to remote consumers, not diminish them. If we are going to deliver for regional Australia the opportunity for telemedicine, for virtual classrooms, for remote monitoring of community care clients and, as I said before, for a range of applications that possibly have not even been thought of yet, it is the most important thing.

I know that in my home state of Tasmania my constituents want this network. I know that my federal colleagues in this place—certainly Senator Polley and Senator Carol Brown, who have both spoken before me today—want this to go ahead. I know that my colleagues over in the other place all support it. The Premier of Tasmania, David Bartlett, with his forward-thinking capacity obviously wants it and was happy for Tasmania to be the pilot state. Even the Tasmanian Leader of the Opposition wants it. So there is something odd going on there between federal senators and the state Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hodgman. The people in Tasmania are ready for it and they are already signing up to it. They are signing up, just to name a few paces, in Midway Point, Scottsdale and in Georgetown with reasonably priced plans delivering up to 50 megabits per second.

The other day, after I had given a speech on the NBN, Senator Fisher asked about knowing the difference between ‘megabits’ and ‘megabytes’. Yes, Senator Fisher, I do know the difference between megabits and megabytes. Seeing Senator Fisher was quite helpful last sitting week in pointing out this verbal slip, I thought I might return the favour to her! This morning Senator Fisher suggested that NBN stands for ‘nobody knows’. This is not the first time I have heard Senator Fisher say this. I think I will help her a little bit and do her a little bit of a favour, because ‘knows’ actually starts with a ‘k’. I am not sure where she gets her spelling lessons from, but I think she needs to improve a bit there.

Anyway, I am really glad she highlighted the fact that the NBN would deliver speeds of 100 megabits per second and eventually 1,000 megabits per second through optic fibre broadband to 93 per cent of homes and businesses, because it highlights the importance of upgrading our telecommunications infrastructure to the next generation of technologies. We know from the research that the demand for internet bandwidth has been increasing exponentially in Australia and we have just about reached the limit of what can be provided within the existing infrastructure. If the trend since 1985 continues, we will need speeds of 1,000 megabits—or one gigabit—per second by 2020 to meet the needs of Australian internet users and to compete internationally.

We know that the copper network is starting to reach the limits of the bandwidth that can be delivered and we know that we can dramatically increase the bandwidth with an optic fibre network. This is why, as the member for New England, Tony Windsor, says, it has to be done with fibre. Of course, wireless broadband is useful and important and will be used to serve those consumers who are not in the 93 per cent who will access the network through optic fibre. But, under the best conditions, wireless cannot deliver the sorts of speeds that Australians will need in 10 years time. South Korea is already upgrading to 1,000 megabits per second. While the opposition huff and puff about the cost of the network, I have never heard them talk about the costs of not doing it and what the failure to deliver the NBN would deny to Australians. They do not want to acknowledge that.

We all know—and I think that those on the other side, if they were truthful, would acknowledge it—that the NBN is the largest nation-building project in Australia’s history and will help lift Australia to the top of the world rankings in broadband access. It will drive major productivity and growth opportunities and ensure our children get the best education in the world. I am at a loss to understand how those on the other side can oppose that. I know that for 12 years they did nothing. My colleague Senator Polley and others have pointed out how many plans they had. However, they never did anything, they never pushed it. But, as soon as we take some action, there is a lot of sour grapes happening from that side.

In regard to the international experience, a report delivered to the United Nations by the Broadband Commission in September 2010 has recommended that governments should adopt national broadband strategies because ‘they are a social asset that provides one of the most cost-effective and efficient means of delivering services to citizens’. This is exactly what is happening in countries such as Japan, Korea and Singapore as was identified by John Stanton, CEO of the Communications Alliance, after a recent Austrade organised visit to these three countries. In an article on the ABC’s technology news website on 11 November Mr Stanton pointed out that Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication has projected a value-add to the economy over 10 years of a fibre-to-the-premises rollout in the order of ¥73 trillion, or around $908 billion. Importantly, Mr Stanton noted that the Japanese tried to go a step further and capture the wider economic value of these enhancements in people’s everyday lives but were defeated by the challenge of too many variables and different indices. He added that Singapore and Korea have not attempted to undertake such an economy-wide cost-benefit analysis.

It would be great if those on the other side stopped playing politics and actually did something constructive for the people of Australia. As I said, the people in my home state of Tasmania tell me they want the NBN. I do not know where the people are who Senator Abetz says he talks to who have concerns with it, because everybody I talk to is champing at the bit to make sure it happens. So I think it would be prudent for those on the other side to stop following their leader’s lines—especially the Tasmanian Liberal senators, who, as Senator Polley mentioned, did so abysmally at the last election. Without doubt, the NBN made a difference to their vote. If they have any sense, they will start supporting this within Tasmania and for the whole of Australia.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is really about transparency. As Prime Minister Gillard said when her government was recently installed: ‘Let the sunshine in, let’s have transparency, let’s open the gates, let’s have visibility of what is going on. We’re prepared to let the sunshine in.’ Well, here we are merely seeking information so that we can share it with the Australian community, and what are the government doing? They are obviously not interested in letting the sunshine in at all. They are trying to hide things. They want to put this report through some internal processes so they can hide the information in it. You can almost bet that the process they are going through right now is about taking out any information that would allow anybody outside the government to do a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN. They have an implementation report and, under the guise of ‘commercial in confidence’, they will hide anything that gives anyone else the capacity to properly scrutinise this project. They do not want the opposition or the Australian people to have access to that information.

And it is not as if their record is all that flash. Over their first term of government there were some pretty good examples of their complete failure and incapacity to manage projects properly. You do not have to go much further than the BER. We had the famous example of covered outdoor learning areas which a few years ago could have been built for $125,000 costing $500,000 or, in some cases, close to $1 million. When we are talking about cost-benefit analyses, I would suggest that there was not all that much value for money for the Australian taxpayer in those particular projects. Even in that process there was continual denial that there was any failure, that there was anything wrong. In fact, I think it was Minister Tanner who at the time said they were in such a hurry to get the money out the door that they did not have time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s; it was just a matter of getting the money out the door. We had the absurd situation of taxpayers’ money being spent at that sort of rate but we did not get value for money. So I think the opposition has every right, on behalf of the Australian taxpayer, to ask for the information that the government have available to them and insist that the government do the work that rightly should be done. As the government say, it is the biggest infrastructure project in the Australia’s history, yet they do not want to do the base work that should be done to support it.

I can give more examples. Take pink batts: we spent billions on the installation of pink batts, and now we are going to spend close to $1 billion to repair the problem that was created by pink batts—a complete, unmitigated disaster. Then we can go on to the Green Loans Program. Was there a green loan ever issued? That is a good question! We have a lot of assessors for green loans out there who had their hopes raised about a potential business for themselves. They went out and got trained. They incurred expenses. I do not think we have actually had a green loan issued. Then of course there was GroceryWatch. Who could forget GroceryWatch? The government would like to, I am pretty sure—and Fuelwatch, likewise. They would like to see the back of Fuelwatch.

Then there is the CPRS. We had comments from government senators a minute ago about manipulation of inputs into processes. Well, if there was ever something where the inputs were manipulated, it was some of the work that was done on the CPRS. We were told faithfully by the government that the CPRS was going to be revenue neutral. We were not told for a long time—until we finally discovered it—that that was not an output of the model; it was one of the inputs to the model. So what reason do we have to trust the government when they say, ‘Everything will be fine with this project.’ What reason do we have to trust this government? We do not have any.

Then we come to the NBN in Tasmania. The government tells us that it has been completed ahead of schedule—maybe it has been completed ahead of schedule—but also that it has been completed under budget. The figure that we have been given for completion under budget is 10 per cent. But how would we know? We are not told what the budgets are—minor detail! We were told, ‘Trust us; it was completed 10 per cent under budget,’ but they would not give us the budget figures. We have been told: the cost for the first stage—for the three towns that it has been rolled out to so far: Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point—plus the backbone work, has been about $30 million. We cannot be given a break-up of that.

Senator Conroy’s excuse for not being able to give us either budgets or a breakdown of that cost is: ‘We would be signalling to potential tenderers the figures that we have in mind for the individual parts of the project.’ That is his excuse—and it is just an excuse, because, in so many other ways and in so many other projects, governments put out indicative costs for projects all the time. They do it in their budgets every year. They do it in their election promises during the election cycle. They indicate what the value of a project might be. Yet Senator Conroy’s excuse—his weak excuse—is that we might signal to the tenderers what we have got budgeted for that particular part of the project. It happens in tender allocations all the time; an indication of the budget is not an unusual thing. Yet Senator Conroy, again, does not want the public or the opposition—he does not want any of us—to know what is going on.

The government members have been told by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard: ‘Go out there: follow the party line; sell the message; don’t dissent.’

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What are you doing?

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I am prepared, Senator, to actually have a look at the project. I will come to some of the issues about the project in my home state in a moment, because I have actually been out and had a discussion with some of the people who are on the line, and who have not been told the information and have not been given details of how this might work. But they have been impacted, and they have seen some of the waste already that has been incurred in the construction of stage 1 of the process.

For example, one constituent of mine, who has a lot of rock in the front of his yard, required an excavator to excavate the trench for it. That is no big deal, I suppose. You would expect an excavator to come in and do that sort of work; it is heavy work. But what does NBN Co. do? They go an hour and a half down the road. They hire an excavator without a driver—so they hire a dry excavator. Then they have to find a driver. And it is something in the order of 260 bucks an hour by the time they have got the equipment and the personnel they need; yet the same unit could be hired locally for about 100 bucks. So there is waste already in the implementation and rollout of this project, and it costs about $1,000 to run this line in to one resident. Those costs are going to occur; I understand that. But there should be some scrutiny of the process, and that is what the opposition is looking at—as part of our duties, our responsibilities, as an opposition.

Senator Carol Brown asked earlier: what would the business case provide? It would provide some of those answers that the taxpayers are looking for. It would provide a real opportunity for the opposition—and, if the government members were doing their job as well as they could, for them, because they would also be looking for some scrutiny into this process too. It is just as much the government members’ duty as it is the opposition’s duty to scrutinise this project, to ensure that taxpayers are getting value for money. It is just as much the responsibility of the government members to do that.

The government members talk about the number of inquiries that we have held as part of this process. Why aren’t they after this information? Why don’t they want to know? But they have been told by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard: ‘Don’t rock the boat. Just wander along; follow us like zombies—you’ll be right. Just trust us.’ Yet, when you go through the list of projects—and I did not even mention the mining tax.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell us about that.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The mining tax—that was a lovely disaster, wasn’t it? Nobody consulted; it just comes out there, all worked out. The Treasurer, Mr Swan, has done a wonderful job on that—not! Then, of course, there was the pre-election fix that is now not a pre-election fix. Again, the pre-election fix is another case of exclusion. The three big mining companies come in; they get a chance to talk to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, and of course all the smaller operators are left out in the cold, left out in the dark, and have to try to find some other way to get their issues sorted out. So there is plenty of reason for us to say that we do not trust you when you say, ‘Trust us.’

The Labor members talk about this magnificent take-up rate. Senator Carol Brown talked about the take-up rate. But the take-up rate, I think, needs to be clarified. What Senator Carol Brown is talking about is the number of people who said, ‘Yes, run the cable to my house’—not the people who have bought a service; just the people who have said, ‘Yes, I’ll have a cable in. It’s being done free; it’s not costing me anything.’ I think it is a reasonable thing to do.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why would you say no?

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why would you say no? Even though it is being provided free in Tasmania at the moment, the take-up rate is only at about 50 per cent, and the government is boasting about that. Granted, it is higher in some other communities—I think some other communities have got the message. But, as of estimates, there were only 262 active services of about 4,000 households that are covered by the service in Tasmania.

The government talks about how wonderful this is going to be for rural and regional Australia. In Smithton, only those within the town boundary are going to get access to broadband via fibre; the rest of them are going to have to use the ‘inferior technologies’ that Senator Conroy talks about. They are going to have to have satellite or fixed wireless.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘Inferior’, you say—I thought that was your policy.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am citing Senator Conroy from estimates and from yesterday in question time. The government cannot even get its own line straight on this.

We then come to connection of the service. The latest in decor in Tasmania is these wonderful eight- by eight- by three-inch, in the old terms—approximately 200- by 200- by 75-millimetre—boxes. I have constituents who have these boxes on their bedroom walls. A great fashion accessory in your bedroom is a 200- by 200- by 75-millimetre box! I am holding a photograph of the boxes on the wall in a particular constituent’s residence—it is a pity it is not in colour; otherwise, you would see the bright light on the box that shows there is no service. It took something like six weeks for this service to be provided, and a large part of that time was spent in correspondence with the office of the local member, the member for Braddon—and not getting too far, I might say. Once the opposition got involved, it was connected within 48 hours. The government think, ‘Just follow along; just let it all happen.’ There are two boxes on the wall in this photograph, but my constituent tells me there are now three—the third box is the modem. The photo was taken in her lounge room, and I would not call these the greatest fashion accessories: a network termination box, a battery pack and a modem.

There is something else that the government is not telling Australians about this service. Another constituent of mine ordered a 50-megabit service. That is what they thought they would be able to utilise for their home. On this occasion, the installation was okay; they got the modem installed in a cupboard in their garage. The problem was that the computer was in the middle of the house, some 15 metres away from the modem. When they went to test their service, what did they find? The drop in service from the wireless modem installed in the garage to the computer in the lounge room was in excess of 50 per cent. They bought a 50-megabit service and they got a 23-megabit service. There has been a lot of discussion and debate about the need to hardwire your house, and a lot of that is being scoffed at. Senator Conroy’s second-best friends at the Australian said some time ago there might be a need to hardwire your service. People who I talk to in the industry say the only way you will get a 100-megabit service is by hardwiring your house—you will not get it any other way. So Senator Conroy’s derision at the media for highlighting this is not justified, according to the industry and also my constituent who made the inquiry. That constituent had to plug a category 6 cable into the modem in the garage and run it through the garage, down the hallway and into his office—and he is now getting 48 megabits per second. So he has another great fashion accessory: a category 6 cable running down his hallway at home so that he can actually get from the NBN the service that he bought. He said that, if there is more than 15 metres between the modem and the computer, he is in real trouble as far as capacity is concerned. At his business, where he has everything connected right next to his computer, he is as happy as Larry.

These are the sorts of things the government is not telling people, and I think they ought to. They ought to come clean with the Australian people in respect of their information. It is obvious the information that is going to be released after the parliament has risen and we have had an opportunity to scrutinise this further is going to be restricted. There will be a lot of black marks in the business plan. That is a real disappointment. The Australian people deserve better than that. They deserve to be told what the process is going to be and what the costings are. There are a lot of questions the government can practically answer. For example, what is it going to cost for my telephone line to be converted to fibre? If I currently have an ADSL service on copper and by the magic of the NBN it is converted to fibre—I have not asked for this magnificent new service, but it is coming—how much more is it going to cost me? What is the wholesale cost of the NBN versus the existing network? That is a reasonable question for people to ask. If I was happy with an ADSL2+ service, whatever the speed provided me, and I am compulsorily moved across to a different service, what are the cost implications of that going to be, and what will that do to my home budget? The government has not asked any of these questions. It certainly has not answered any of these questions.

I am not talking about what the providers are charging. In Tasmania that is absolutely no guide, because the government is giving it away. As Senator Macdonald said earlier, the government is getting absolutely no revenue out of the NBN in Tasmania because, by their own admission—and let’s accept that it is an introductory offer, going perhaps until July next year—they are not charging for it. So the prices that are being charged are not real. What are the prices going to be after July next year, and what are they going to do to the take-up rate of the NBN? What speeds will people be able to afford? We want a number of answers. All we are asking is for the government to come clean.

Debate interrupted.