Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move Greens amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 7006 together:

(1)    Clause 2, page 2 (before table item 1), insert:

(2)    Schedule 1, page 4 (before line 2), before Part 1, insert:

Part 1A—Objects

Telecommunications Act 1997

1A  At the end of subsection 3(1)

Add:

   ; and (c)    the availability of accessible and affordable carriage services that enhance the welfare of Australians.

These amendments are probably among the less controversial amendments that various people will be moving this afternoon. It is good, after 13 months of delay and waiting around, to finally be at the committee stage of the debate. These amendments effectively insert an object in the Telecommunications Act to remind law makers and the public what this act is for. The objects of the Telecommunications Act at the moment lack an explicit reference to the purpose of telecommunications markets, and over time competition has emerged as a proxy for the public good. With due regard to the benefits of properly regulated competition, the Greens believe that the act should incorporate explicit principles of the rights of end users and not just assume that competition is always an effective proxy or an effective stand-in for end-user benefit.

The Telecommunications Act does not define the long-term interests of end users but, instead, refers to the definition in section 152AB of the Trade Practices Act, where promotion of the long-term interests of end users is achieved through meeting three objectives. The first is:

(c)

the objective of promoting competition in markets for listed services;

The second is:

(d)

the objective of achieving any-to-any connectivity in relation to carriage services that involve communication between end-users;

And the third is:

(e)

the objective of encouraging the economically efficient use of, and the economically efficient investment in:

(i)

the infrastructure by which listed services are supplied ...

Surprisingly, the Telecommunications Act 1997 defines neither the long-term interests of end users nor any-to-any connectivity, despite the former being the main object of the act. Their leaving these definitions to the Trade Practices Act shows that the policymakers at the time clearly saw both overwhelmingly in terms of competition. The Greens do not think competition principles alone go anywhere near far enough in defining the public good, so we are seeking an explicit provision in the Telecommunications Act to spell it out. With those brief comments, I commend Greens amendments (1) and (2) on sheet to 7006 to the chamber.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the Greens’ intent in moving these amendments, which go to the objects of the Telecommunications Act, but the coalition will not be supporting these amendments. However, we think that the tone of the objects are important for the chamber to note and reflect on, because the tone very much goes to many of the things the coalition is arguing in the overall NBN debate.

I note that Senator Ludlam wants to insert in particular an object regarding ‘the availability of accessible and affordable carriage services that enhance the welfare of Australians’. Let us be very clear about ‘accessible and affordable carriage services’. Of course, that is what the opposition has argued from day one of this debate. The object behind our policies, the government’s policies and the Greens policies—it seems it is everyone’s object—is to provide the most accessible and affordable services. We, however, put a caveat on that: it should be at the lowest cost to the Australian taxpayer; it should be at the lowest cost base to provide those accessible and affordable services.

Regrettably, the path that the government is tracking will see it spending billions of Australian taxpayer dollars in a $43 billion scheme designed to produce some great political outcome for the government through which it can claim to have solved all the woes of the world before getting to the object. Politically it is miraculous, marvellous and wonderful, Minister, because you have been able to go to elections and offer nirvana to people. That is what you are really trying to do: offer them some great utopian nirvana. Practically, however, you are offering an overbuild and an overlay of structures across the country that will involve the waste of billions of dollars, and it will be done without providing real transparency to this parliament—the type of transparency this parliament should expect to see.

I am sure the intentions of Senator Ludlum and the Greens are sincere, but if we want to have accessible and affordable services provided at the lowest cost to the Australian taxpayer, putting an object into a bill will not provide it. What will provide it is a thorough, robust cost-benefit analysis of this NBN, a thorough, robust Productivity Commission inquiry. That will deliver a decent analysis of the best way to provide accessible and affordable services at the lowest cost to the Australian taxpayer. That is what we all want. That is what we all expect to see.

Unfortunately, the government is afraid of scrutiny of its NBN proposal, the type of scrutiny that the experts, the economic modellers, at the Productivity Commission can provide. They are the people who can provide robust and transparent analysis. The government is afraid to get that done. I do not know whether it is a matter of pride for Senator Conroy and the government that they are refusing the opposition’s requests or whether it is because it has come from the opposition. The national interest, the taxpayers’ interest, the billions of dollars that are on the line and the interests of the communications sector in Australia should come before Senator Conroy’s, the Prime Minister’s or the government’s pride. If they are going to pursue decent broadband policy they should be willing to give it a decent test, put it on the line, take it to the PC and give it the type of robust analysis that is necessary.

Senator Ludlum, I welcome the intent, but you are not going to get this outcome by inserting it into the objects of the bill. You are only going to achieve this outcome by testing the government’s assumptions, policies and alternatives. And there are alternatives to ensure that we get affordable, accessible broadband services provided to all Australians at the lowest cost. They focus on the areas of market failure, ensuring that builds do not overlay areas that already have effective fast broadband services and focus on the black-spot areas, the regional areas, that need a decent standard of broadband. Instead, we have a government that wants to build the same fibre connection across the entire country, destroying billions of dollars in existing assets in the process, to create a multibillion dollar government owned monopoly which it now concedes may be a government-owned monopoly indefinitely. This is thanks to agreements it has made with the Greens. Through all of that, the government is just refusing to accept that there should be some decent analysis of its policies. It is even hiding from the Australian people the types of documents that we should expect to have available to us, including all 76 senators in this place, for a real fair dinkum debate about the merits of this legislation and the merits of the government’s NBN policies.

The government will not release to us the business plan that I know Senator Xenophon is calling for so passionately. That business plan should be released. It should be made available to all senators in this place and Xenophon is right to fight for its release. We should be able to see the assumptions that have been put into it. I have no doubt that the business plan claims the NBN will be a great success. The business plan for the government’s NBN was written by the NBN Co. The business plan will claim the NBN to be a great success. But it is important to test the assumptions and pricing models that underpin it and to see the expected take-up rates. This will ensure that we have all of that information and evidence on the table for all 76 senators to consider.

Senator Xenophon should certainly hold out for the government to release that plan. He should certainly ensure the release of the analysis of that business plan that is being undertaken by other agencies or independent bodies that the government has commissioned. Senator Wong, at least, has commissioned them; we are still not clear whether Senator Conroy had any say in commissioning the analysis of the business plan. Senator Xenophon should ensure that those analyses are also provided, along with the business plan, to inform this debate.

Right now the government is asking all 76 senators to vote in the dark. That is why the opposition called a division on the second reading motion. For us it is important that all the information is there. For us it is important that there is some robust assessment of whether this is the right path to go down, because this is the largest investment of funds in an infrastructure project in Australia’s history—$43 billion. It is a very significant investment and it is being done without the business case being made available and without the analysis of the business case being made available. More fundamentally, it is being done without any consideration, before all of this happens, of whether this is the right model or the right approach.

I can remember when Senator Conroy came into this chamber as a newly minted minister for broadband and communications. He used to tell us that fibre to the node, providing minimum speeds of 12 megabits per second, was the answer to all our woes and was what Australia needed to secure its economic future. Do you know what? That was not 10 or 20 years ago; it was three years ago, two years ago and even about 18 months ago. We were still on a fibre-to-the-node vision then, where 12 megabits per second was acceptable. That could have been done for $4.7 billion.

Today the government are telling us that it will cost $43 billion and that we need 100 megabits per second. How did they come up with those figures? We know that they came up with those figures on the back of a napkin on a RAAF VIP plane that Senator Conroy had to board with the then Prime Minister Rudd. We have had three years to the day of this Labor government mismanaging program after program. We have seen them try to put pink batts home insulation into Australian rooftops. Where did that get us? It got us loss of life, houses burning down, an industry decimated and a situation where we now have a government spending a billion dollars on a clean-up for its own program.

We have seen this government encourage thousands of Australians to set themselves up as home sustainability assessors in the Green Loans program. What happened there? They have basically all ended up unemployed. They have ended up without work. We have seen this government encourage the building of school halls across the country, in many instances at a gross cost. Of even more concern is the fact that many schools would far rather have seen the money spent on something more functional and useful; but, because the Labor government knows best, they had to have a school hall!

So, if you want to know why the opposition is fighting hard to ensure there is decent analysis of the government’s NBN model and why we are fighting hard to ensure that there is transparency about all of the business cases and studies into your NBN model, I can tell you that it is because we know that you cannot be trusted to deliver. We know that the government has failed time and time again with every single policy area that it has tried to implement. We know that in all of these areas they have wasted billions of dollars, they have crippled industry, they have hurt households and they have left schools in the lurch. And the opposition are not going to let the government do it with $43 billion in an industry that is critical to Australia’s future.

The telecommunications sector is critical to our future as a country, but we have to get it right. We have to get the competition in this sector right. We have to get the innovation in this sector right. By picking a winning technology the government are not encouraging innovation. The government are doing the complete opposite of encouraging innovation. Instead, the government are picking a winner. They are picking one technology. They are saying everybody needs fibre rolled to their front door and hooked up to their house, and that will be the solution to all their woes.

Indeed, in the legislation that they are asking us to consider today they are potentially blocking and stifling one of Australia’s major companies, Telstra, from investing in future wireless opportunities. That is a key part of their legislation. The option is there for the minister to block Telstra from bidding for more spectrum that will make it possible for them to pursue further investments.

So we have this government picking winners, saying that it knows best, creating a new government owned monopoly, and doing it all at the whopping great cost of $43 billion. We are going to hold them to account every step of the way on this. The challenge for the government, as this debate progresses through the committee stage, is to inject a bit of transparency—to accept the demands of Senator Xenophon and to release the business case. We have been calling for it. Senator Cormann has, of course, ensured that other areas of analysis of that business case have been exposed. He and I will move a motion in this place later today that the Greenhill report be released as soon as it is provided to the government. All of these documents should be released if you believe in transparency, and you should accept the need for robust analysis of your proposal. It is a $43 billion proposal and it should have a decent cost-benefit analysis attached to it.

Even Senator Conroy has previously talked about the importance of cost-benefit analyses. The government’s own body, Infrastructure Australia, has talked about the importance of cost-benefit analyses, yet for the biggest project ever undertaken the government will not commit to a cost-benefit analysis. That simply says to us that they have something to hide, and that is why we will push the government to the brink on this issue. We will do that because it is very important that we ensure that such large sums of money in such an important industry receive the types of protection and wise decision-making that this government is so clearly incapable of.

I turn to Senator Ludlam’s amendment. I again say that the opposition will not be supporting it, because changing the objects of this bill will not deliver the robust analysis that we think is necessary. The challenge for the Greens, the crossbenchers and, most importantly, for the government—if they believe in having accessible and affordable services and if they want those services at the lowest cost to the Australian taxpayer—is to accept our demands. Get the Productivity Commission involved. Let us have that study. It need not hold anything up. It can be done by the end of May and then we will have something decent to debate in this place.

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

I am at a loss as to why the opposition are not supporting this amendment. Even Senator Birmingham, at the beginning of his comments, claimed that there is a universal objective here, which is the ‘availability of accessible and affordable carriage services that enhance the welfare of Australians’. The opposition are claiming that they want more. I will address their arguments, but there is absolutely no reason why the opposition could not support this amendment put forward by the Greens; it is a sentiment and object of this bill that there is complete understanding and support for.

The amendment goes to the very heart of the NBN policy, in many respects, and I would like to challenge the opposition on the fairly shallow rhetoric surrounding what they claim is the creation of a new government monopoly. Far from it. What we are talking about with the National Broadband Network is an open-access wholesale-only fibre-to-the-premises network that addresses the issue of residual monopolies in the telecommunications market by structurally separating the wholesale and retail arms. This has the effect of removing the residual monopoly that existed at the retail level which was, as my Senate colleagues are well aware, perpetuated by the mishandling of telecommunications policy under the former government.

We saw for many years the former Howard government seek to perpetuate Telstra’s residual monopoly in the telecommunications market—for a very shallow political purpose. That was to ensure that their bottom line stayed healthy enough to take a public sale of Telstra’s shares, a privatisation, to the market. We know that the reason we got into a mess with telecommunications and had one of the highest prices for broadband in the OECD was this mishandling. The coalition were prepared to put their singular policy objective of maximising the return for the Telstra privatisation before the social and economic requirements of a nation heading into the 21st century, needing that economic infrastructure to build the industries and create the jobs of the future.

There is no more negligent approach to this area of policy—I make that point very strongly today. All senators, most of whom were not in the parliament when we had some of the most deplorable telecommunications policy under the former government, need to understand these facts. For them to come in here and talk about the National Broadband Network as somehow being the creation of a new monopoly means they have no appreciation of the recent history of telecommunications policy in this country. It exposes their lack of understanding about the structure of the telecommunications industry, the dynamic that exists between the wholesale and retail arms of the industry and how that dynamic rightly sits at the heart of the National Broadband Network policy and this bill.

As we on this side have been saying throughout the second reading debate and in many other debates, the National Broadband Network, and this bill, will fix the structure of the telecommunications industry and allow competition to thrive at the retail level. This is done by addressing the place that Telstra occupies in the market and acknowledging the arrangement that exists between NBN Co. and Telstra in relation to the structure of the market. Their lack of basic understanding has been further exposed as senator after senator from the opposition has come in here and continually resorted to shallow rhetoric about the creation of a new monopoly. I have said this many times—the NBN Co. and the structural model for telecommunications, as outlined in the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010, resolve all of those problems.

I and many of my Senate colleagues on all sides of politics have been receiving complaints and hearing the frustrations of the citizens of Australia about internet services for well over a decade. I know that even before I was elected in 1996 there was significant frustration amongst consumers of internet services in both the residential market and the business market—in the small and the large business sector—because of Telstra’s exorbitant pricing of higher bandwidth products. Those of you who are as old as I am would probably remember the 64-kilobit ISDN connections for which Telstra charged corporate clients $30,000-plus a year. That is the residual monopoly, the exploitation of the market, that the National Broadband Network policy and the structural issues contained in this bill finally resolve.

This policy also creates the opportunity for a healthy service provider market to thrive on the back of a suitably robust national fibre network. The opposition are fond of promoting the virtues of wireless broadband. They come in here and say that there is no proof that we need a fibre network. Well, the science on the technology is in, and it shows that what we need most is a wholesale fibre network, a National Broadband Network, that has the capacity to be future-proofed. That is about making an investment now in the technology that will see us through, as far as we can predict the future. That is pretty impressive. For the record, once again, the technology of the fibre network is so strong that you can upgrade it at either end to get more capacity. We know and the opposition knows that upgrading a national fibre network is about upgrading what is at the end of the fibre. This is the big investment and it will not require another bill.

It is also important to challenge the opposition’s assertion that somehow we do not need to make this investment now, that we need to do more study. We do need to make this investment now—we know the market was incapable of doing so. The opposition is very conveniently forgetting the lengths that the government went to to test the market, to see if the market was capable of responding to the challenge of investing in a national fibre network. Let me remind everybody that the market failed. It failed for a range of reasons but, most of all, for the same reason it failed previously: the structure of the telecommunications market in Australia did not permit any of those companies to make an investment of the magnitude that would render it future-proof and serve the policy needs and objectives of the National Broadband Network policy. Just to be sure, this government tested the market. Through all of the investigations, and through my experience in telecommunications, it was pretty clear to me that the market was failing because we had the residual monopolist, Telstra, operating in the market and time and time again refusing to make investments in it.

Even the former government put the wood on Telstra to see what kind of investment they could pressure. And what did they come up with? A half-baked OPEL proposition that did not even stand up at the first test, which was how many people this network would reach. It fell over at that point. There was nothing under the former government that would satisfy the future-proof attributes of the National Broadband Network.

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

It would be up and running if that had gone ahead.

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

The other issue about OPEL is that the technology choices did not stack up. I think it was relatively easy to unpick.

Senator Macdonald, I am glad you are here, because you know as well as I do that the objective of the former government was at least to try to provide universal access. Yet we do not hear from this opposition the same sentiment. We hear platitudes and all we get is obfuscation and delay. All we get is a new excuse after the old. Right now we are hearing the call for the business case. I remind you all that, when this bill was introduced last year, there was another document being called for as a condition for the passage of this bill. So it does not matter what is being considered, or the imperative nature of it, the coalition will grasp on to whatever they can and use it as an excuse to delay.

My own feeling about the case for the National Broadband Network and this request for information about the business case is that we have effectively traversed these issues for well over a decade. We have had inquiry after inquiry—and not least the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network established when the coalition had the majority of senators in this place, which delivered no less than four formal reports to the Senate. They had their forum. Opposition senators had every opportunity through the course of the broadband select committee to call on all of the information, including, as they did, the implementation study, and they were able to ask questions of the publishers of the implementation study. At every step of the way, opposition senators had the chance to ask the questions, to call witnesses—pretty much whoever they liked. But still it is not good enough. When it comes to the crunch and after all of those inquiries—the inquiry into this bill, all the legislative and references committee inquiries, the select committee inquiries and the combined references and legislative committee inquiries; there have been so many—it is still not enough for the opposition.

We go full circle here. It comes back to the fact that they are just not interested in engaging on the substance of these bills and what it means to telecommunications industry structure and what it means to competition policy in generating a telecommunications sector that I think will be one of the most elegant regulatory structures in the world. Why? Because it has a wholesale-only open-access network that is completely independently regulated and, on top of that, a thriving competitive regime for retail service providers. The vertical cross-subsidisation that caused distortion in the market and allowed consumers of telecommunications services to endure far higher prices than they ever ought to has finally been resolved because of the National Broadband Network policy. Of that I am immensely proud.

I come back to the objective of the NBN. The Labor Party’s objective has always been to provide universal high-bandwidth broadband access to all Australians. Because we understand the depth and substance of telecommunications policy, we have gone to a model that identifies the necessary structural separation of operators in the market and acknowledges that you have to have an independent regulator governing the pricing on that wholesale-only open-access network. That is the model. I think the opposition have trouble stomaching it for the reasons Barnaby Joyce laid out very clearly for us in the chamber the other day. For the opposition, it does not matter how good the policy is. The opposition, we know, are opposing this very supportable amendment. The government are supporting the Greens amendment to insert in the objects:

(c)  the availability of accessible and affordable carriage services that enhance the welfare of Australians.

It is a worthy objective, but the opposition cannot find it in themselves to even support that. Why? Because it is just about opposition for opposition’s sake. I know the opposition will be judged harshly by all Australians who are waiting on those waiting lists to even get an ADSL service, who are on the end of the long tails out of town with a pair gain system that was designed in about 1963 and only get a line out of their area if not too many people on that pair gain system are on the phone at the same time. I know there are Australians who resent being pushed by Telstra on to an expensive mobile data service when they could have a National Broadband Network. (Time expired)

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

I want to address Senator Ludlam’s proposed amendments before the chamber. Before I do that, though, I want to, as the previous speaker has done, address some general remarks. I note in passing that the arrogance of this government can no better be exemplified than by the absence of the minister from this very crucial debate on telecommunications in our country. That is no reflection on Senator Lundy, who I have indicated on many occasions would, in my view, make a far better minister for broadband and telecommunications than the incumbent.

I suspect that one of the reasons the current minister is not in the chamber is that he is running around the parliament shoring up his numbers to make sure he continues as minister—and well he should be worried. As each day passes, more and more people are questioning the sense of the Labor Party’s National Broadband Network proposal. As more and more scrutiny is directed towards Senator Conroy’s NBN, more and more people are concerned as to whether this network will be accessible and whether it will be affordable. But the fact that the minister cannot even bring himself to be present during this crucial debate is symptomatic of the arrogance not only of the minister but of the whole Gillard government. The arrogance of the Rudd and then Gillard government was clearly commented upon by electors at the election held in August when voters around Australia tossed out, for the first time in 80 years, a first-term government. It was only by some of the manipulation and backroom dealing for which the Labor Party is so renowned that Ms Gillard was able to cling onto the power and trappings of Prime Minister by making deals first of all with the Greens and then with a couple of Independents.

No-one was surprised that Ms Gillard would be able to negotiate a deal with the Greens because we know the Greens are always open to any proposition that might advance their ultra-left-wing view on the world, the view that says: ‘We will tell you what’s better for you. You as individuals in Australia don’t have any rights. How dare you think you might be able to make a decision on which form of broadband you require. We, the government—we, Big Brother—will tell you what is good for you.’ That is the philosophy of the old communist countries, you might recall, back in history where communism and communist dictators never thought individuals could make up their minds. They always thought that they, the government—that is, the Communist Party—knew what was best for everybody, so they had repressive regimes which told everybody that the government would decide what was best for people, what was best for individuals and their families. That is the same attitude, I have to say, that the Greens and their allies on the left of the Labor Party have: ‘Don’t leave it to the choice of individuals on what should be happening. We, the Greens, will tell all Australians what is best for them.’ That has been the approach in this whole debate about telecommunications.

Senator Conroy indicated that this bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010, has nothing to do with the NBN, in spite of it being clearly demonstrated that the NBN, the National Broadband Network, is mentioned 62 times in the bill. More importantly, contrary to what Senator Conroy said, if this bill does not go through, there is every likelihood that the whole NBN proposal will collapse because perhaps Telstra will have a rethink, perhaps Telstra will reject the $11 billion bribe that has been offered to it and perhaps Telstra will continue to build, as it has been doing for many years now, an alternative network made up of fibre, its existing copper and its HFC network. Perhaps Optus will say, ‘We could make a very, very fast broadband service to a lot of Australians out of our HFC service and we could probably do it at a cost of less than $43 billion to the taxpayer.’ In fact, I am quite certain that Optus and Telstra would be able to provide a very, very fast broadband service to, admittedly, a smaller group of Australians—not 100 per cent of Australians but a smaller group—at a cost that would be a 10th, a 20th, a 40th, I would guess, of what the taxpayers are going to have to fund for this particular passion, almost this ideology, of Senator Conroy.

I did indicate to Senator Conroy that I wanted some matters clarified in the committee stage of the bill, but his arrogance is clearly demonstrated when he is not even here to participate in the debate. The minister currently at the table, Senator Feeney, is a different one to the one who was here when I started my speech just eight minutes ago. With no disrespect to Senator Feeney, I have to say that at least Senator Lundy—who I thought was going to take this bill through in Senator Conroy’s absence—is, in my view, an expert on the subject. She is not always right, and we disagree on a lot of things, but she does understand it. I keep saying I think she would make a far better minister than the current one. I note that Senator Lundy is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship, yet here she was, I thought, taking through this very important bill. She has now left, perhaps to go and gather her numbers to try and get rid of Senator Conroy as the minister. Now we have here Senator Feeney—a lovely fellow, getting to be quite an expert in his ministerial field in defence, and very keen and enthusiastic in that area. But, Senator Feeney, I am somewhat surprised to think that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, who has been so passionate about this, is not to be seen anywhere. Don’t tell me he is out doing another deal with the Greens and the Independents. Here he is—you are relieved, Senator Feeney. Senator Conroy, thank you for coming in. Oh, it was only a fleeting appearance.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We did but see him passing by!

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

So we do know he is here. Let me see which door he is going to go through to try to drum up support for his position as he just flits through the chamber. Doesn’t that demonstrate the arrogance of this government, the absolute sheer arrogance of Senator Conroy and the whole government? The minister in this important debate cannot be here but, in a display of utmost arrogance and contempt, chooses to walk through the chamber to see some of his mates to try to get their votes. He has the arrogance to show the contempt he holds for the Senate by saying to the Senate, ‘Look, I’m here, but I can’t be bothered participating in this debate.’ That typifies the government, it typifies Senator Conroy and it typifies this whole proposal where you have a group of left-wing politicians, directed by the Greens, telling Australians what is best for them.

Sure, fibre to the home will be good, but copper has been okay and will continue to be okay for a long time. That is why NBN Co. is paying Telstra to keep its copper going in some places. The HFC would provide very fast broadband. We all want mobility, perhaps more than speed these days. Here I am talking in the chamber and I can operate my laptop and my mobile phone at the same time. Neither of them is connected to fibre to the home; they are working on wireless. Who knows what we are going to be able to do in five or six years time. Remember, it will be eight years before this system is in place.

I have diverted myself. I wanted to ask Senator Conroy some questions I gave him notice of during my speech in the second reading debate. I wanted him to put this to bed once and for all. We get all these Tasmanian senators speaking in this debate. They tell me what the internet service providers are charging customers. We heard it is from $49.95 to $89.95. That is great, we have heard a lot about that, but I keep saying to them, ‘Yes, but what are NBN Co. charging the service providers so they can charge the customers those prices?’ My understanding, from questioning at estimates, is that what they are being charged by NBN Co. is absolutely zero, zilch, nothing; NBN Co. are giving it away for free. What sort of an arrangement is that? From what we have been able to find out—it is always very difficult to get information—NBN Co. have spent something like $100 million in Tasmania. What return are they are getting on that $100 million investment? Absolutely zero, zilch, because they are giving it away for free. Worse than that, they are giving away another $300 per connection to get the box connected.

I indicated to Senator Conroy that I wanted to ask him in the committee stage if that is true. I am hoping, as an Australian, that he will say to me: ‘No, Senator Macdonald, you’re quite wrong and Mr Quigley was quite wrong when he gave you that information. No, we are getting a return on our investment.’ But he is not even here to answer the question. Senator Feeney now seems to have given up, he seems to be leaving, but it is good to see Senator Lundy has at least half returned to the debate. But I will have to wait until Senator Conroy deigns to lower himself to attend the chamber and be part of the debate before I can ask those questions. I will put them on notice again. I do want to know the answers.

I have digressed from the amendment moved by Senator Ludlam—but not really, because I have been talking about accessible and affordable carriage service. That is what Senator Ludlam is urging by way of this amendment to the objects, but clearly he is a bit misdirected. The figures I have been given are that, to join up to the NBN, it will cost the individual home owner between $3,000 and $7,000 just to get connected. If you do the simple math on the back of an envelope—$43 billion divided by the number of Australian families or Australian homes that use it; five million is a pretty generous conclusion—you will see that this will never be a commercial operation as we were told it would be in the first place.

This amendment talks about accessible services. We all know that seven per cent of Australians, many of whom I represent in Queensland and in my role as opposition spokesman for remote Australia, will never get access to this fibre-to-the-home service. We have never had the business case put before the Senate and a cost-benefit analysis done. We will never know if it is affordable because they will not give us the detail of the figures. But experts in the field have suggested that this NBN service will be anything but affordable to the majority of Australians.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment moved by the Greens in relation to the availability and affordability of the NBN throughout this country. Senator Birmingham has called for a fair dinkum debate. If you listened to what Senator Macdonald has just gone through, that is anything but a fair dinkum debate. It is not really a debate to attack the minister for trying to achieve what the coalition failed to achieve for 10½ years—that is, a policy that can take this country forward into the new era of telecommunications.

What we see with the coalition is typical of them ever since they were defeated at the last election. We see them in wrecking mode. They are nothing more than wreckers. They want to wreck every positive government policy that comes before this parliament. That fact could have been shown more clearly than it was in the Leader of the Opposition’s instruction of the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, to demolish the NBN. So we know exactly where the coalition are coming from in this debate. It is not about being constructive, it is not about the public interest and it is not about the future of this economy; it is simply about wrecking and about short-term political gain based on fearmongering and personal attacks against the minister, the only minister in the last decade who has managed to bring a policy position forward on this issue.

The coalition failed for 10½ years to have a policy for telecommunications in this country. If you look back over the 10½ years of coalition government, the coalition’s telecommunications policy was a three-line position: the three amigos in charge of Telstra. What a disaster that was. It was a disaster for the shareholders of Telstra and it was a disaster for providing decent broadband access to this community. That was the coalition’s position, a position of no capacity to deal with this issue. They put in place a management team at Telstra that did nothing except what the coalition are so good at—that is, wrecking and not making progress. There is quite clearly market failure in relation to this whole approach to broadband.

The Howard government continually had warnings about what they needed to do. There were reports about how they should deal with the emerging new technology, and yet they failed to deal with it—they did nothing. It was the same when we were facing the global financial crisis. The coalition’s view was that we should wait and see what happens. Senator Macdonald’s contribution—‘Just let us wait and see if the existing copper network will suffice to bring decent broadband to regional communities and to all the communities of Australia’— is similar to that view. It is an untenable position for the future. It is a position which really lays the coalition out for what they are. Senator Macdonald’s contribution simply exposes the coalition as the wreckers and Luddites that they are.

They really are the Liberal Luddites in relation to telecommunications policy. They will do anything to stop the new technology coming in. This is the technology of the future. This technology will drive our health systems, our productivity and our capacity to trade effectively with the rest of the world. It is about ensuring that we have a framework for the future that ensures our education system can match it with the best in the world, and yet the coalition—and the Luddites in the Liberal Party in particular—simply want to demolish this.

One of my duty electorates is New England. The local MP, in case I need to remind the coalition, is Tony Windsor.

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

Temporarily.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been a long temporary situation up there, Senator Macdonald, that neither the Liberal Party nor the National Party could do anything about. Tony Windsor has shown more vision and capacity to understand the issues for New England than the coalition ever could. Prior to the election, I attended a number of BERs in New England. We were revolutionising the capacity for schoolchildren in New England to be taught in decent accommodation.

They have an opportunity in New England through broadband to bring the best teachers into the classroom in real time, and not only the best teachers in the New England region, in New South Wales or nationally but also internationally. They can be brought into the classrooms to assist our education system and provide the best capacity to bring students forward into the future.

When you go to classrooms up in New England, it is clear. When you talk to the principals and teachers, you see that they are excited about having broadband in regional areas. They are excited about ensuring that their children and their pupils have the best opportunities. Tony Windsor is well aware of those opportunities. Tony Windsor has the vision that the Liberal Party and the National Party do not have.

When you talk to the member for New England, Tony Windsor, about what is needed in New England, you find that what is needed is not just education but also health. The National Broadband Network will provide an opportunity for e-health. It will bring the best physicians face to face over the broadband network with the residents of New England—the residents of Tamworth and Armidale—who do not have the facilities that we have in the capital cities. It will give those people an opportunity to see directly and have the use of the best physicians in the country for diagnoses of their ills. That is something that the member for New England realises.

When you talk to business people in the New England region, they say that one of the real potential opportunities for them in the future is to have broadband, high-speed internet, access to build the jobs of the future in regional and country Australia. It should not be, as it has been under a coalition government, that if you happen to live in a metropolitan area you get the best broadband. You should have access in the regional areas. Businesses in New England, in Tamworth and in Armidale, tell me that if they had the capacity of a hundred megabits a second, they could create the businesses in New England that will ensure that rural and regional areas like Tamworth and Armidale grow for the future. That is the benefit of the broadband network.

After 10½-plus years of neglect and the incapacity to come up with a plan that could be delivered, the coalition paid a heavy price at the last election on this issue, because rural and regional Australia know exactly the lack of competence and the lack of capacity of the coalition to deliver them an equal opportunity and a fair go when it comes to access to broadband. They know that it was the Labor Party, it was this government, who set about delivering broadband right across this country. That is what will drive future jobs, that is what will drive future productivity and that is what will drive the health of rural and regional communities such as those communities in New England.

As the duty senator for New England, I want that region to have more capacity to compete not only with Sydney, Melbourne and the other big cities but also internationally. When you talk to businesses in rural and regional Australia, they tell you about the problems they have had over many years around not having access to broadband—not having access to the speeds that would allow them to submit tender documents to the cities and overseas when they are tendering for complex engineering contracts. They do not have that capacity. The National Broadband Network will provide the capacity for engineering workshops and engineering firms in regional and rural Australia to compete on a level playing field with engineering firms around the country, because they will be able to use the new software programs that are available to build the engineering designs that are needed to compete effectively internationally. They will have it there and they will be able to use those software programs to build their businesses and create employment in regional and rural areas.

Yet what do we hear from the National Party, who should be and claim to be the defenders of regional and rural Australia? When it comes to the two big questions that face regional and rural Australia—access to broadband and access to building the communities—the National Party along with their coalition partners, the Liberals, are saying: ‘You should not have access to that. You should depend on the old copper network. You should depend on the decaying copper network. You should not have the same access as everyone else.’

On climate change, they do not want farmers in New England to have access to the computer technology that would allow them to analyse what is happening with the climate, how they could mitigate climate change and use the best computer software and technology to deal with that. The coalition have abandoned the regional and rural areas of this country, and they have abandoned them because they are Luddites. The Liberals are the Luddites of this parliament. They want to wreck the National Broadband Network. I just do not understand it. You would think, even on a basic, commonsense approach to the future of this nation, that they would say, ‘Yes, this is the way forward, as it has been seen to be the way forward in countries around the world.’ Those are countries that we must compete with in productivity, countries that we must compete with in providing health services to our constituents and countries that will move ahead if we do not adopt this new technology. The Luddites are in control, the wreckers are in control, the extremists are in control of the coalition and that is not in the national interest. (Time expired)

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listened very closely to the contributions from Senator Cameron and Senator Lundy. These are remarkable tactics we are seeing from the government at present. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is not in the chamber; he is clearly off wheeling, dealing and negotiating behind closed doors rather than taking part in the debate in this chamber about what is best for this country. The minister responsible for the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 is somewhere else. He is not in here contributing to the debate that is currently under way about his legislation and about a $43 billion program that would have a profound impact on the nation, a profound impact on a critical industry in Australia, a profound impact on the budget and a profound impact on Australian taxpayers from now into the future.

Senator Cameron talked a lot about vision. He built a lot of his case on the need for vision and on having vision. I have a vision too. I have a vision of responsible government. I have a vision of a government that takes carefully considered decisions. I have a vision of a government that has some consideration and concern for taxpayer dollars. I have a vision of a government that wants to stimulate competition and investment and a private sector in innovative industries. That is not the vision that I see when I look opposite.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Feeney interjecting—

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What I see when I look opposite, Senator Feeney, is a government that has grand visions of ideas and no idea of how to implement them—no idea whatsoever. I see a government that grabs something, scribbles it down on the back of an envelope—$43 billion, 100 megabits per second, fibre to the home—and says: ‘Here we go. We’ve got a policy. Away we go. Now we’ve got no idea how we’re going to push this through. We don’t know whether it is the best thing to do. We’re not going to be responsible enough to test it all. We’re just going to charge ahead with this idea.’ That is not good enough.  It is not good enough for Senator Conroy to get on a plane with Mr Rudd and say: ‘Our broadband policy that we took to the 2007 election—three years ago today—didn’t work. We couldn’t get it to stack up.’ Senator Conroy probably put more time and thought into his fibre-to-the-node 2007 election broadband policy than was put into the fibre-to-the-home broadband policy that he switched to when the first one did not work.

So the vision I have is for government to be responsible and do the hard yards to build a case to justify whether their proposals stack up and make sense. The government are totally unwilling to do those hard yards. They talk about their vision for broadband, but they have done absolutely no analysis or assessment of what is the best way to actually deliver fast, competitive, affordable broadband services to all Australians with value for money for the taxpayer and maintaining competitiveness in the telecommunications sector. They have not done any of that analysis. They have just picked a plan that they think is a winner. That is all they have done—picked this $43 billion plan and said: ‘That’s what we’re going with. That’s what we’re charging ahead with.’ They have done absolutely no robust analysis.

As I said before, this amendment is well intentioned. It is important to remember that we are debating an amendment at present. I know the minister has gone missing, but this amendment from Senator Ludlam is well intentioned. It is about the desire for affordable and accessible services, and that is what we should all be trying to seek. But it is not just about affordable services to consumers; it is also about providing an affordable service for the taxpayer, which is what we as a parliament and you as a government should deliver: decent value for money for taxpayers, not just throwing good money after bad to build services over the top of services that already exist.

I again remind the chamber that this government only a couple of years ago thought that 12 megabits per second was a world-leading service that would deliver everything that could possibly be necessary into the future. It was only when they could not manage to get complying tenders that stacked up with what they wanted for their fibre-to-the-node policy that they abandoned that policy and suddenly came up with a trump card, saying, ‘Actually, 12 megabits per second, even though we advocated it for years, wasn’t good enough and now we’re going for 100 megabits per second.’ It was a double-or-nothing type strategy except that the speed was more than doubled; the speed they suddenly thought people needed was essentially multiplied by 10 times with no analysis to justify either that increase or the cost of the program. It took the cost from $4.7 billion to $43 billion with no analysis whatsoever.

Rather than Senator Conroy being off behind closed doors doing whatever wheeling and dealing he is doing at present with the Greens, Senator Xenophon or Senator Fielding—who have all vanished and are obviously all in the midst of these negotiations—why doesn’t the government just come in here and give Senator Xenophon and the opposition the business plan that the government received for NBN Co. more than two weeks ago, which we have been calling for over the last couple of weeks? For more than two weeks you have been sitting on this business plan. You have defied orders of the Senate to release it. You have defied requests from the opposition to release it. You have defied requests from the crossbenchers to release it.

Senator Xenophon has made that a key condition of his position on this legislation, and it is understandable that he would want to know what is in that business plan. I hope that Senator Xenophon stands by the many comments that he has made very strongly in these past few days about the importance of that business plan—that is, that we do not have a situation where half of the 76 senators in this place are expected to vote blindfolded without seeing the NBN business plan.

Senator Xenophon has made some very compelling arguments, and I hope he stands by those arguments and makes sure that he is not just given titbits of information in a closed-door briefing. I applaud him for the credibility that he has shown to date in refusing to sign confidentiality pacts with the government—confidentiality pacts that, like so many other parts of this government’s policy, shifted from having a seven-year requirement to having a three-month requirement to having a two-week requirement. Senator Xenophon refused to sign those deals, and I hope that he will be convinced not by titbits of backroom information but by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy doing the right thing. The right thing would be for the minister to walk into this chamber and meet the orders of the Senate, which are to produce the business plan so that we can all look at the document and make this debate a far more informed debate than the one we would be able to have without the knowledge of the assumptions of NBN Co., the pricing of NBN Co., the take-up rate they expect and all the things that underpin this business plan. If the minister did that, we would be able to have a good, robust debate and to make sure that we were all informed.

The government should equally table the analyses of this business plan. Senator Conroy should make those available as soon as they are publicly known. I do not know what it is that the government is afraid of here, aside from the fact that the business plan might be able to be attacked—that there may be holes in it and that it may not live up to the many claims the government has made to date.

Most importantly, what Senator Conroy should do, when he finally graces us with his presence back in the chamber for the committee stage of debate on his bill, is commit to a Productivity Commission inquiry into the NBN. He should charge the Productivity Commission with the task of investigating whether this is the best way to achieve accessible and affordable services for all Australians at the lowest possible cost to the Australian taxpayer in a way that preserves and enhances competition across the telco sector.

If Senator Conroy did all of those things, he would fundamentally change the dynamics of this debate. Instead of having to do his behind-closed-doors deals, which he is engaged in as we speak, he could change the fundamental parameters of this debate by walking in here, agreeing to the Productivity Commission inquiry, tabling the business plan and committing to make the analyses of the business plan available. It would be so easy. Yes, there is a raft of other amendments that the coalition, the Greens and Senator Xenophon want to debate, but these are the issues that keep coming up time and time again as the real stumbling blocks in the government’s pursuit of this. They are stumbling blocks because of that vision that we are on this side of the chamber have that governments should behave responsibly and be considerate, careful and thoughtful in how they spend taxpayer dollars.

That is far from what we see from this government, which has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in its botched stimulus program activities around school halls and pink batts and others that I named before. It is because of the government’s track record of wasteful spending, jeopardising taxpayer dollars and jeopardising Australia’s future that, to be blunt, we do not trust them with a program of this magnitude.

At present, the best we have heard from the government as to why Australia should adopt this $43 billion NBN proposal is a ‘trust me’ stance. We have Senator Conroy coming in here and saying: ‘There are lots of global studies that say broadband is a good thing. Trust us, this is the best one to apply.’ That is all we have. ‘Trust me’ is not good enough. When it comes to the business case, we have assurances from the government that the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, and the cabinet will go through the business case with a fine toothcomb. I have seen their fine toothcomb activities before. There has been debacle after debacle and policy failure after policy failure for three long years now. We are not about to just willingly allow the government to embark on another one, because this is not just some small policy; this is the largest infrastructure policy that this government or any government has ever undertaken—a $43 billion project.

Australians will be repaying the cost of this for many years to come if we get it wrong. That is why we need to get it right. That is why we need to ensure that whatever we do in the broadband space is the best possible policy outcome and will deliver fast, affordable broadband to all Australians, at the lowest cost to taxpayers, with a competitive industry. These are the things that we want to see—but I emphasise that there should be value for money for taxpayers.

Senator Cameron can talk all he wants about vision. A government with vision equally needs to be a responsible government, and this government is far from responsible. He talked a lot about having real policy. Real policy involves prioritising; it involves recognising that perhaps government cannot deliver utopia without enormous cost, as in this proposal, to Australians. That is why the opposition has championed real policy options that would target services to regional areas and black-spot areas. Indeed, if the OPEL project that Senator Macdonald referred to earlier had been continued with after the 2007 election, many regional areas of Australia would enjoy faster broadband services today. They would have enjoyed them a year ago; some would have enjoyed them two years ago. We would actually have had services on the ground, whereas instead we are now having this debate in this place because the government is preoccupied with a utopian, politically driven vision rather than actually being a responsible government.

The challenge is there, Senator Conroy. Walk into this chamber, table the business plan and commit to the Productivity Commission inquiry. You can change the dynamics of this debate—but it is up to you. Get out of the room where you are doing your backroom deals, come in here, front up and be open with the Australian people. That is what we want to see. That is what this chamber deserves. It is what all Australians deserve. That might just actually get us a decent, responsible, affordable outcome for future broadband policy.

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

I rise to make a contribution to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 during the committee stage of the bill. If the Liberal and National parties are serious about improving competition in the telecommunications market and delivering better services for their constituents, they need to support this legislation. Every day of delay for these reforms is another day of higher prices, less choice and fewer innovative services for consumers and small businesses, especially those in regional Australia. This bill is an important micro-economic reform that will revolutionise the communications market for Australian consumers. It will set the stage for greater competition and productivity.

We heard from Senator Birmingham a lot of detail about the NBN and the reasons for their not supporting this legislation, but his contribution was largely not about this legislation at all. The Liberal Party continue to link the NBN to this piece of legislation only for their own political reasons, only to do what Mr Abbott has asked them to do—that is, to demolish the NBN. Senator Joyce publicly confirmed that that is their job. They have confirmed that they believe that the NBN is the reason that we are in government—Senator Joyce has said that. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has said numerous times that the NBN Co. has provided a three-year corporate plan and a 30-year-business plan. As the minister said, the company submitted the plan on 8 November 2010 and the government is committed to releasing as much information as possible from the business plan. He also said that we will release the business plan in December.

This legislation will make significant amendments to the Telecommunications Act 1997, the Trade Practices Act 1974 and the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. In this legislation we have before us the opportunity to implement a substantive regulatory reform package that will deliver a more efficient and effective telecommunications market with better and more appropriate consumer safeguards for Australian consumers. This bill reshapes the framework for Telstra to progress its decisions, including to separate, to allow Telstra to seek approval from its shareholders to migrate fixed line customers to the NBN. This bill will streamline our telecommunications sector and strengthen consumer safeguards to ensure service standards are maintained at a high level.

Overwhelmingly the majority of industry supports this legislative reform package. It is time to take action to address the longstanding problems with the existing telecommunications regime. For too long we have endured poor services at high prices and have faced numerous access disputes. It follows quite simply that passing these reforms is a key priority for this government, consumers, businesses and the broader economy. There seems to be genuine support for the separation of Telstra and I believe even those opposite cannot dispute the consumer benefits and enhanced safeguards.

Whilst those opposite continue to grandstand about the government’s expenditure on the National Broadband Network, they are stalling and thwarting any legislative progress before the end year for their own political ends regardless of the damage their tactics will have for consumers and businesses. Those opposite are denying consumer access to the safeguards that they deserve, they are causing greater uncertainty for Telstra shareholders and they are delaying much-needed reforms to the telecommunications sector. Their only aim is to stop us moving forward and to stop the Gillard government from progressing our legislative agenda.

These amendments provide the opportunity to overcome the vertically integrated, privately owned monopoly that Telstra enjoys in the Australian telecommunications industry. We have before us a package of fundamental reforms to existing telecommunications regulations in an attempt to rectify the anticompetitive nature of the industry. We are determined to address the mistakes of the past and to establish an effective and efficient regulatory framework for telecommunications.

The way forward that we have proposed is a mix of strong measures to open up the sector alongside the appropriate safeguards and incentives for consumers. This bill will reshape regulations for the telecommunications sector and will allow us to deliver better and fairer outcomes for Australian consumers and businesses. These reforms will allow the sector to smoothly transition to the NBN, they will increase competition and they will improve consumer safeguards. I hope that those opposite will have a change of heart and do the right thing for Australians and the Australian economy by voting in support of this legislation.

This bill will provide more legislative and regulatory certainty for Telstra and its shareholders as it transitions into a retail company. Through these reforms it is possible to create a win-win situation for Telstra, its shareholders and Australian consumers and businesses. These legislative changes will deliver much needed benefits for consumers while simultaneously protecting consumer interests. By addressing Telstra’s integration across the fixed line, copper, cable and mobile platforms and by delivering a structural separation of Telstra, consumers stand to benefit from increased competition across the sector. With the NBN Co. as a wholesale-only telecommunications provider with open access arrangements, the rollout of the NBN is already reshaping the competitive dynamics of the communications sector. Competition will only increase with the ongoing rollout of the NBN and with the separation of Telstra.

The industry has been calling for fundamental and historic microeconomic reform in telecommunications, and we are delivering this outcome in Australia’s long-term national interest. This bill will address the longstanding deficiencies in the regulation of the sector and it will also drive growth and productivity, regional development, social equity and innovation. We will have proper regulation of the wholesale company and we will have proper scrutiny from the ACCC.

This legislation has been informed by the discussion paper on telecommunications reform which was released on the same day as the announcement of the National Broadband Network in April 2009. The 140 submissions to the discussion paper included all major telecommunications service providers, broadcasters, media companies, state and territory governments, the ACCC, disability and consumer groups, business organisations and unions. Their response was clear: across all of the submissions unanimous feedback, as we have heard in this chamber, was that the telecommunications industry is uncompetitive, it does not assist consumers and it does not assist businesses.

We have initiated fundamental reform to the telecommunications industry to address the high level of vertical integration amongst both Telstra’s wholesale and retail services. These changes come alongside the rollout of the NBN, one of the largest infrastructure nation-building projects of our time, a project which will drive Australia’s future productivity and growth. We must have the appropriate telecommunications regulation in place to ensure that the NBN is affordable and able to deliver high-quality services to businesses and consumers. The proposed changes to the telecommunications regulations have been praised by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC, and the Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel, has himself said that the public is best served by having a competitive telecommunications sector.

This legislation has widespread support across the telecommunications sector. We know that. We know that the 10 major industry groups that include the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the Competitive Carriers Coalition, iiNet, Internode, Macquarie Telecom, Netspace Networks, Primus Telecom, TransACT Communications, Vodafone Hutchison Australia and the Australian Telecommunications Users Group plead the case for passing this bill with signatories arguing that we need these comprehensive and coherent reforms to improve competition and consumer protection in Australia. These groups also emphasise the need to deliver these reforms for consumers in regional Australia.

Australian consumers and businesses are calling out for reform, and it is frustrating that those opposite continue to oppose changes that are clearly in the best interests of the telecommunications sector and that are in the broader national interest. Through this legislation we are also making changes to consumer safeguards and protecting consumer access to affordable telecommunications services, because we know that for too long consumers have suffered as a result of regulatory gaming and litigious obstruction. We have endured 164 telecommunications access disputes since the commencement of the regime. Compared with other utility sectors there is a disproportionate amount in the telecommunications sector given that there have only been four access disputes across other regulated utility sectors.

This legislation sets up a more level playing field for consumers in the future. The ACCC will set the terms for access into the future, and this bill removes the right to seek the merits review of the ACCC’s decisions. The legislation retains and strengthens the universal service obligation, the USO. Telstra has the universal service provider as the universal service provider. That therefore must ensure all Australians have reasonable access on an equitable basis to standard telephone services, including payphones. The consumer service guarantee, CSG, will be bolstered through minimum performance benchmarks to require telephone companies to meet or exceed the CSG requirements. If the standards are not being met, those companies will incur civil penalties. There will be an additional priority assistance requirement for telephone companies. Through enhancing the powers of the Australian Communications and Media Authority to issue infringement notices, we will also have a more effective enforcement of our enhanced consumer safeguards.

We cannot let those opposite deny Australians better broadband and telecommunication services for their own political advantage. We know—we have heard it in the chamber before—that at the Melbourne communications conference Mr Turnbull, the shadow minister, said that if vertical integration was the problem structural functional separation of Telstra is the answer. We must now ask how, in spite of their own shadow minister’s comments, those opposite still will not support this legislation. Using the NBN as the only reason to object to a bill which breaks down the telecommunications monopoly is just another example of the delaying tactics of those opposite. We need to act now and deliver fundamental reform to the telecommunications industry, reform which will benefit both consumers and businesses in the future. These are substantive stand-alone reforms to the telecommunications industry. Nothing in this legislation concerns the NBN other than the agreement between NBN Co. and Telstra. The telecommunications reforms have nothing to do with the cost-benefit analysis of the NBN. The opposition know this and they are linking this bill with the NBN for their own advantage.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill provides a framework for the migration of customer services from Telstra’s network to the NBN. This is the means by which the structural operation of Telstra may be achieved. This bill is not about the operations, structure or the ongoing processes of the NBN. It is about streamlining our telecommunications sector and strengthening consumer safeguards. It is about delivering better and fairer outcomes for Australian consumers and businesses in our broader community. The opposition need to be honest about the reason they are opposing this bill. This bill is not about the NBN; it is all about the opposition’s strategy to delay, wreck and demolish—on the orders of their leader, Mr Abbott. We know and they know this bill is about competition and consumer safeguards— (Time expired)

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

I want to return to the amendment before the chamber. I cannot understand the government’s position. They keep telling us they want to get this bill through and yet they bring in the ‘zombies’—to use Senator Cameron’s words, not mine, of course—to read 15-minute speeches that have nothing to do with the amendment before the chamber. I wanted to ask the mover of the amendment some questions but neither he nor the minister are here. The Greens and the Labor Party are treating this as an absolute farce. We are here to ask Senator Ludlam questions about his amendment and he did not even bother to turn up. He has not even been here. How serious can the Greens be with their amendments when they are not here to listen to what people say or to answer questions—no Green, no minister—what a farce.

Progress reported.