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

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President Furner. I think this is the first time I have spoken while you have been in the chair and I congratulate you on your appointment to this position. I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011. The coalition is strongly committed to providing Australians with fast and reliable broadband services. However, we believe that the provision of these services should be at the lowest possible cost and certainly should not come via the wasteful destruction of competing platforms. Those opposite, by contrast, seek to construct a $50 billion monopoly provider which locks out competition and locks Australia into a new National Broadband Network, with little regard for emerging and future technologies. It is a grand, shiny promise, but under the facade it is, quite frankly, a disaster that we cannot afford and a burden for the future of Australia.

As we all know, the NBN is a financial black hole funded by debt with completely implausible underpinnings, which will never live up to the scant financial details that have been published by this government. That is little wonder; this is one of the most secretive projects this country has seen. I suspect once, or if, Australians ever get to know the whole financial truth about the NBN they will be horrified. Labor promised of course, before the 2007 election, to 'let the sun shine in' on government. The shutters have been well and truly locked shut on this one. The sun does not shine in on the NBN, which is being provided with all means and all manner of ways to keep its operations and expenses as secret as possible. The NBN seems to be beset by problems, but the government take the three monkeys approach to this one: they see no evil, they hear no evil and they speak no evil about the NBN. Instead, day after day in question time Senator Conroy comes in here and reads an email he has had from an occasional constituent telling us how wonderful they think the opportunity for faster broadband may be. That is not the debate; the debate is whether this the best way to provide faster broadband.

As Labor look the other way—and I guess they do have so many debacles on their hands—they just do not admit that there could be alternative or better approaches to this back-of-the-envelope NBN cooked up by Senator Conroy and the former Prime Minister Mr Rudd. But this is an issue that certainly will not go away, because the problems will become more and more obvious as the rollout continues. Senator Conroy disagrees. He argues that this is the best way to do it. But of course in having the courage of his convictions he has failed to subject the NBN to a fair, thorough and independent cost-benefit analysis—to test it and to see whether indeed this is the best way, the most efficient and cost-effective way, to deliver faster broadband services to Australians. He will not do that because he knows that it just does not stack up. Instead, he tries to deflect all attention by continually attacking the opposition.

Senator Conroy, like the opposition, knows Australians want affordable, fast and reliable broadband services. That is something I think everybody in this place is in agreement with. As a coalition we are committed to delivering that, but Labor seem to have forgotten the affordable component. Fast and reliable is one thing; affordable for consumers is another. What we are going to see, it seems, under this NBN are dramati­cally escalating price rises for consumers when it comes to very fast connections. Yes the government may be trying to put caps in place for the base level connection, but the base level connection is not the premise on which they have sold this policy. It is the very fast connections with which they have sold this policy, and yet we are seeing those very fast connections subject to significant price rises. Just this week it has been exposed that NBN Co. want to have price rises of five per cent above inflation for those peak speeds. They have said they need this feasibility because they are subject to 'considerable demand uncertainty'. They are NBN Co.'s own words, and they go on:

Demand uncertainty remains in relation to issues such as the price payable by end-users for broadband services over time ...

Certainly Labor has forgotten the issue of affordability when it comes to consumers. Of course they have also forgotten the issue of affordability when it comes to taxpayers. Taxpayers face a cost of some $50 billion in the end, either through government genera­ted debt or NBN Co. generated debt—and NBN Co. is a 100 per cent government-owned entity so, whichever way you look at it, 100 per cent of the debt that NBN Co. will raise will be attributable to the government. We have a government that out of this $50 billion is going to pay Telstra and Optus to shut down their existing fibre networks. Think about the logic of that—existing networks will be paid to be shut down so we can build something else. This country will be paying for something that already exists so that we can build right over the top of it. Frankly, when you hear logic like that, it is little wonder so many Australians have lost confidence in this government.

Competition at the platform level is equally important to ensure consumers see the low prices that competition usually brings. As I and others have mentioned many times before, consumers are already voting increasingly with their feet, moving to wireless broadband services. With the rollout of 4G services in major cities that is planned and underway, I expect this trend to continue and it will continue to undermine the bizarre take-up assumptions on which the NBN was built and which they now seem to concede are subject to such uncertainty.

This bill specifically deals with the rollout of fibre into new housing developments. We all know that the rollout of fibre is incredibly expensive, and the question in this bill is why would the government seek to again destroy competition in the broadband sector, this time by locking competitors to the NBN Co. out of the greenfield installation market. You would have thought the government should be seeking the most efficient and cost-effective ways to roll out its monolithic NBN. But, considering the regard it holds taxpayers in, it is no surprise that it seems to be happy to simply waste billions of dollars.

The government has previously said that the greenfield market should be competitive. Indeed, it has said it is competitive—the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is on the record as stating in regard to the greenfield market:

The installation of FTTP is taking place in a competitive context, with developers typically contracting out the provision of infrastructure and services in developments.

Even Senator Conroy himself said just last December:

Providers can compete to provide infrastructure in new developments—for example, by offering more tailored solutions to developers or more expeditious delivery.

Yet the government seems to want to change all of the ground rules and tear up the competition that exists in this marketplace. The government's figures suggest that by 2013 some 250,000 houses on greenfield sites will be built, growing to 1.9 million by 2020. They will have to be connected to the NBN under this government's plan. Many companies currently offer fibre deployment services in greenfield developments. So, we have a situation where we have demand—there are greenfield developments constantly underway and they are forecast for the future; and we have supply—we have companies already providing and building broadband services on these greenfield sites. We have suppliers eager and able to compete to fulfil the demand. But, as is often the case, this government, which acknowledges that this competitive market exists, is saying one thing—that it wants to keep a competitive market—but when it comes to how this legislation will operate it is doing quite the opposite. It is just another example of our not being able to trust this government's word.

This bill provides developers with a choice but, when you look at the operation of it, it is really a Clayton's choice. Developers, in establishing greenfield housing developments, can either fund the fibre deployment in those housing developments through a private provider or they can wait for the NBN Co., as the provider of last resort, to do it for free. With the NBN Co. as a provider of last resort, which will see it pay for key services to be delivered—a cost traditionally borne by the developers—many of those developers will seek to offload those costs on to taxpayers and the NBN Co. Far from being a provider of last resort, because the NBN Co. is offering the cheapest deal to developers, it will of course become the first choice for many of these greenfield sites and developers. Make no mistake, the result of this will be the decimation of the existing greenfield fibre deployment sector. This is Labor's bizarre version of competition—you compete but we the government will offer it for free. We all know what the outcome of that will be. Perhaps Senator Conroy would have realised this anti-competitive bill would kill Australian businesses if he had actually listened to the stakeholder reference group. Senator Conroy promised to listen to stakeholders while developing this policy, but if he did listen he certainly paid no attention to what they said.

On behalf of the coalition I will be moving amendments to address some of the very serious problems, and particularly the anti-competitive problems, in this bill. I will be moving to ensure that industry can establish specifications for the laying of fibre and not simply have to meet NBN Co. specifications, and that NBN Co. provide pits, pipes and fibre on a competitive basis. This will enable private providers to compete and to continue to offer their services to developers, knowing there is an industry specification that suits all in the industry that they need to meet and, equally, that NBN Co. will not have an unfair competitive advantage over them. This is a sensible amendment which will ensure that Senator Conroy's nice words about competition are matched in this legislation and with NBN Co. in reality.

The amendment we are pursuing will speed up the provision of fibre, with developers not being forced to wait for NBN Co. to do it for free when they finally get around to it. It will allow developers to get on with the job of providing fibre-ready premises and developments to purchasers. You would think this is something the government would want—to get the job done as quickly as possible in as many develop­ments as possible, not to provide the potential backlog that comes with waiting for the monopoly service provider to be the sole provider of last resort service.

While the government should support this, the industry and stakeholders actually do. The Urban Development Institute of Australia said, in relation to the coalition's alternative approach, that this is a 'pragmatic suggestion'. It said:

Whatever brings around greater certainty for purchasers of those properties that all the utilities are actually there and are available and can be handed over to them and the greater that certainty is, the better it will be.

In relation to the coalition's alternative approach, OptiComm stated:

… there would be some advantages in what you are saying to what is currently proposed. That allows diversity in the greenfield.

Transact, one of the major providers of such services already operating right here in the ACT, said that they would support that type of amendment to the legislation. We want private sector greenfield cable operators to be able to stay in business and continue to provide services to their customers. That is why I will also be moving an amendment to enable these operators to stay in business by exempting them from the government's anticompetitive, so-called cherry-picking rules.

We would like to see fibre deployments in new developments not owned or operated by NBN Co. or Telstra but instead owned and operated by the same entity who built them, and an entity able to have and provide retail services by such a competitive greenfield operator to people living in that development. This will provide developers with maximum flexibility and will maintain their important existing business models. This, of course, is not anticompetitive. It will not shut other retail service providers. Such competitive greenfield operators would continue to be subject to the other access requirements which apply under the telecommunication specific provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act. Other retail service providers wishing to serve such residents in a development would have the legal right to access the network of these greenfield operators and to obtain access over their network. It is simply a sensible change to make sure that these operators will not have their business model, which involves being able to build and provide services in these greenfield sites, shut down by virtue of being forced to comply with requirements that the NBN Co. is having to comply with—a much larger, much bigger national entity that is being established in a vastly different way from these smaller and often localised entities. This approach will certainly improve efficiency and flexibility, and I hope that both of these amendments will be supported by all sides of this chamber.

The coalition believe that it is quite sensible and quite logical that this legislation seeks, in greenfield services, to provide for the rollout of fibre. We understand that. Whilst it may be marginally more expensive than a copper rollout, in the long term we think that in greenfield sites it does make sense. But we think it is vitally important that you preserve the competition that can exist in these greenfield sites. It is absolutely critical that private companies that have been rolling out, are rolling out and would like to continue to rollout their own fibre services in these greenfield sites are able to do so and are not effectively shut out of doing so because of an anticompetitive regime that makes its cheaper and easier for developers to simply opt for NBN Co. to do the work instead. It is a fundamental point of difference. Whilst the government are saying they are standing up for competition in this regard, they are far from standing up for competition in this regard. While saying that they do not want NBN Co. to have a monopoly in greenfield developments, they are in effect setting up a situation where, by default, NBN Co. will end up with a monopoly in greenfield developments. It is just a constant case of this government saying one thing and in effect doing another and, in doing so, having serious adverse consequences that Australia will pay for for many years to come.

The real risk with NBN Co., and the NBN as it is proposed, is that it will limit innovation, limit diversity and limit competition in the provision of broadband services around Australia. The very model has the potential to limit that, but this legislation, in particular, dealing as it does very specifically with greenfield sites, with new developments, quite transparently has the potential to limit innovation, competition and best practised most affordable standards in those developments. I hope that senators, especially senators on the crossbenches, will see the sense in preserving competition in this sector. While the NBN has a solid anticompetitive track record, hopefully this is one area where the Senate and the parliament can stop it from killing off competition. The amendments the coalition will move will deliver flexibility and efficiency for developers, speed up the rollout and take some of the burden of rolling out fibre in new developments off NBN Co. so that they can concentrate on other areas and so that householders and those who purchase land get the benefits of having fibre-ready properties sooner and, hopefully, cheaper as well. NBN Co. can perhaps get on with making this dog of a plan that it has at least work as best it possibly can and, hopefully, at the lowest cost to both consumers and taxpayers.

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

I rise to make some remarks on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011, and it is not before time. This bill is very similar to the fibre deployment bill that was introduced in 2010, which lapsed when the last parliament was dissolved for the election. Many witnesses who gave evidence for the first turn of the wheel, the first iteration of the bill, pointed out some quite serious flaws, which the government addressed and then served up something quite different. The similarities are that the bill answers questions about what will happen as the gigantic retrofitting exercise of fibre infrastructure is about to get underway on a large scale to most of the premises in the country.

What will happen to what is being built while that rollout is occurring? What will happen to the estimated 1.9 million new premises that will be built while the NBN is being rolled out so as to ensure that we do not leave those people behind? The whole point of the first iteration of the bill and this one is to ensure that new developments have access to fibre technology as they are being built. That, of course, reduces the cost of retrofitting, which is estimated to be roughly $1,300 a lot or unit where no passive infrastructure has been supplied. I did not detect anything in Senator Birmingham's comments that undermined the general premise of the bill. Let us not leave people behind. And let us not send technicians and people back down streets that have only just been built in order to dig trenches to put in the infrastructure when that could have been done at the time.

The key distinctions and differences between this bill and its predecessor are that this bill sets out the key requirements and does not leave tasks to subordinate legislation, and so we have a much better idea of where the government is heading and we will not need to wait for the regulations. That is largely, I think, because of the timing. Some significant issues that were not resolved in 2010 have since been resolved and clarified. Obviously, senators will be very well aware that this year has seen a number of major milestones, including at least, and most obviously, a better definition of the heads of agreement. While that has not been put to Telstra's shareholders, I think there is a general sense now that we know where this whole process is heading, and that of course is crucial to NBN Co.'s understanding of how it will access existing infrastructure.

Teething problems that were experienced when NBN Co. was very new and when the government and Telstra were in negotiations have now been greatly clarified. The bill, therefore, sets out that NBN Co. is the infrastructure provider of last resort in new developments. A developer can choose another entity if they so wish, or NBN Co. is the infrastructure provider of last resort. I think this sets to rest most of the objections that the development community raised in their submissions to the inquiry into the first version of the bill where it was left up in the air and there were concerns expressed that developers would have to pick up the cost or, indeed, householders would have to pick up the cost. It is very important that that has been set to rest. Developers and property owners will now be responsible for doing the trenching and ducting, and Telstra services will infill developments of fewer than 100 premises, until the NBN fibre rollout takes place and reaches those areas. Developers can use any fibre provider of choice on the proviso that they meet NBN specifications and open access requirements.

I have some sympathy with some of the points that Senator Birmingham raised earlier. The bill does provide for what would look like a very fluid market and competition at this wholesale level in the greenfields area, but in fact I think it is quite unlikely that we will have a particularly liquid market. I think it is going to settle fairly rapidly into a handful of providers, chiefly NBN Co. and Telstra and a couple of the other incumbents, such as TransACT, who obviously still have a very important role to play. But I do not think we are going to be seeing vibrant competition in this layer. Unlike Senator Birmingham, who appears to be promoting competition for the sake of it, I do not think that is necessarily going to be as problematic as the coalition are making it sound. The bill tries to ensure that developers have fibre-ready passive infrastructure, which is just a clever word for the holes and ducts and so on for the cables to be installed, for the future provision of fibre for use by any fibre provider. NBN Co. will not be charging developers for the installation. I think it is a much more elegant solution than the first bill, which, as I have said, left a lot of things up in the air.

As we flagged during the committee process, we are not inclined to support the opposition's amendments to this bill but perhaps not for the same reasons that we have not supported a number of coalition propositions to NBN related legislation. Mr Turnbull, the member for Wentworth, was sent on a mission by Tony Abbott to just smash this thing up, just destroy the network and make it into as much of a political liability as possible for the Gillard govern­ment. That is a very important reason why the coalition are not sitting on the government benches at this time. That extraordinarily destructive attitude towards a really important piece of infrastructure for this country, including, you would have thought, for the constituency of the National Party, made it much easier for the regional Independents to cast their votes when the time came. But I think the coalition's position has shifted. I do not think the amendments that Senator Birmingham is proposing here are in the order of the kind of sabotage that has been attempted over the last 12 months or so. At every opportunity, the coalition have sought to derail the rollout of NBN Co., and I think these amendments are something of a different order. They are an inelegant and unworkable solution to what is probably a genuine problem, and I will speak more on that.

In the dissenting report, the coalition agree that it is highly desirable to encourage the rollout of fibre in new developments—so far so good—but then they go on to propose a number of measures that complicate rather than simplify the process. I will speak in more detail on them when we come to the committee stage of the bill. It was interesting that the language in Senator Birmingham's speech gave away the reason why we will beg to differ when we come to vote on the coalition's amendments. He said that, even if the government provided a cheaper and easier solution for developments, nonetheless competition would be more important. At that point I thought there was something really deeply jarring there in that we would be seeking to promote the principles of competition even if there was a more elegant solution in just having NBN Co. and then, by extension, Telstra providing most of these services, which would make it cheaper and easier. What exactly would the benefits of competition bring to an equation in which it is cheaper and easier for developers and, of course, for the people who are moving into these new estates? Why would we be promoting competition if it made it more difficult and more expensive, which is obviously the logical conclusion?

There are some things for which setting up the free flow of markets is very good—and at the retail level for the NBN project, that is exactly what is going to happen. Telstra might think that they are the incumbent, but I actually think that, in the RSP market and in the provision of services to people at the retail level, we are going to see vibrant competition. But just as we do not want people rolling out a parallel network of roads or powerlines to promote competition, I think that the hardware layer needs to stay in public hands and that the competitive aspects of that layer will be at the margins. They will be in wireless provision and, to some degree I think, in greenfield provision. But it is not the main game and perhaps it should not be.

The NBN Co. has been designed as a natural monopoly. We do not want other providers running parallel ducts down people's roads and ripping up people's gardens just to ensure that the principles of competition are met. I think the government has the hardware layer and the wholesale layer quite right. This goes back to the debates which we have been having over the last 24 months or so on the disaggregation of Telstra and the structural separation of the wholesale and retail arms. All this bill is really doing is bringing that process to a logical conclusion, with some carve-outs for incumbents like TransACT who have already made themselves a legitimate space in the market and have actually been doing quite well, as have a number of other providers.

The NBN is a very large project and with projects of this size transitional arrangements are going to be necessary. As much as we would have liked the NBN to be in place today, it is not possible to simultaneously extend it to all Australians nor is it possible to extend the NBN to all small developments across the country. There is quite a delicate balance to be struck here between not wanting copper to be installed in greenfield developments, which is then going to be ripped out in 12 months time when NBN Co. comes past, and not forcing NBN Co. or other fibre providers to, effectively, run exhaustively long extension cords out to places which are nowhere near the first and second release sites of NBN Co. We recognise the difficulty which is inherent in the transitional arrangements—that urban expansion is occurring at the same time as we are undergoing this enormous retrofitting operation. Some balancing needs to be done.

The NBN will provide 93 per cent fibre coverage to Australian premises—to homes, to schools, to businesses and so on. The fact that the coalition are still out there trying to bring this project down is just a source of unceasing amazement. I would have thought it would have been fairly clear that the outcome of the last election, for the first time in my experience, hinged on communica­tions issues. I think that is a really healthy thing in this age in which the communica­tions sector and everything that it underpins makes up such an important part of our economy and brings us closer to the rest of the world as our region lights up and as the rest of the world lights up.

I think this is exactly what the Australian government should be doing and it rolls back some of the cloudy and very confused rhetoric surrounding the provision of what are, effectively, utility services—that the market will take care of it. Some things the market takes care of very well and some things it does not. If the market had been able to take care of it, we would not need the NBN—because it would have already happened. The Nationals supported the full privatisation of Telstra. That was meant to bring perfect competition along so that the free market would take care of everything. Instead, of course, the obvious happened—the profitable areas of our cities and towns were very well served and, in some cases, overbuilt with competitive infrastructure. But the regions were stranded. We predicted that that would occur and that was exactly what did occur.

If you are going to provide infrastructure of this kind to regional areas, it is going to be more expensive. Then you have a choice. Do we want to make it more expensive for customers in regional areas to access this infrastructure—in which case, just let the market rip and fibre will go out to where the market can afford it—or do we want to do what we have done with electricity, with water, with transport infrastructure and with gas, where it has been reticulated, which is make sure that everybody in Australia gets to pay the same no matter where they live? There will be some disadvantages to living in regional areas that no amount of infrastructure will be able to eliminate. Not every town is going to have a big teaching hospital and not every town is going to get the hardware for the fibre for the NBN. But the very least we can do, I think, is make sure that it costs the same to access these services no matter where you live. If you are going to do that, the cities are going to need to subsidise the bush. It was uncontroversial when we did that with water, electricity and transport. I do not see that it should be controversial that we are doing it with communications, particularly given the importance of this sector.

The other thing which I think the opposition continually forgets is that this is not a public investment which will pay for itself in time. NBN Co. is not a government department. It is a corporation which will run for profit. But it will run for profit with the imprimatur of shareholders who hold seats in this parliament. As senators are no doubt aware, and as Mr Quigley of NBN Co. is no doubt becoming quite weary of, we can call senior levels of NBN management into estimates committees or the joint committee which was set up to watchdog this project. We can keep the company on a tight leash in a way that we could not with Telstra once we had flogged it off—and I do not believe that any amount of regulation could have prevented the kind of gaming of markets which we saw with Telstra. I think that is the great advantage of the Commonwealth build­ing this infrastructure and, in a very conscious and premeditated way, subsidising regional areas to get this world-class infra­structure. How the National Party have found their way to opposing something like that, I am absolutely at a loss to explain. Perhaps Senator Joyce can explain that for us. We have here a model which, for the first time, will actually bring world-class broadband—it will leapfrog us ahead of a number of other countries—not only to the inner cities, not only to central Melbourne and not only to Fremantle but to the remote Aboriginal communities in the north-west of WA, to regional communities in Tasmania and to places that cannot even get dial-up at the moment. I think that is a profoundly important project.

There are a number of reasons why many people in here are hoping that Tony Abbott is not successful in his project of just smashing the government and getting an early election. One is that, I think, the NBN would be a casualty. I hope that the phone lines in National Party offices and in the offices of regional MPs are ringing and that people are saying, 'What on earth are you doing trying to pull this project apart?' Arguably, its opposition to this project cost the coalition the Treasury benches and I plan to make absolutely certain that people are very aware that this project hangs in the balance. I do not think it is yet at the stage that, if there were a change of government, the NBN Co. would survive. Mr Turnbull has already drawn up plans for the potential privatisation of a highly fragmented network that simply has not reached anything near its fullest extent and to somehow hand over buckets of money to private providers to fill the gap. It did not work in the 13 years that the coalition were in government last time and I cannot imagine why we think it might work now.

This is not an antimarket position either. The free market and competitive markets will have a very healthy role to play at the retail level. But I think it is time now to just get on with the job of the volume rollout. The joint committee will be an able watchdog and so will the other institutions and levers that this parliament can bring to bear. Let us get on with it. I look forward to debating some of the coalition's proposals which, unlike some previous amendments that we have seen, have been advanced in good faith. I look forward to the long overdue passage of this bill.

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

It is great to have the minister in the chamber today during what must be a very touchy time for the Australian Labor Party. I am sure the minister has complete confidence in his capacity to get the NBN out—'complete confidence' are words being used quite a bit around here lately. I am sure he has complete confidence in the government's capacity to reach a surplus, complete confidence in the carbon tax, complete confidence in the NBN and complete confidence in the member for Dobell.

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge what we are looking at here: the Telecommunications Legislation Amend­ment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011 in the guise of the Labor Party's NBN. The difference between the Labor Party and the coalition is not that we do not believe in broadband; it is that we do not believe in $56 billion of debt. We believe in fibre to the node. They believe in fibre to just about any place they can point a stick at. They believe that the only way to pay for it is to remove themselves from market principles, create a monopoly and, in the meantime, borrow the money. And if they cannot pay it back, they just put it on the credit card bill along with all the other debt—another issue that is in the news at the moment.

The coalition will be proposing a couple of amendments to this—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

He is awake. I have complete confidence in the minister—complete confidence, like the complete confidence they have in the member for Dobell! I have complete confidence in the Labor Party! I might go to a few of the allegations being made by the minister. The minister talks about his belief in unit pricing. The National Party believe in unit pricing and that is why the National Party moved an amendment to have unit pricing on the download speed—true unit pricing. But what we got from the minister was another swindle where they only told half the story. 'Half the story' is another term you hear to describe what the Labor Party say. They tell half the story. They do not tell the full story about what actually happens.

On this the Labor Party have three silos: the fibre silo in the urban areas, the wireless silo in the rural areas and the satellite silo. And they all have different costings. The people who will pay the most are the people in regional areas—that silo. So the govern­ment do not really believe in unit pricing and that is why they voted against the amendment to bring about unit pricing. As we know, the Independents, Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott, supported the government in making sure that regional areas did not get true unit pricing. So we can dispel that one.

Now we have a piece of legislation that is going to bring about a new monopoly. In the past, under the coalition one of the great reductions in the cost of living came about through telecommunications where there was a 20 per cent reduction, I think, in the actual costs. But, now, the crowd opposite—the complete confidence crowd—have legisla­tion that will allow the NBN to charge five per cent above the CPI. The reason they are doing that is that the numbers do not actually stack up. It did not take too long to find that the numbers do not stack up. Who are they charging this to? In this new monopoly, everybody will have to be part of it and connected, and they will be ripped off.

I notice shadow minister Malcolm Turnbull has said that the NBN only has 50 customers. Even I found this number to be so incredibly ridiculously small that I had to ask my staff to check it. Surely, it cannot be that bad. There cannot be just 50 customers. Surely, this $56 billion enterprise cannot have just 50 customers. But I think it is true: they only have 50 real customers. Remember the launch in Armidale where they all put their hands on the button with Julia Gillard? I have complete confidence in Julia Gillard! I have complete confidence in the Prime Minister! She has complete confidence in the member for Dobell! We have the minister—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The one over there!

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

The out there minister; the minister out there—I should say, Minister Stephen Conroy. In Armidale, there was Minister Conroy, the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, the Labor aligned Independent, Tony Windsor, and a few other people, and they all put their hands on the button. Down the button went, but the trouble was that the button was not connected to anything. The seven customers there were actually connected beforehand. What the button actually did, God only knows, but it looked really good. It was right up there with the 'Hour of Disney'—lots of flashing lights! I have complete confidence in what happened up in Armidale! But now we have to have complete confidence in the Labor Party and the NBN. With the invest­ment of the Australian taxpayers' money in this process there has to be some sort of purpose to what we are doing. We do not, in the coalition of the National Party and Liberal Party, not believe in fibre; we absolutely do if it is fibre to the node and not fibre to every house. Let us clearly spell that out. We are having huge advancements now in wireless—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

I have got complete confidence in your capacity. There are a number of amendments we will be looking at under this telecommunications legislation. One is where they are trying to bring in this sort of new monopoly to squash out of the marketplace independent providers who go into a residential area to install fibre. We believe in small business, and small business has the capacity to do that. Our amendment goes to making sure that we do not lose those independent providers of the installation of fibre. And it does make sense that as new subdivisions come on site that people look at the installation of fibre—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

What are you saying? I have complete confidence in you, Minister. The Prime Minister has complete confidence in the member for Dobell, and I have complete confidence in your story. The member for Dobell is telling the truth; I have complete confidence in that! There is no doubt about it: somebody broke into his house and stole his credit card, his licence and his phone, and they drove down to Surry Hills. They managed to make a few phone calls on the way. I hope the phone did not have a code lock on it. They must have known the code. That thief looked awfully like Craig Thomson and signed something with a signature that looked awfully like Craig Thomson's signature, and then after a certain transaction, which we will not go into because it will scare the kiddies, went back up to Central Coast at which point in time they must have broken back into the house and put everything back where they found it. That is a marvellous story and the Prime Minister has complete confidence in that story! And I have complete confidence in the NBN! I think it is going to work! It is a plausible idea! I have complete confidence in their capacity to bring the budget back to surplus!

Let us go into this confidence trick, because that is what we have got. It is absurd that we are now going to lock ourselves into a place where a monopoly is going to have the capacity to jack up prices and basically rip it out of the consumers. That is not a good outcome. It is also not good that we have a monopoly going in and basically knocking out of the market the private providers of fibre rollout. That is obviously a very bad outcome. I am glad to hear that the Greens are considering those amendments. We will not lock them in. But I am glad to see that they are considering them. I am sure that—and I do not want to say with complete confidence—in due course you will make your mind up about them.

We must also make sure that the Labor Party are truly held to account over the fact that they have not brought unit pricing to regional Australia.

An honourable senator: Are you voting for these?

You can have complete confidence that you will find out. Unit pricing is an issue that the Labor Party voted against and the Independents voted against. Did the Greens vote against unit pricing for regional areas? I am not quite sure whether the Greens voted against unit pricing for regional areas. They made a speech about unit pricing for regional areas.

An honourable senator: They voted against it.

Oh! They voted against it. The Australian Greens voted against unit pricing for regional areas. They actually believed that people were naive enough that they could pull the wool over their eyes. Unit pricing in the delivery of a product is obviously download speed. That is where you should have the unit pricing. You did not believe in that; you voted against it. Your credentials on unit pricing and parity and fairness are there for all to see in the way you voted on amendment (2) on subsection 151 DA(6). That was it and you voted against it.

An honourable senator: The amendment was written in crayon!

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He has got you there!

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

I did not hear it; but I am sure it was funny.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was red crayon!

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

Red crayon, was it? I have complete confidence that it was in red crayon—absolute and complete confidence a la the Prime Minister! We will be moving some amendments which will, hopefully, try to make sure that we keep the providers of fibre rollout in the market. It is a viable sector, and that viable sector should have the capacity to continue.

I do have concerns about the debt that this is going to leave us with. It is vitally important that you understand that if we cannot pay back this debt, the Australian people are going to pay it back. All the money is being borrowed. You have got to have complete confidence in the Labor Party. What was I saying about the member for Dobell? He is a great asset to us! Stick by him! Stay with him! Do not let him out of your sight! Do not let the CT scan out of your sight! You just stay right next to him. I want you in every photo, holding him, arm in arm—oh, maybe not! Stay close by him; he is a great asset for us.

The coalition is proposing an amendment to impose cost discipline on NBN Co. This amendment will require NBN Co. to purchase at a set price any network from developers who have had other NBN co-competitors install that network. If this amendment is successful then NBN Co. will not be able to charge a fee greater than that set under this agreement. This will have the effect of regulating the cost to developers of having to install fibre developments in greenfield sites. Just as NBN Co.'s prices will be regulated when supplying services to brownfield sites, there should be oversight of its supply of fibre to greenfield sites as well.

The coalition proposes an amendment to preserve competition for those who currently have new fibre infrastructure. This amendment would exempt those providing this infrastructure from part 7 and part 8 of Telecommunications Act 1997. Those parts of the Telecommunications Act are funda­mentally anticompetitive. They prevent fibre network owners, other than the NBN, from providing a superfast carrier service to residential or small business owners so the Labor Party have to revert to such anticom­petitive practices. Apparently it is to provide more competition in the telecommunications marketplace. That is what they said. They said they were going to provide more competition but they have instead provided a monopoly. Now that they have the monopoly in place, as we said they would, they are legislating the five per cent above the CPI increase in the pricing so they can rip the people off. That is what they are good at.

They have to protect the NBN business case. The NBN's business case is another thing that I thought the Prime Minister might have complete confidence in. Where was the cost-benefit analysis before they went into the largest capital infrastructure process in our nation's history? I do not know where it is, but I tell you what: when Minister Conroy leaves this place, he will be the best salesman for vacuum cleaners that this nation has ever known. He will have a boot full of vacuum cleaners and he will be ready to sell, sell, sell. This man will be unstopp­able. He will slay Amway; he will slay Reader's Digest. He will be the best door-to-door salesman.

How he ever managed to get this through ERC I do not know. I just do not know what happens in the Labor Party. Did he walk into the Expenditure Review Committee and say: 'I'm about to launch on this nation about $56 billion worth of expenditure. We could build hospitals galore, up and down the coast and everywhere, and inland rail. We could build so many things: dams, roads—you name it—but we are getting ourselves a telephone company. We have already got a few of them but we're going to get another one'? And he did it without even a cost-benefit analysis. He told us the story about how he waited for the Prime Minister of the day, Kevin Rudd. Julia Gillard had complete confidence in Kevin Rudd! He waited for the former Prime Minister of this nation, before they got rid of him, and jumped on a plane with Mr Rudd, and that is how he got this through. That is how we have ended up with a new telephone company, which is actually an old telephone company. In fact, it is the same telephone company; it is just a much bigger monopoly. Then he decided he was going to put fibre into every house, every shed and every toilet in the nation—everywhere you go there will be fibre. It will just be a fibre wonderland out there. The trouble is that it is going to cost the earth.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

You should have complete confidence in it. I have complete confidence in you! So we had Optus, we had Telstra and we had other providers, and now we have the NBN, which is basically coming in as the new monopoly. We are closing down the ones we have. They have made an absolute killing because they saw the minister coming and they have leased him back the pipes and the trenches. They actually still own them. It is only a matter of 19 years and they will get them back. It is so pathetic that if you did not laugh you would cry. All they got were 50 customers and it cost $50 billion plus. That is a billion dollars for each customer. What a bargain! What an absolute financial genius! They are incredible. What a great deal!

You should recommend yourself to the Australian people at the next election on how you have gone with the NBN. I am sure they will have complete confidence in you, just like the member for Dobell. It is just bizarre. But, with the expenditure of the nation's money, the coalition have to make this thing, wherever it goes, work. It is not that we do not believe in fibre, because we do. We put about $8 billion on the table in order to get it to the node. We just do not believe in running it to every house, because we cannot afford it. We have $197 billion in gross debt. Last week that debt went up by $2½ billion—that is $2,500 million in one week. Our nation is just going down the tube. Everywhere you look, everything they touch is just manifest incompetence, and that is reflected in their polling. If somebody said, 'What do you think of the NBN?', I would just say, 'I believe that the Prime Minister of Australia has complete confidence in it.'

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

I am very pleased to enter into another debate on Australia's broadband network, which, had the coalition not been defeated in the 2007 election, would have been up and running by now. All of the elements were there. The money was put aside. We would have had a national broadband network based on fibre, wireless and satellite, and it would have been operating now, whereas the best that the Labor Party could tell us about their proposals was that they hoped it would be up and running by 2008 or 2010. I think anyone with any knowledge of the industry would have been aware that it was going to blow out beyond that. The Labor Party, and the minister in particular, keep saying that the coalition is opposed to a national broadband network. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I say, our plans initially would have had a very high speed, ubiquitous broadband network in operation now, as we speak.

I will give you some brief history about the Labor Party before getting onto the Telecommunications Legislation Amend­ment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011. The Labor Party were thrashing around in opposition. They had no idea what was what about anything. They went to Telstra having had a bit of a disagreement with the Howard government at the time. The Labor Party or their shadow minister, who is now the minister, had no idea on telecommunications. So they went to Telstra and Telstra said to the Labor Party: 'Look, give us $4.7 billion and we'll settle all your woes. We'll give you good and fast service right around Australia.' So what was the 2007 Labor Party policy? It was $4.7 billion and they would build a national broadband network—a very fast one. Since then it has been a comedy of errors—or perhaps just a comedy in itself.

The figure went from $4.7 billion up to $15 billion, then there was an assessment that cost $25 million, and that assessment said that all their ideas were silly. They then went ahead with a tender, which they pulled halfway through. In the end, we have ended up with $55-plus billion expenditure of Australian taxpayer money on what I am confident will become the ultimate white elephant. That is not to say in any way, quite the contrary, that we are against a national broadband network. But we are against the $55-plus billion network that Senator Conroy accepts total responsibility for.

People will not be able to afford this network. You do not have to be Einstein to do the figures—let me do them on the back of an envelope. We have a total cost of $55-plus billion, and rising. There are 22 million people in Australia. Divide one into the other and see what you get. Senator Conroy promised us that NBN Co. would make a profit, would pay interest on its debts and would give a return to the government. Then they were going to sell it, much to the chagrin of Senator Ludlam, who is the honest socialist in this place—he wants to keep the NBN in government hands forever, but he is open about that. Senator Conroy pretends he is not a socialist—he is going to sell it to private industry. Which private industry will pay, by the time it gets to that stage, more than $100 billion to buy a facility servicing less than 22 million men, women and children in Australia? The mathematics just do not stack up. Senator Conroy knows that but he will keep saying, 'Yes, it will make a profit; yes, we will sell it off'—but nobody will buy it, and he knows that.

The only way this service will continue in Australia, should Australia be unfortunate enough for Labor to remain in government, will be with massive government subsidies that will continue for as long as I live and beyond. It is the only way it will work. We have had the example, Mr Deputy President, in your home state of Tasmania, where the NBN was giving its part of the service away for free, and the retail service providers were still charging what Telstra and Optus used to charge pre-NBN. How can you run a $55 billion service if you are giving it away free? Since then they have moved on. There are some prices around and about, but prices are creeping up. People are saying that they are not good prices; they are prices they used to get under the old system, and the speeds are about the same. Even under the old system, as Senator Conroy well knows, you could get 100 megabits per second if you wanted—you just had to pay for it. It would have cost a lot of money, but not as much as the NBN will ever cost you.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

I hear the minister call out about someone from Townsville. Anyone who gets a $55 billion service provided for free will be happy. Give me a $55 billion service and do not charge me for it and I will be very happy—I am sure it would be good. Unfortunately, when people in Townsville—or in Lismore or in Tasmania—finally work out the real cost of this, they are not going to be interested. And this is at a time, I might say, when the cost of living for all Australians is going up day by day. Once we get the carbon tax, which will increase the cost of power by anything up to 15 or 20 per cent, the cost of living is going to go up again. People will simply not be able to afford Senator Conroy's $55 billion white elephant.

I will come back to that if I have time but I do want to move to the bill before us. It is all about installing fibre into greenfield sites, which is common sense. I think everyone thinks that is a good idea. But the old socialists sprout the rhetoric that there will be competition; people are going to be competing so we will get the best service because competition brings the best results—and it does. Senator Conroy has publicly stated that the greenfield policy would be determined with input from a stakeholder reference group, including operators who would be able to tender for contracts to build, operate and transfer greenfield fibre networks to the NBN. Senator Conroy issued a press release in April last year, stating:

Since April 2009, the Government's fibre in greenfields policy has been the subject of extensive consultation, including a discussion paper, input from a Stakeholder Reference Group, one-on-one consultations and release of an exposure draft ...

The position paper released today builds on consultations with the Stakeholder Reference Group to assist with the implementation of the policy.

In a further statement on 9 December last year, Senator Conroy said:

It has been a consistent feature of the government's policy in new developments that there should be room for competing providers. This continues to be the case ... Providers can compete to provide infrastructure in new developments—for example, by offering more tailored solutions to developers or more expeditious delivery.

What has happened to this great commitment to competition? On 13 March this year NBN Co. issued a press release referring to an agreement signed with subcontractor Fujitsu and its construction partner Service Stream:

... Fujitsu will manage the design, construction and associated works for the development of fibre to new developments.

Great competition! No doubt Fujitsu is a good company, and it is no doubt capable, but they got the nod to put in NBN's fibre. What happened to the competition, Senator Conroy, that you issued media release and media release about? What happened to all your pious statements in this chamber and elsewhere about the great benefits of competition, when at this hurdle you roll over and give it to one contractor? It is the same with the NBN. We did not like the old telecom monopoly. We saw how far behind our telecommunications were, so we brought competition to the telecommunications industry. Thanks to the Howard government, the number of new services in the last decade or so has just exploded. That was with competition. What does Senator Conroy do? He brings in the biggest monopoly of any sort that Australia has ever known with this $55 billion-plus edifice.

I was talking about industry consultation. Let me demonstrate the sort of consultation shown by Senator Conroy. I have a copy of a letter addressed to Senator Conroy and it states:

Firstly, can I applaud you sir on your manipulative, sneaky, underhanded attack on our Shire. With one letter you have reinforced in my mind that the Gillard Government is unfit to govern this great country of ours.

Your statement in the letter, and I quote: "I have been in regular contact with Carpentaria Shire Council about the upgrade of its retransmission towers'—

the mayor says in his letter—

is a blatant untruth.

The mayor concerned is Councillor Fred Pascoe, a very intelligent, able and capable mayor of one of the biggest shires in Queensland—up in the north-west of Queensland, incorporating Normanton and Karumba—and that is what he says in a letter to Senator Conroy: 'Your statement, Senator Conroy, is a blatant untruth.' Fred Pascoe is not the sort of person who makes statements for any purpose other than the truth.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

You are saying that Councillor Pascoe is in the National Party. I do not know what political party Councillor Pascoe is in, if he is in any. I suspect he is not, but he is very well respected—an Indigenous leader, I might add, but that is almost irrelevant to this—and the popularly elected mayor of this council. He is not one of those given to hyperbole or one who ever takes part in the partisan political debate.

He is furious at the way Senator Conroy has 'consulted' on the analog-digital conversion. It is a different issue to the one we are debating, but I mention it in the context of competition and consultation—which I have been talking about in relation to this bill—that Senator Conroy talks about. Here is Mayor Fred Pascoe telling Senator Conroy that he tells 'blatant untruths'. Senator Conroy in that regard is following his leader, Ms Gillard, who you will remember a year ago promised there would be no carbon tax under a government she led and then a few months later did the exact opposite. Senator Conroy clearly is following the standard set by his leader.

In his letter—which I am sure Senator Conroy has and will be aware of; it is published today in a newsletter in Karumba, so I am not giving away any secrets here—Councillor Pascoe goes on to say:

You told us that analogue services will be switched off come 2013 and that you will not be funding Councils to provide the upgrade to our retransmission towers to provide FREE TO AIR television to our residents.

And basically that is all you have told us.

Why have you not provided us with the answers to our questions, such as:

Here is a telling question, Senator Conroy:

This letter goes on to say:

Councillor Pascoe goes on, in frustration, to say to Senator Conroy:

I would have preferred you to have spent your energy in sending a letter to all householders answering some of the questions above rather than shoving the blame on the Carpentaria Shire Council on your unfair decision to make towns in the bush pay for "FREE TO AIR TELEVISION".

If you know Fred Pascoe well, you would understand why he says at the end of his letter, 'I hope you sleep well at night, sir.'

Senator Conroy is not a bad fellow. You might remember, Senator Conroy, you helped a little bit with the Karumba airstrip. That is in this shire. As far as the rest of us are concerned—I do not know about in the Labor Party—we know that you are not an evil man. I think you have the best interests of the country at heart. Because of the background of Labor Party ministers, you have absolutely no idea of business and money—if there is a problem, just throw someone else's money at it. You will never have to pay; you will just get the taxpayers to cough up a bit more.

I raise this in the hope that Senator Conroy might go back to his office, send a bullet through to his department and office, and get some answers for Mayor Pascoe, his council and the people who live in this remote community. I know the transmission towers are an ongoing issue, Senator Conroy, but you have not been listening. You have been working through the principles on the basis of what happens in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, or even Toowoomba or Armidale, but these are very different communities. I know you have been up there, so you should understand. In this, my contribution to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Fibre Deployment) Bill, I urge you to get some answers for Mayor Pascoe and his community. You will understand from the tone of the letter, most of which I have read into the record today, that this is not a whinge. It is not a political comment but a genuine plea from some very disadvantaged people for a little bit of help. It will not cost you much money, Senator Conroy, compared to the $55 billion you are wasting on the NBN. This would cost you a pittance. I ask that you address those concerns at the same time that you take some notice of what Senators Birmingham and Joyce have said, and what Senator Humphries will say, in the chamber about how you got this deployment bill wrong. The coalition will be moving amendments in the committee stage and I hope you will see the merit in those and perhaps support them.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to contribute to this debate on the Telecommunications Legislation Amend­ment (Fibre Deployment) Bill and I respect­fully adopt many of the comments made in this debate by my colleagues Senators Macdonald, Joyce and Birmingham. The concerns that the coalition have about the entire structure of the NBN rollout remain real concerns. I think it is fair to say that it gives us no pleasure to describe the kinds of expensive pitfalls—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

I will come to that, Senator Conroy—have patience. I do not relish the thought that this might go terribly wrong and that we might find enormous costs being visited on the Australian people to clean up the mess that Labor has created with this. However, it is important to put on the record the concerns that we have and to hope that the government will pay some, albeit slight, attention to the issues that the coalition are raising here. We do have experience in rolling out important new technologies while in government, and it is important to make sure that we have the capacity to work for the best possible outcome for the people of Australia.

I want to start by raising a specific issue to do with the ACT. The legislation before the chamber is principally designed to provide a platform for the government to deploy fibre as part of the NBN, particularly in greenfield sites around Australia. It is extremely important that we establish a good basis for fibre to be available to people moving into greenfield developments around the country. Getting that infrastructure right from day one is important. In broad terms, as we have heard already, the coalition supports ensuring that infrastructure is available in a way which minimises the cost of residents retrofitting those areas later. In respect of deployment in the ACT in greenfield sites, that is largely happening already. I do not think there have been any greenfield developments for some time in the ACT that have not had proper allowance made for the rollout of broadband to all of those new areas.

My concern today is particularly about the retrofitting of broadband infrastructure in established areas of the ACT. I understand that the minister or the NBN regime will have considerable powers over the way in which that infrastructure is outlaid. In particular, I understand that it will be possible, if required, for the NBN rollout to occur in spite of, or at variance to, arrangements under local planning laws for the provision of cabling and other infrastructure requirements of the NBN. That maybe an issue that is relatively easy to deal with in some parts of Australia, but I can assure the minister that it will not be easy to deal with in the ACT. In his drive between the airport and Parliament House, I am sure the minister will have observed that the ACT—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was a long-term resident who went to university with you. I'll get those photos out.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed, you remind me that you have a deeper footprint in this place. You are absolutely right.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remember what they did to you in the square in Bush Week. I was there.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think I better have a conversation with you behind the screen later on about that, Senator Conroy.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was the problem: there were no screens.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. I will return to the subject of the legislation. In that case, Senator Conroy would be well aware that in the ACT there are places where we do not have overhead cabling for services such as electricity and telephones that run along streets. In the ACT those facilities are buried underground or they run along the spine of residential developments. It was designed to provide for a higher level of amenity in the ACT, but admittedly it also adds costs to the replacement of those items of infrastructure. I hope and would appreciate an assurance from the minister that the rollout of the NBN to existing residential areas of the ACT will not entail the overriding of that very import­ant planning principle for this territory—that the amenity which the planners of Canberra going back several decades have sought to protect will not be compromised by the temptation for a future possibly cash strapped NBN to cut corners and to begin to string wires between streetlights in the territory in order to make sure that the costs of the NBN scheme are kept down.

I know this is a consideration because NBN Co. itself, in its own public statements of the likely costs of rollout, has said that the question of what it calls 'aerial deployment' has a significant impact on the total cost of the rollout of NBN. Its corporate plan states that, even though the NBN has paid Telstra $16 billion to lease their underground ducts, increasing aerial deployment from 10 per cent of houses—which, I gather, is its existing plan—to 25 per cent of houses would trim costs for the NBN by $1.8 billion.

I do not want to sound a harbinger of doom but I foresee the day when this government and this NBN Co. may well discover that it needs to make a $1.8 billion saving because the costs of this scheme have blown out and the profits anticipated from it have dwindled. Finding savings of $1.8 billion might be a very attractive option for them. In those circumstances, the temptation to run cables between streetlights might be such that NBN Co. will be unable to resist. As costs and time taken to complete projects blow out, the overwhelming urge will be to override the wishes and the interests of local communities and string fibre overhead. I do not imagine that many communities will take that kindly but, I can tell you right now, the ACT community particularly will not take it kindly because we do not have a system of overhead cabling along streets. This government, with respect, has done enough to detract from the quality of the city's fabric with its rundown of the budget of the National Capital Authority without adding to this by running cables between street lamps in this city.

I urge the government to reconsider the use of the power in that case. It is a bit of special pleading, I know, but I want to make that point very clear. Senator Conroy, who knows the ACT so well, he tells us, is not here. I hope there is someone who can offer some assurances about that. That would be much appreciated by the people of the ACT. The minister's department, in its own consultation document, states:

While the construction of the NBN involves considerable expenditure, an additional requirement to move all cabling underground would add substantially to its cost.

This is the clearest signal, I think, we could all expect that overhead cabling is very much on the agenda if that is what is required, irrespective of what local communities might think about that.

The second issue I want to raise today is the very issue that the minister himself brought up at the table a moment ago, which is the rollout of broadband in Gungahlin, the large township in the north of Canberra. I make no bones about the fact that I am dissatisfied with the quality of broadband available in Gungahlin. This city is the most online community in Australia, where take-up of technologies is the greatest across the country and where good-quality broadband is a product that the people of the city take very much as a matter of importance and signi­ficance. In having quality broadband avail­able to the people of Gungahlin, ultimately the largest and—at this stage—the newest township of the city, there is a significant issue which needs to be addressed by the government.

I have called for better quality broadband and I am committed to achieving that for my community. But I will say that, notwith­standing that call, I am less than confident that the NBN will be the answer to that call. I am concerned that the NBN, because it has elements of instability about its concept and its execution, may not deliver what the people of Gungahlin want and need. I note that Labor promised to fix broadband black spots, of which Gungahlin is clearly one, before the 2007 election. But in the last term of Labor we had no more than the canvassing, announcement and then reannounce­ment of plans rather than any actual delivery of better broadband. We all know about the broadband plan that was going to cost $5 billion and then was going to cost $50 billion and whose cost is escalating all the time, but I particularly want to know what the government's plans were for Gungahlin.

Before the last election there were inevitably further announcements that Gungahlin was going to be well dealt with. Then, last October, NBN Co. officials told Gungahlin residents that the timetable for the first 3,000 homes to receive the NBN, between April and June of 2011, would be available within six weeks—that is, before Christmas last year. That followed an announcement during the election campaign by the minister that 14 locations across Australia, including Gungahlin, would be among the first to host the National Broadband Network. People are still waiting. Obviously, the broadband that was supposed to be in 3,000 households by June this year is nowhere yet in sight. It is now August and we still do not have any households that have been connected. Although I welcome the slightly higher level of urgency, or anticipation, that appears to be creeping into the announcements made by NBN, I will not, with respect, be convinced that any of this will happen until I actually see it. I hope that one day I will.

I noticed the minister having a go at some members of the other place, yesterday in question time, for calling for broadband to be connected to their electorates. I make absolutely no apologies whatsoever for being on the government's back about the timetable for the rollout of NBN broadband in areas of my electorate in the ACT, because that infrastructure is being provided in part through taxpayers' dollars. My constituents pay plenty of dollars in tax and they are entitled to know how their dollars are being spent in providing this essential service. I will continue to call for it in this place and to seek to know what is going on. It does not detract from my view that the NBN is not the best vehicle to deliver high-speed broadband either to the people of Gungahlin or to anyone else in this country, but I am perfectly entitled to know what is going on. If the minister chooses to characterise that as walking both sides of the street, it says more about his failure to comprehend the role of members of parliament and their duty to their electorates than anything else.

Again I call on the minister, formally in this place, to outline clearly to the residents of the ACT two things: first, if they are in existing premises and are not connected with high-speed broadband, what will be the nature of the deployment of fibre to their homes and, specifically, will there be a guarantee from this government that there will not be a rollout of overhead cables along the streets of the ACT? Second, I want to know whether we can have a firm timetable for when deployment will occur in Gungahlin.

The third matter I will raise today is the question of competition within the ACT marketplace. The government will be well aware, I hope, that the ACT, being a com­munity which is so adept at taking up technology, already has a very good and competitive broadband supplier in the form of the TransACT network. TransACT provides a very high-quality product to the people of the ACT. It already provides at least 60 megabits per second to a large number of places in the ACT and is continuing its rollout of broadband. However, the question that needs rightly to be addressed for TransACT's benefit is: exactly what will be the impact of the NBN rollout on this highly competitive and effective provider that is already in the marketplace? TransACT has been around for 11 years. It operates in both the ACT and regional Victoria. It has a very high-quality product that is used and supported by a lot of Canberrans, but it is not clear at this stage whether the network will be overbuilt, whether it will be integrated into the NBN or whether the NBN will simply be competing with TransACT. As other senators have made clear in this debate, elements of that competition are less than fair, given the subsidy which NBN effectively operates under to provide its services, especially on greenfield sites. I hope that the future of that very important asset to the ACT community will be clarified soon, and I look forward to seeing how the government intends to deal with that existing, effective player in the ACT marketplace.

The question of fibre deployment to the Australian community remains a murky question. I do not think that anyone can rise in this place and say with certainty where we will be in just a couple of years time under the government's plans. Those plans have changed dramatically in the last three years, and I see no reason why they could not change just as dramatically in the next three years. A lack of certainty is not good for business. A lack of certainty would concern many people, certainly consumers and potential customers. This government's plans need to firm up. It particularly needs to provide the certainty that it has done its homework with respect to this deployment, which was not evident when it first made the announcement of the National Broadband Network without having done a cost-benefit analysis, which is something that it so solemnly told the Australian community in 2007 would never happen in respect of any major product that it was embarking on. There is no cost-benefit analysis today. We do not know whether this stacks up or not. While the government remains unwilling to share information about those issues with the Australian people, we are entitled—in fact, we are compelled—to ask the kinds of questions like the ones being asked today in respect of this legislation.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the minute and a half we have until we move onto matters of public interest, I would like to state briefly for the record that I share the concerns of the coalition benches. We have heard today that this $50-plus billion rollout of the National Broadband Network which is being undertaken without any cost-benefit analysis, as Senator Humphries has just remarked, has only about 50 current customers, and that these people are obtaining services that are at a cost comparable to that of the facilities that were available previously. Importantly, the mooted benefits of this very fast National Broadband Network, come at a considerable cost which is out of the reach of so many people in many of the communities that are affected right now. A lot of discussion has taken place in that regard.

Ultimately, this comes down to: is this the best use of taxpayers' money? In fact, it is not even taxpayers' money. I regret to inform the Australian people that this is borrowed money. This is money that the government does not have. The government does not have it because it has squandered so much of the legacy and resources that were left to it when it came to office in 2007. So we are borrowing money to provide services that, in many instances, were already available, and in doing so we are creating a national telecommunications infrastructure.

Debate interrupted.