Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, who is represented by Senator Hume in this chamber, as to why portfolio questions Nos 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, 309, 311, 312, 318, 321, 323, 325, 326, 328, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342 and 344, which I placed on notice on 17 November 2020, remain unanswered.

Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for her statement. I won't ask you to repeat those numbers. I didn't write them all down. I am advised that the questions on notice from budget estimates 2020-21 that are being sought were asked of the National Broadband Network Corporation, NBN Co. And I understand that the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications have repeatedly encouraged NBN Co to provide those responses in a timely manner. I will contact the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts in relation to these questions.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Based on the evidence we have received from the committee, the overwhelming majority of these questions, as the minister is aware, as she just outlined, to NBN Co were due on 21 December 2020. Today is 16 February 2021. This means that the questions outlined are now 58 days overdue and counting, which is simply unacceptable. And I understand that there are a number of other questions which other senators have placed on notice in the Senate to NBN Co which are also overdue—significantly overdue. This lack of responsiveness reflects very poorly on the minister for communications and very poorly on NBN Co. More broadly, it underscores a lack of respect for Senate accountability, which has plagued the communications portfolio throughout the parliamentary term of this government. Labor calls on the Morrison government and NBN Co to release these questions immediately and stop disrespecting the intelligence of Australian taxpayers.

The majority of the questions on notice go directly to the economics of the NBN and financial metrics underpinning the NBN Co Corporate Plan 2021. They go to the issues such as debt, cash flows, cost per premises, operating costs, capital expenditures, bonuses and a range of other information that allow the parliament, the media and the Australian public to better understand what was happening with our public money. In fact, much of this information was consistently published in previous corporate plans, but this year the government decided to withhold this information because they did not want the media or the parliament to have visibility of its latest cost blowouts. It's another smokescreen. It's another cover-up. So, today, the Senate seeks an answer to that question. What exactly is the Morrison government trying to hide by not answering these questions or allowing them to be answered?

What we know is that the release of NBN Co's corporate plan was delayed this year. It's normally released on 31 August, but this year it was delayed. It was withheld until 23 September. Notably, it was withheld until the afternoon after Minister Fletcher had announced the government's embarrassing copper backflip at the National Press Club. And then, when the corporate plan came out later that afternoon, it immediately became clear that key information published in previous corporate plans had been omitted. So laughable were the redactions that the revised cost of the NBN, $57 billion, was not mentioned anywhere in the document.

In terms of the information sought by the questions on notice, we know this information is held with the Chief Financial Officer and could have been provided to the Senate in December. We know that NBN Co's corporate affairs division is among the best resourced corporate affairs divisions in the country, if not the best resourced. We also know that the delay of these responses is not an accident—it's intentional. It's clear that the intent was to withhold this information.

NBN Co and the government have gone to great lengths to prevent the Chief Financial Officer of NBN Co from appearing before the Senate and other parliamentary committees. The one time the chief financial officer was forced to appear, under the threat of a Senate order, the Chief Executive Officer of NBN Co wouldn't allow him to open his mouth and respond to any question of substance. It was the most curious form of witness protection.

There is a very simple reason that the minister for communications is seeking to delay the release of this information: this government's inferior NBN has not been faster and it has not been cheaper. On every measure, this technological debacle is slower, is less reliable and is more expensive. Let it be lost on nobody that in 2013 the Liberals, standing alongside a hologram of Sonny Bill Williams at Fox Studios, promised their second-rate version of the NBN would be delivered for $29.5 billion. Then it blew out in 2014 to $41 billion. Then it blew out again to $49 billion in 2015. Then it increased to $51 billion in 2018. By late 2020, it had surged again to a forecast of $57 billion. What a shame that the technology hasn't surged as fast. Worse still, the government even tried to cover this figure up and have their public officials invent a new accounting methodology to talk about the costs of NBN.

It took less than 90 days from when the rollout was supposed to be completed for the government to begin desperately backflipping towards fibre, imposing greater cost and time on consumers and taxpayers. If you want the Oxford definition of 'incompetence' and 'waste', look no further than the Liberals and this hapless minister for communications and their technological omelette known as the NBN multitechnology mix. The Liberals promised every Australian would have access to minimum speeds of 25 megabits per second by 2016. We are now in 2021, five years on, and these minimum speeds are still not being delivered over the copper NBN network.

According to reports, up to 238,000 households still cannot access minimum speeds, which are actually a requirement of both Australian law and the NBN Statement of Expectations. The Liberal Party—yes, I'm referring to the same Liberal Party who are on track to amass $1 trillion in debt—has used taxpayer money to purchase over 49,000 kilometres of new copper for the NBN. That's enough copper to wrap around planet earth, with some left over. Labor has heard that the government maxed out the copper supply in Australia and had to start importing copper from Turkey and Brazil. If you're a global copper trader, the Morrison government is your best friend.

Who can forget when Malcolm Turnbull, the then Prime Minister, hailed HFC technology as 'the great game changer'. Now Minister Fletcher has said that too. It most certainly did change the game, but for all the wrong reasons. Never has the rollout of network technology in Australia been more of a shambles. The NBN HFC rollout is the most uneconomical and, arguably, the most unreliable in the world. There is a good reason former NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow wanted to toss the entire HFC footprint in the bin. There's good reason that Mike Quigley and his management team also rejected the use of HFC, under Labor. After talking it up as the best thing since sliced bread, the Liberals had to scrap the Optus HFC network, because it was not fit for purpose. That was a humiliation. Then they had to pause the rollout of the remaining HFC network in November 2017, because the technology was so unreliable. Turning on your vacuum cleaner was enough to cause your internet to drop out.

Just last fortnight we found out that NBN Co will pause activations on the HFC network because they have run out of the chips for their modems. What a hot mess! No wonder Launtel, a Tasmanian ISP provider, recently wrote a blog referring to HFC as 'a dog's breakfast' and singling it out as the most unreliable technology on the NBN network. Remember, this was the stuff that the previous Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull hailed as a game changer. A Tasmanian ISP said, 'It's the most unreliable technology on the NBN network.'

This brings me to the performance of the NBN during lightning storms. We have been hearing reports from the Blue Mountains, the Hawkesbury regions, parts of Greater Sydney and outer Melbourne that fibre-to-the-curb modems on the NBN have been literally getting fried during lightning storms, with some households requiring up to six modem replacements, with technicians having to visit each time; not very efficient. There's been an unacceptable lack of transparency on this issue but, from what we understand, lightning is causing a voltage surge down the copper line and into the modem.

The Liberals had one job and that was not to stuff up fibre-to-the-curb like they stuffed up everything else. This entailed ensuring that the electronics and vendor equipment used to deliver the service were fit for purpose and had adequate surge protections. If storms are capable of blowing up six consecutive NBN modems then something is not right. When political parties are incapable of taking a long-term view and consistently put politics ahead of the public interest, it invariably extracts a heavy price. Australians have paid more and gotten a worse NBN, and no matter how much spin the Liberals churn out, that is the stark reality. This 'build a dud and backflip it later'' approach means NBN Co is now borrowing billions more to construct a fibre network that will run in parallel with the existing copper network. Critically, despite new cost blowouts and rhetoric about upgrades, the government has only budgeted for one in 10 households in the copper footprint; 400,000 premises are to receive a fibre lead-in between now and 2024. On top of this, the full copper network will have to be operated and maintained, while the fibre network constructed in parallel goes underutilised. Remember the copper that wraps around the planet and there is some left over? A lot of that's going to be now underutilised.

You would in all sincerity be hard pressed to think up a more illogical and costly way to deploy a national broadband network with public money. After $51 billion, the purchase of 50,000 kilometres of new copper and a decade of ridiculing fibre, not only have this government forfeited their credibility but they have done so without explaining what the real cost of their capitulation is. This backflip is not simply a vindication of Labor policy but an affirmation of something more fundamental: the Liberals get the big calls wrong.

To sum all this up, we have a minister and a public company spending $57 billion of taxpayers' money, disrespecting the Senate and seeking to evade security and scrutiny. We have a copper network that is so defunct it still cannot deliver minimum speeds to up to 238,000 premises. We have an HCF network that is arguably one of the biggest and most expensive telecommunications debacles in the world. We have modems literally frying because of lightning surges down copper lead-in cables.

Evidently, the decision in 2013 to dump fibre has resulted in a colossal waste of time and money. Do it once, do it right, do it with fibre—had the Liberals simply followed this path, Australians would have a faster and more reliable network at far less cost to the taxpayer. Little wonder we have a dud NBN at a cost now forecast to reach $57 billion, nearly $30 billion over budget, and are ranked 61 globally for speeds and a rollout schedule running more than four years behind what the Liberals originally promised. They said they could do it better and cheaper, and they haven't delivered on any of that. It's no wonder this government is trying to evade scrutiny; it is really no wonder at all. I would call on the government to ensure they hold NBN to account, provide the answers to these questions, and provide an open and transparent process through Senate estimates and in other areas. They should be scrutinised. (Time expired)

Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(a), I rise to speak on the explanation sought by my colleague and friend Senator Urquhart from the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, represented by Senator Hume in this chamber.

I won't read through the numbers of the questions on notice.

Senator Urquhart interjecting—

With encouragement from Senator Urquhart, I will: 301, 302, 303, 304, 305—good news; they managed to answer 306—and 307. They also managed to answer 308, but 309 is unanswered, along with 311, 312, 318, 321, 323—

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Kitching, resume your seat for a moment. Senator Brockman, on a point of order?

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These have already been read into Hansard. I would raise tedious repetition.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. Thank you, Senator Brockman.

Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To continue: 325, 326, 328, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342 and 344. Of course, that isn't tedious repetition, as was suggested by Senator Brockman; it's actually just embarrassing for the government to have an agency that think they are above the standing orders of this chamber. That is actually the problem. No-one on the other side actually wanted to hear all of the numbers of those questions on notice that are outstanding.

Who do the NBN think they are? Remember that committee members were told informally that they wouldn't get any answers until the end of January. In this blithe nonacceptance of the Senate standing orders, the NBN decided they would set their own timetable. We'll get to more of their outrageous antics later on.

Clause 74 of the Senate standing orders provides that a minister has 30 days in which to provide an answer to a question. As at midday today, 16 February 2021—also my birthday, Deputy President—there are 118 overdue questions on notice, lodged via the Table Office, the oldest being 62 days overdue. There are 345 questions on notice which were taken by the communications portfolio in the 2020-21 budget estimates. The committee set the following due dates for responses to questions on notice: 3 December 2020 for the initial hearing and 21 December 2020 for the spillover hearing. Two hundred and thirty-nine questions were taken on notice during and post the initial estimates hearings. Only 59 were returned to the committee on time, and 180 were or are overdue, that being 75 per cent of the questions, and 32 still have not been answered. One hundred and six questions were taken on notice during and post the spillover estimates hearing. Only nine were returned to the committee on time, and 97 were or are overdue, that being 91 per cent of the questions overdue, and 49 still haven't been answered. What this actually shows is a clear pattern of disrespect and lack of transparency and accountability by the minister for communications, Minister Fletcher, and his representing minister in this place.

There are two particular agencies that are among the most egregious in their constant and continued attempts to withhold information sought by me through the questions on notice process. I do not say this lightly. With the exception of the Department of Parliamentary Services, whose constant evasions and obfuscations are masterly—and that is a bit of an understatement—both the NBN Co and Australia Post are perhaps the worst I have ever seen. As someone who has asked many questions on notice—over 11,000 in the life of this parliament alone—I do not say this lightly.

I preface this by making the point that this is in no way a slight on the hardworking men and women in these organisations. Remember that it was the party to which I belong, the Australian Labor Party, and our union affiliates who saw off an attempt by this government and the former CEO of Australia Post to sack a quarter of our nation's posties under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic. It was also the grand vision of my predecessor in this place Senator Conroy that realised the National Broadband Network to give all Australians world-class access to the internet. We've heard from Senator Urquhart some of the problems with that.

We on this side stand up for those workers every day. What we don't stand up for is senior executives at public sector government business enterprises—remember, they take no corporate risk and are remunerated extremely well—stonewalling questions put to them by the nation's parliament on behalf of the people of Australia, just like they were company directors at an annual meeting avoiding the scrutiny of their shareholders. Let me start with the NBN senior executives and board. I discovered through a question on notice that they actually answered that the NBN has 13 employees earning over $500,001, 21 employees earning between $400,001 and $500,000, 110 employees earning between $300,001 and $400,000, and 733 employees earning between $200,001 and $300,000.

Their conspiracy of silence is a disgrace. They do not get to choose to keep secrets from the taxpayer and the parliament. It is disrespectful to the people who are paying their large salaries—the same people who will be paying the bills racked up by this organisation for a long time. No doubt their children and their children's children will also be paying these bills. They are the same Australians who put us here and who expect us to do our jobs. Part of that job is to keep the government accountable and to ensure that there is scrutiny of government departments and agencies.

Labor has even heard that the government maxed out the copper supply in Australia and had to start importing copper from Turkey and Brazil. But let me read you some of the questions on notice that are outstanding in relation to the NBN: 'How many executives received an increase to their base salary in the 2019-20 financial year? In each of the 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial years and the 2020-21 financial year to date has NBN engaged, employed or hired the services of a media personality? If so, who was engaged, employed or hired, for what purpose and at what cost? Please produce a copy of the register of declarations of interest as at 1 December 2020.' Let's just take that last question. You might think that was a fairly easy question to answer. If you were an organised entity and your documents were organised, you should be able to produce that quickly. But, no, we're still waiting for that one.

NBN Co and the government have gone to great lengths to prevent their chief financial officer from appearing before Senate and other parliamentary committees. The one time the chief financial officer was forced to appear, under the threat of a Senate order, the chief executive officer of NBN Co wouldn't allow him to open his mouth and respond to any of my questions that were being put to him. It was a total joke. I also had to insist that the legal counsel of NBN Co come to estimates because, not surprisingly, you have to put in FOIs in order to get NBN Co to respond to anything. They haven't responded to the FOIs either, so we shouldn't get our hopes up. It was a strange performance. The chief financial officer was more reminiscent of a hostage than a senior public executive fronting up to answer questions about the expenditure of public moneys. It was a little like the end of the film Thelma & Louise. As they drive off the cliff, NBN Co's CEO is Louise and the unaccountable minister is Thelma.

As for the performance of NBN Co executives at estimates, it is a masterclass in obfuscation and how not to answer a question. These fat cats at NBN can run, but they will not be able to hide. It is just a matter of time and how bad they want to look in the meantime before this parliament will get the answers to the questions that we seek. At some point they are going to have to answer these pretty basic questions, which are easy questions to answer. But maybe we can assume that their records are not in any fit state for an entity of that size and they can't actually access anything, because there is no excuse for their inability to produce those documents. They spend a fortune on PR gurus who usually defend such upstanding corporate citizens at James Hardie. For example, Australia Post employed Ross Thornton but actually can't seem to locate how many hours he has put in there. That matter is in another lot of questions on notice that we have put to another agency, another government owned business, that is supposedly answerable to Minister Fletcher.

I will go through some of my points. Australia Post employed a PR guru. He has worked for James Hardie and AMP. Let's not forget that AMP, during the banking royal commission, were found to be charging fees to dead people. If you were to look at the make-up of the board of Australia Post, it is full of people who have Liberal Party connections and who are now on what is a pretty prestigious board, the Australia Post board. What we had heard long before we had Cartier watches being purchased for already well remunerated executives were extraordinary stories of the former CEO, Ms Holgate, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars on the corporate credit card, spending eye-watering amounts on fresh floral arrangements and plants for the office at a time when everyone was working from home—so they were putting these floral arrangements into the offices when no-one was there—and the board trying to approve exorbitant bonuses for themselves.

The spectacle of one pampered poodle after another defending the right of a multimillion dollar salaried public servant using public money to buy luxury watches as personal gifts for favoured staff is one that defies credulity. But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. In some ways, I think the NBN situation is actually worse than anything Christine Holgate did. Ms Holgate showed a fundamental misunderstanding of her role, her duties and her obligations as a public sector CEO. There were the Cartier watches, the floral arrangements and the bonuses they tried to approve for the executive team at around about a million dollars each. There she was asserting that Australia Post money is not taxpayer money. Of course, Australia Post is very much a government owned organisation and it actually belongs to all of us. We all use it. It is a part of every Australian's life. Her answers revealed a very unhealthy culture that I fear explained much about the profligate spending culture at Australia Post that the hundreds of questions on notice exposed.

Let me now read some questions on notice that are outstanding in relation to Australia Post. 'Please provide Australia Post board documents, including but not limited to board meeting agendas, board papers and board meeting minutes created between October 2018 to December 2018'—remember, that's October 2018 to December 2018—'which reference or relate to rewards, gifts or bonuses for any Australia Post employee, manager or executive.' We called for documents for October, November and December, and they still can't find them. Then there's this exchange between me and then Australia Post CFO and now Acting CEO, Rodney Boys, who is apparently likely to become the CEO, at an estimates spillover session:

Mr Boys, do you think you will be able to respond to my question on notice, fully, in terms of a breakdown of the expenditure on the office of the CEO credit card? You said you could not answer, because everyone was working at home from coronavirus. We had a brief discussion at the last estimates and you said, 'We could not answer that, because people are working at home,' and we had a discussion about whether you did any online banking—

Remember, this is the CFO of Australia Post—

and whether you were able to do banking when you weren't in the office. Are you going to be able to answer that question on notice properly, and give us a breakdown of the expenditure—

You won't be surprised to learn that we also have yet to receive this information. A large proportion of the answers that we seek here today relate to the NBN's extraordinary entertainment spend, for which the Morrison Government refuses to provide automated reports from accounting software, so I've asked for a breakdown of $874,000 in a financial year. Apparently they are not able to break down that figure. I have also asked for NBN's aggregate of bonuses paid to its executives, whether or not NBN increased staff salaries during the APS pay freeze, NBN's internal FOI procedures given the numerous FOIs lodged by me that have been resisted, requests for copies of Australia Post board documents, and breakdowns of executive-issued credit cards. But in actual fact, today, the Senate seeks an answer to the following question above all: What exactly is this government and the Minister for Communications trying to hide? All the Liberals who sit opposite who were preselected on a mantra of small government and accountability should not be running interference for the spivs and grifters who seek to obfuscate and evade parliamentary scrutiny by refusing to answer questions on notice put to them by the Australian parliament.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, this afternoon it is of grave concern to yet again see the lack of accountability of this government in answering questions on notice. I did see Senator Hume come in here and explain that, despite the minister's best endeavours, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications has been unable to get NBN Co to answer these questions. I put to you that the troubles in this relationship and the troubles in the lack of accountability and the lack of reporting in outcomes of NBN Co's performance to this parliament go much, much deeper than that. For example, Senator Urquhart asked questions in relation to the forecast of the outstanding amount of debt and equity by financial year 2024. How much in free cash flow does the 2021 corporate plan forecast NBN will generate by financial year 2024? Have these cash flows been committed? If yes, towards what? What was the capex for the fixed wireless network as at 1 July 2020? How many fixed wireless towers have been built? How many fixed wireless cells have been deployed? Based on the 2021 corporate plan, what is cumulative capex for the fixed wireless out to 2024?

These were issues in previous corporate plans but, for some reason, the government and NBN Co saw fit not to adequately explain this information in the latest corporate plan. Now we find that, even still, despite these questions being asked by opposition senators, there are still no answers. The NBN corporate plan was missing information on peak funding from cost blowouts. There is no update on the NBN debt profile—again, a question that was asked by Senator Urquhart—and no updated capital expenditure by technology. You know, this is capex expenditure. It is a fairly basic thing to go in a corporate plan yet we cannot even get these questions answered in estimates. There is no operating expenditure profile.

The corporate plan shows a complete lack of transparency and, as the shadow minister, Michelle Rowlands, said, it was nothing short of a cover-up designed to conceal unfunded announcements made by Mr Fletcher today. The issue here is that this government keeps trying to assert that it is meeting the connection milestones, that it exceeds them and that it is doing a great job in managing NBN Co to deliver to Australians. So it is little wonder to me that NBN Co and the department of communications are also dragging their feet in answering these questions because, again, what it exposes is cost blowouts and consumer disappointment when the promises that the government has made are simply not met.

I will take you to some of the questions asked by Senator Green in estimates. Senator Green, asking about the 1.5 million premises being G.fast enabled, said:

One of them said it would be by 2020 and the minister is now saying it's 2023. Why won't fibre to the curb network be gigabyte capable by the end of 2020?

Mr Windeyer, the key official answering these questions from the department of communications, said:

I think there are some details here that would be worth raising with NBN or we can take them on notice, but I think NBN will be able to answer for you when they appear exactly what the state of the FTTC network is and its readiness.

As we see in the kinds of questions that remain unanswered, the department of communications said: 'Let NBN Co answer these questions. We could take them on notice, but best direct your questions over there.' Well, perhaps we should've asked both NBN Co and the department some of these questions, because now we've got the department complaining that they can't get NBN Co to answer these questions in a timely manner. What does this show about the accountability of this government in relation to the promises that it has made to the Australian people in relation to its NBN network?

It is an appalling state of affairs. I have been speaking to constituents that have responded to marketing and have signed up to certain megabit levels that simply cannot be met by the current infrastructure that exists in their local area. Essentially, they have been sold something that doesn't exist in their area. Senator Urquhart asks at question 188: 'How many FTTN premises cannot currently achieve a layer 2 speed of 25 megabits per second?', and they haven't answered it. What we're really talking about here is Australian consumers that were sold a dud product, where we have a government that refuses to be accountable for the promises that it made. This is an appalling state of affairs.

While I've seen many a government official at estimates complain about the number of questions that Senator Kitching asks—they tend to kind of go, 'Oh, here we go again'—there is a real relationship between things like executive bonuses, flowers bought, corporate culture, and how much is spent on entertainment and the like when you relate that back to poor performance and accountability. These are promises that are made to the Australian people, that this government is essentially responsible for, that are not delivered. They were asked:

In 2013, the Coalition promised every Australian would have access to minimum speeds of 25 Mbps by the end of 2016. Can you confirm this target was missed up by up to 7 million premises?

We're here in 2021 now. You would have thought that, somewhere in Minister Fletcher's accountability or the officers that the department of communications has sat with, they would be tracking their promises and the outcomes and that they would be able to say that the department would be able to answer, that the minister would be able to answer and, indeed, that NBN Co would be able to answer basic questions about the promises that they made as a government. But again, here you can see in these unanswered questions that we've got on one hand a government that likes to make big promises and pays no attention to the detail of getting them delivered. Not only is the government not paying attention to detail but it seemed to me, in the answers given by officials, that they did not have the technical know-how at a senior level to be able to answer the questions about the milestones NBN Co should be meeting in order to meet these commitments. That to me seems like an extraordinary state of affairs.

Senator Green also said in estimates, 'You don't have the details of the $70 per home that it's going to—by the government.' Mr Windeyer said: 'No, I don't have the technical details of what NBN is going to be spending money on over the next few years with respect to the FTTC network. I'll take that on notice, but I think they'll be happy to answer it.' Senator Green said: 'I think I have to hand over, but you said that this was a significant upgrade—it's so significant that you don't know what it is.' Mr Atkinson from the department said:

Can we just desist with this. I think Mr Windeyer is saying you'll get a better answer from the people who are actually going to be implementing the upgrade on the technical aspects of exactly what's going to happen to the FTTC.

We see that, when we ask technical questions of NBN Co, Senator Hume comes in here and says that the department is doing their best to get answers from NBN Co, and yet the department doesn't have the expertise to answer them themselves—which I think they should have. These are major announcements that are embedded in the translation between the announcements that the government has made and the relationship of the department with NBN Co that holds together that accountability to the Australian public. And still we come in here and Senator Hume says, 'We're doing our best to get NBN Co to answer these questions.' I remind Minister Fletcher and Senator Hume, who was indeed at the table at the time, that it was the department that directed many of these questions to NBN Co—questions that I believe they should have been able to answer. The failure to answer these questions very much underpins the disaster that is now the NBN and data promises that this government made to the Australian people about the technology that they should be able to have access to at work, at home and in the broader community.

The kinds of issues that are being raised by the opposition are in relation to NBN Co's financial year 2020 results. Again you can see NBN Co and the government trying to self-congratulate themselves on their outcomes, and yet when you dig down into the data—if you can get it through these processes, because the department doesn't seem to be able to ask NBN Co for this accountability—the claims being made don't stand up.

NBN Co, by all reports in their data, showed a great outcome by completing the volume rollout over COVID-19. But in this parliament we have a duty to scrutinise the kinds of claims being made, and the cost blowout from the multitechnology mix that the government has promoted has gone from $29.5 billion to $41 billion to $49 billion and now to $51 billion. The kinds of questions we asked about the corporate plan, which Senator Urquhart has asked, highlighted that the 2020 corporate plan saw significant revision downwards in targets, making it easier to exceed the stated claim and claim credit for having done so. If you compare the 2020 results with the unrevised 2019 corporate plan forecasts, capital costs are up $1.5 billion and revenue is down $100 billion. The kinds of questions that Senator Urquhart asked about capital expenditure remain unanswered.

It is little surprise to me that NBN Co is dragging its feet in answering these questions, but I find it completely galling that the government pretends it wants to be completely accountable to this parliament and that there's some kind of administrative accountability when we know that these issues go right down to the core of the disaster that is this government's commitments to the Australian people in relation to the NBN.

Question agreed to.