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

He might as well have. He might as well have said, ‘Nyaa, nyaa, nyaa, nyaa—you can’t see it!’ He might as well have said: ‘Australian taxpayers, you’ve paid $25 million to get this implementation study. I’m not even going to give you 25 minutes a million to look at it.’ He might as well have said to the Australian parliament: ‘We spent nine months getting this jolly thing. We’re not even going to give the Australian parliament nine minutes to look at it.’

The questions are piling up and the answers have never been provided. It is little wonder that the Australian public are left wondering. There is nothing to do other than to think that the National Broadband Network stands for ‘nobody knows’—nobody knows who is going to get what with the NBN. Nobody knows when they are going to get it, where they are going to get it or how much they are going to have to pay for the privilege, least of all Rudd Labor and least of all Minister Conroy. If Minister Conroy does know some of the answers, he ain’t telling us, and you have to ask: why would that be? Why would Minister Conroy not be showing us his now infamous implementation study, which has the answers—he has told us it will have the answers to life, the universe and everything! Bring it on, Minister, and convince the Australian public that National Broadband Network does stand for something other than ‘nobody knows’. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.