Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I completely reject the assertion that the government is going to have to write off the value of the equity investment in NBN. Secondly—and I heard Senator Wong say that this is a very good question—there is a very straightforward answer: it is actually not the government that determines whether something is classified as an equity injection or as a grant; it is based on an assessment by the Australian Bureau of Statistics which is done quite independently. They, of course, assess based on what the expected rate of return is. In relation to whether that is a rate of return sufficient to qualify as an equity injection, in simple terms, it obviously has to be above the rate of inflation.