Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications. Will the minister explain to the House why it is critical to reform government businesses facing digital disruption? How is the government ensuring businesses owned by taxpayers are better placed to survive in the modern economy?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question and acknowledge his considerable expertise in the area of financial management. There are four big taxpayer owned businesses in my portfolio: the NBN Co, Australia Post, the ABC and the Special Broadcasting Service, all of which are facing very big management challenges. The NBN Co, of course, we have discussed at great length during question time, and the incompetence of the Conrovian era interrupted for a brief time by the member for Grayndler as communications minister—a whole panoply of incompetence which we are now slowly and deliberately cleaning up with competent management. I would like to get an occasional question from the member for Blaxland, but he is only interested in yachting. He is a phantom. He is not just a shadow minister; he is a phantom shadow minister.

But there are other big challenges that we are addressing too. Australia Post's letters business has been declining for a considerable time. Over the last five years, including during the entire period of the Labor government, Australia Post's letters business has been declining. Over the last five years alone it has declined by one billion letters. It is a high fixed cost business, and the consequence of this is that Australia Post has run up its first loss—as honourable members would have seen in the last six months. And over the next decade, if there is not significant reform made to Australia Post, the letters business alone will lose $12 billion and the company as a whole will lose cumulatively $6.6 billion. This trend was very clear under Labor, but absolutely nothing was done. They just kicked the can down the road and we are now doing the work, doing the hard yards, working closely with management to ensure that we can put Australia Post on a sustainable footing.

Turning to the national broadcasters: the ABC for years has not been under any pressure or any incentive from government to run its business efficiently. It does not have the natural pressures of a commercial broadcaster. We have put in a thorough efficiency review conducted by my department and assisted by Peter Lewis, former CFO of the Seven Network, and we have identified very substantial savings that can be made from back office and administrative waste at the public broadcasters. All of this is a reminder of the fundamental point that whatever you may think about the Labor Party—you might like their policies—the one thing that they cannot do is manage. They cannot manage anything.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.