Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting to be here today and hear the Labor Party put forward a matter of public importance about telecommunications. It was actually fascinating to read it. I thought I would pull it apart and look at it. I will start with (c), where Senator Conroy’s MPI says:

the collapse of Telstra’s plans to construct a fibre to the node network leaving Australia without a pathway to a fibre based upgrade of Australia’s broadband infrastructure.

That just about sets down how the Labor Party see Australia. You see, the fibre-to-the-node network was going to connect Sydney to Sydney, Brisbane to Brisbane, and Melbourne to Melbourne. It did not actually connect Australia. It did not actually get to Newcastle or Wollongong. But this was the package that Senator Conroy thinks is a matter of public importance. Well, it is. It was so bereft of any moral function for what this nation needs that it is a matter of public importance.

It would be an absolute disgrace if the minister had allowed that to go through. I think it is actually an endorsement of the support of the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts for regional Australia. This clearly points out the sort of myopic, narrow view that the Labor Party has of Australia. It is the Australia of the people who have telecommunications, with no thought of the people who do not have it. It is a clear political ploy. It is a pitch to the voters, a pitch to the inner suburbs of Sydney—and good luck to you—but it is not a pitch to Australia. It is nothing about our nation.

It is interesting that they talk about a plan. They are big on plans in the Labor Party. Morris Iemma has a plan: he has a plan about how he is going to have a plan to make a plan. There are lots of plans, but we never actually see their plans; we never actually hear about them; we never actually see their acumen and have them lay out an argument, like the National Party did when it negotiated the $3.1 billion package. That is a plan—that is where the hard work is. We actually have that. We have put in the work.

We know what the Labor Party are going to do: they are going to snaffle up that money, grab it up—Gobbleguts is going to grab it up—and put it towards some nefarious outcome, which they obviously agree is going to be a fibre-to-the-node type plan. They would connect the capital cities. They would use the money that has been extracted to give some parity, some fairness, to the Australian people, to provide equality across the Australian continent, and say to people in Tamworth, Brewarrina, Longreach, Darwin, Tennant Creek and all those sorts of towns: ‘No, we don’t think you’re part of the Labor Party’s Australia. The Labor Party’s Australia exists in Sydney, the middle of Melbourne or the middle of Brisbane, but it doesn’t exist anywhere else. It doesn’t exist in Newcastle or Wollongong. In fact, we’re going to make it a matter of public importance to say that we’re disgusted that you would consider connecting the good workers of Wollongong. We’d make it a matter of public importance that the Labor Party thinks it’s disgusting that you would want to connect Newcastle. How dare the conservative side of politics want to connect Newcastle! How could they possibly consider that? Connect Tamworth? No, we could never have that!’ So it is no wonder that Minister Coonan would say, ‘No, fellas—go back.’

It is also interesting that, right at the beginning of the MPI, Senator Conroy talked about ‘the Australian government’s complacency on the rollout of broadband’. Maybe he does not want the Australian government to be involved in that telecommunications company anymore. Maybe that is the truth. Maybe the enabling legislation was a whole charade. The truth was that you were going to sell Telstra anyhow, weren’t you? That was always on the cards.

In fact, I would like to see someone walk into the chamber and say, ‘Should I ever get elected, I will make a commitment over my mother’s grave that I will put Telstra back into private hands,’ because I never hear that commitment. They dodge that issue and they are dodging that issue more and more, especially now they realise that 51.8 per cent of Telstra is still owned by the Commonwealth. But they have dropped that out of the conversation. They want to take Australia down a path. They want to have a bet each way.