Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a ludicrous proposal. I am pleased to see that the minister acknowledges it and recognises it as such. Australia needs a broadband policy that will deliver the lowest cost broadband in the future to the maximum number of people at the highest speed. There are no guarantees that this process is going to do it, because we have no idea of the regulatory framework that will be applied and we have no idea of what approach the minister is going to take to structural separation. We have no idea of just how the minister intends to actually deliver this policy. The reason we have no idea is that it appears that the government has no idea. That is why the government has asked for all manner of contributions from all over the place, simultaneously, across an extremely short time frame—because it has no idea. It is asking others to help make the policy up and at the same time it is looking to dish out the dollars to deliver the policy.

The AFR editorial that I quoted earlier highlighted that little would be lost and much could be gained by taking a little longer and doing some more work to get the market structure and the policy right. The government may even find that it does not need to throw $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ funds at it. That is the crux of the matter—this government rushing in on an election promise and not considering whether it really is valid to actually be spending the money and the funds that it has outlaid. We have the unusual situation of the government announcing in the budget last night new investment funds for broadband and infrastructure purposes yet at the same time seeking to raid funds set up to benefit regional communities to fund this policy. In another piece of legislation we have the unusual situation of the government wanting to abolish the Communications Fund set up by the previous government—wanting to raid that fund, which was set up specifically for regional players and for regional delivery of services—and instead spend the money on this broad, unknown policy objective that will most likely put regional users at the end of the line. At the same time the government is saying that it is going to put more money aside for broadband in future years. So it is raiding the regional fund and not delivering for regional areas when apparently it has money for broadband in this year’s budget and future budgets.

A question for the minister in this process is: why are the government not taking those funds that they have identified for broadband and infrastructure and committing them to the delivery of this policy, rather than raiding the Communications Fund that is there specifically for regional Australia? That is a question that I hope the minister very clearly answers in the debate on the other piece of legislation.