Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was amazing—the phones of 13,000 people, including Aboriginal communities and flying doctors who had phones that worked on the CDMA, were made redundant; the most remote Australians you disadvantaged.

The whole point of a deregulated telecommunications industry was to encourage competition, whether that be through bidding for major projects or the competitive retailing of products. The rushed nature of this process does not hold us in good stead when it comes to competitive bidding for the national broadband network. We in the coalition are committed to doing all we can to ensure this bill is a clear and detailed piece of legislation that assists with the exchange of existing broadband infrastructure information but, at the same time, provides adequate safeguards in relation to how this information is used and that there be competition. I am terrified that what happened to CDMA will happen if this is not a strong bid. OPEL, which spent millions of dollars, got wiped out by your say-so.

This is probably the first time in the history of Australia—it might happen in Nigeria or Zimbabwe—where an incoming government is not honouring the commitments of the previous government. The G9 consortium were asked to go and whistle in the wind for all the money that they spent on putting a bid together. That sort of thing discourages anyone putting in a bid. These bids are expensive; they cost huge amounts of money. On a whim you just wiped the last one out, and that has never been heard of in the history of Australia. I suppose it is the new way the government are going to work, because they have done the same thing with the Regional Partnerships project.

I got diverted. We want broadband that works. We want broadband that will deliver to 98 per cent of the people. You say you can deliver it; I say you cannot do it in two months. The challenge is yours, and I hope that you will forget your politics, forget your commitments to Telstra because they assisted you in the last election and play the game straight down the line.