Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move the second reading amendment standing in my name:

At the end of the motion, add “but the Senate condemns:

(a)   the Government’s disorganised and unprofessional fibre to the node process overseen by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy), where interested parties are keen to proceed but are impeded by the Government’s lack of sound public policy; self-imposed ridiculous timeframes; absence of regulatory, access, pricing, competition and network architectural guidance; inability to articulate governance, structural and public expenditure requirements; and failure to understand the proper and durable role of the private and public sector in the provision of key infrastructure;

(b)   the sidelining of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Productivity Commission and Infrastructure Australia from what is increasingly appearing to be a purely political process;

(c)   the Government’s failure to acknowledge the existence of significant fibre-based broadband infrastructure assets;

(d)   the Government’s failure to provide detail about the operative ‘instruments’;

(e)   the Government’s exposure to risk of information ‘seekers’ and ‘respondents’ about the lack of specific information about key safeguards, assurance and requirements;

(f)   the unprecedented and heavy-handed intervention despite a willingness of telcos to cooperate and existing ACCC and commercial information gathering and sharing processes;

(g)   the multiple breaches of the Commonwealth’s own procurement requirements, the Auditor-General’s August 2007 Better Practice Guide Fairness and Transparency in Purchasing Decisions – Probity in Australian Government Procurement and the sound principles of fairness, transparency, probity and value for money; and

(h)   the lack of a consumer advocate and ‘last mile’ expertise on the Minister’s experts panel”.