Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection: Mr Kevin Rudd. What have we seen in the 12 months? We have certainly seen an enormous amount of process—a process driven government. We have seen the spin that is the creature of the state Labor governments now transferred to Canberra. We have seen symbolism of a kind we have never witnessed before at federal government level. We have heard talk of a kind that is breathtaking. And have we ever seen a lot of travel. I was staggered by Ms Gillard, the Deputy Prime Minister, saying on Insiders that she has been the Acting Prime Minister for no less than 69 days in the first year of the government. Every time I turn on the TV, I seem to see the Prime Minister’s 737 taking off for another destination. No wonder the government want to get a new fleet of aircraft. They are wearing out the existing aircraft with the travel that Mr Rudd engages in on a constant basis.

What we have not seen is action. We have had 10 months of the government initiating reviews, talks, summits et cetera, and then for the last two months a blind panic reaction to the meltdown on Wall Street and around the world in financial markets. We have seen a panic reaction that involved splashing out $10 billion from the surplus—half the surplus gone in a blink—and a panic reaction in terms of the banks.

This ‘all talk and no action’ is best exemplified, may I say, by Labor’s extraordinary position on their proposed national broadband network. Before the election, Labor spent all their time demonising the coalition about the state of broadband in this country, completely and utterly misrepresenting the truth about the state of broadband in this country. In response, when everybody said, ‘What’s your policy?’ they made the most extraordinarily simplistic, shallow and ill-thought-through policy, which they are now all living to regret. They are all very pleased that poor old Senator Conroy is the one who has to front on this hopeless policy. It was a one-size-fits-all policy where they simply said, ‘We’ll just roll out a fibre-to-the-node network to 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses and we’ll do it in five years.’ That was the policy—no detail, no structure, nothing. That was all they said. Then they said, ‘And we’ll throw $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ money at it.’ That was the extent of this amazing policy, which they are now stuck with.

They promised in the course of the NBN process that they would select a tenderer to build this thing by the middle of this year. Five months later, of course we do not have a tenderer. The tenders do not even close till Tuesday and there is no way that the preferred tenderer can possibly be selected till next February—15 months after the government was elected. Senator Conroy promised that construction of this thing would begin by the end of 2008. We will be lucky to see it by the end of 2009, if at all.

The only action they have actually taken in relation to broadband has been to come into government and arrogantly cancel the Optus-Elders contract that had been awarded by our government to extend wireless broadband to all those regions of Australia who currently cannot get fixed line broadband. This was a magnificent policy, with $958 million behind it, to extend to rural and regional Australia the sort of broadband services which we in metropolitan Australia take for granted. The only thing that the Labor government have done since they came to office has been to cancel that contract, thus depriving the people of rural and regional Australia of a metropolitan equivalent broadband service, which they would have got by the middle of 2009. At the rate we are going, they are not going to see a broadband service equivalent until about 2013, if they are lucky.

In relation to the tender—which closes in two days time, can I say—we only have one confirmed tenderer and that is the TERRiA consortium, principally backed by Optus, a great company. But three companies have already pulled out of that consortium. The biggest telecommunications company in this country, Telstra, is refusing to bid because the government cannot seem to make up their minds whether they are for or against the structural separation of Telstra. They are so incapable of making a decision about that fundamental issue that the biggest company in the telecommunications industry is refusing to make a bid, thus jeopardising the very process that Labor put in place.

Nothing symbolises more the cynicism and failures of the government after 12 months than the failed and fatally flawed process that has involved the national broadband network. Their failure to deliver the national broadband network on time and on budget shows that it was a cynical and cruel hoax perpetrated on the Australian people at the time of the last election.