Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, let us deal with today’s battles. But I do have concerns in respect of the Communications Fund being transferred into the Building Australia Fund because there does not appear to be any legislative guarantee that that $2 billion that has been earmarked for regional and rural Australia’s telecommunications needs will be spent on that. So, as I see it, there is no guarantee that that will occur. That is my principal reservation.

If there were an alternative approach that would see these moneys transferred into the Building Australia Fund but quarantined by legislation on the basis of how they were supposed to be used and subsumed in the processes that are in this legislation—improved on, I believe, by the amendments of the opposition and the Greens—then I would be more disposed towards that. I do not know what Senator Minchin’s views are in relation to that, but I think the important thing is to guarantee that the money that has been earmarked for telecommunications in regional and rural Australia is there for the purpose for which it was intended—and which, I note, the Labor Party supported, albeit in the circumstances of a privatisation that they opposed.