Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I agree with the former speakers that the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network played an exceptionally useful role, particularly given that the RFP was conducted in something of a vacuum. I take the point that both the previous speakers have made—that the evidence provided to the committee was extremely valuable, although obviously now, interestingly, there is some dispute about whether the committee should continue to provide that oversight role. I think it has been a very useful task that we have undertaken. We have taken good evidence and engaged a range of experts and stakeholders from across the industry and from the community. I appreciate Senator Lundy’s acknowledgement that the evidence that we took and the work that we did informed the outcome of the RFP.

The situation has changed quite dramatically. We have a project which is essentially ten times the scope of what was proposed during the election campaign. The Australian Greens believe that the logic of making such a bold investment is sound, and we are also pleased that the government has concurred, at least in the interim, with the Greens’ view that the network should be publicly owned. I will come back to that at the end of my remarks.

I was a bit surprised to hear the minister this afternoon in question time, I think in response to a question from the Leader of the Opposition, essentially rebutting the need for any formal cost-benefit analysis or economic modelling as to the benefits or otherwise of such a project. The minister now has a very delicate balancing act before him as to whether the taxpayer is going to be getting value for money for building the network and what that actually means in the way of cost for the end user purchasing bandwidth from the NBN. I find it impossible to imagine that the project was announced without such modelling being undertaken at least in some form.