Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It is once more very interesting to note exactly where this nation is going and the incompetence before us in the guise of a government. It is quite peculiar where we have ended up, especially now with what is going to be the largest capital investment program in this nation’s history.

Senator Conroy was further embarrassed in question time today while playing around with his justification and the embarrassing mistakes he made in the media this morning. Early this morning Senator Conroy was claiming with regard to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 that the National Broadband Network is not mentioned in the bill. In fact, it was mentioned 62 times. I had the bill there and, as I opened it up, the word ‘NBN’ and things to do with it were popping up like rabbits; they were everywhere.

Senator Conroy today would not confirm or deny his statements in question time, but he came up with a very different excuse. He said: ‘This bill is actually describing a deal between Telstra and the NBN. It is not about the NBN.’ You almost need to have the wisdom of Solomon to try to decipher that, but from what I can see the bill is about an $11 billion deal between Telstra and the NBN, not about the NBN. That is as clear as mud. That is a piece of cake. It is all clear—nothing to see here. That really sheds some light on exactly how convoluted, confusing and hopeless this minister has become. If this bill is about the deal but not about the NBN then the minister must explain why he invited the CEO of NBN Co., Mr Mike Quigley—who, by the way, got his job without a job interview or without a public process of application for his job—along to announce the deal and why at the press conference Mr Quigley said:

This is a very important step forward for NBN Co …

The minister must further explain why he said in a press release announcing the $11 billion deal between Telstra and the NBN Co.:

This agreement paves the way for a faster, cheaper and more efficient rollout of the—

wait for it—

National Broadband Network …

The Prime Minister in the House of Representatives today got in on the act of incompetence and tried to defend the minister by saying that he is a man who is fully conversant with the National Broadband Network. It poses the obvious question. If what we have seen today in its most classic form is a person fully conversant with his act then I would hate to see someone who is not conversant with his act. Poor Senator Conroy today, as soon as the question came, broke into a sweat. He had sweat pouring out of him because he is under the pump. He is under the pump by reason of the fact of his own incompetence. We have gone so far down this path and he knows that he is hiding something. Why will he not table the business plan? Surely it would cause him less grief than he is getting at the moment. Why will he not send it to the Productivity Commission? We heard him today talking about all these reports and all these sorts of oblique references to sundry reports everywhere else, but when it comes to the most obvious body, the one designed in this nation to investigate these sorts of things—the Productivity Commission—he refuses to send it to them. The only conclusion that everybody can come to is that he has something to hide.

Now we are looking at a process where, even by the government’s own admission and even though they get the numbers wrong every time, they are going to borrow—and it is not them borrowing; it is the Australian taxpayer borrowing—between $26 billion and $27 billion. That sits on top of where we are at the moment, the $170 billion gross that we have already borrowed. This money has to be paid back. They will expect a return on those funds. The return that the McKinsey report says we are going to get from the NBN is six per cent. The bond rate at the moment is only about 5½ per cent. It would be a lot safer to put the money in the bank. Why are we going to the risk of trying to incorporate ourselves as a competitive entity? Actually, we do not want to be competitive because that is another thing.

We see in proposed section 577BA of the Telecommunications Act as amended by this bill that they have applied for exclusion from what was formerly section 51(1) of the Trade Practices Act. In essence the government have basically said that you will be deemed to have passed that act or you will not be held to that part of the act. This is another thing. What we are doing here is setting ourselves up a monopoly. We are changing the legislation to set up a monopoly, and they have always admitted that at some point in time they are going to sell or try to sell the NBN back into the market. You are only going to be able to sell something if it provides a return. A return at six per cent is not going to be very attractive. So how do you change the return? You change the return by jacking up prices. It is very easy to jack up prices when you have a monopoly. It is very easy to make money when you demand that people go on to it by tying up to the mechanism of delivery.

The concern so many people have is that the government were incompetent with the ceiling insulation debacle—they could not get fluffy stuff into the ceiling without setting fire to 190 houses and tragically killing four people. They spent $1½ billion dollars putting it in and then about $1 billion pulling it out. We had a Labor government where, with the Building the Education Revolution program, we heard the rhetoric and ended up with the bill. We know it cost in excess of $16 billion. The taxpayers are being absolutely touched. This is the same government that talked about the war on obesity, the war on inflation and the war on homelessness—all these things were never achieved. This government is now going into the business of telecommunications. They are doing it in such a way—you have to see from the competency of the minister—that it raises serious questions.

The only way to dispel these serious questions is for there to be a proper analysis by the proper body, which is the Productivity Commission, and at the very least the tabling of the business plan. This is currently following this sort of nefarious process that the Labor Party has of talking about transparency but not talking about it now—just as they talked about the release of the Henry tax review but we never actually had the release of the Henry tax review; they kept stalling it and stalling it and stalling it. Finally, it was released and, after it was released, they did not incorporate any of it. There was the guide to the Murray-Darling Basin which was supposed to be released before the election but was never released before the election. Then they miraculously held it back when they were doing negotiations with the Independents and it was finally released on a Friday night at four o’clock after the media had passed their deadline with the media in one room and the politicians in another. Why did they do that? It was because they tried to circumvent a process of transparency. This is what is going on here.

The more we see Senator Conroy not being across the detail, not understanding what Minister Albanese in the other place said that completely contradicted what he said on Sky Agenda this morning, not understanding some of the vital parts of the act and their interplay with the NBN, not understanding that the NBN is actually mentioned in the act—in fact, he categorically stated that it was not in the act, when obviously it is—the more we realise we have no confidence in his capability. Then there is the manner in which he deals with other people’s money. Having good one-liners, happy smiles and a rambunctious nature is a poor excuse for diligence in understanding this incredibly complicated application in this incredibly complicated field. The Labor Party painted a marvellous sunny upland picture of broadband without really understanding and hoping that no-one else would ever bother to inquire. But we are inquiring now because that is our job in this place.

We have always had a strong commitment to communications in regional areas. I remember a couple of years ago now crossing the floor to try to maintain the $2.4 billion that had been put aside for a regional fund. I remember all of the protections in the Telstra bill: the network reliability framework, the customer service guarantee and the universal service obligations. We put $2 billion aside, and with interest we were to have $2.4 billion in that account. After the Labor Party stole that money we got the promise that they would do something in regional Australia. What have we got up until this point in time? Nothing.

Even now, when they are going forward with this and talking about regional Australia, they are dealing with only 93 per cent. I am one of those people who live in the other seven per cent. It is once more not so much a thing for regional Australia but a duplication of services that exist in urban Australia at a price that Australia just cannot afford. If we had the money, we could afford it. But we do not have the money, so we will have to borrow the money. What is Labor’s plan to pay this money back—or have they paid as much attention to that detail as Senator Conroy has to the detail of his own legislation?

A lot of questions have been asked about the competition implications of proposed section 577BA. All these sorts of things are sneaking out via the cracks. Telstra have Minister Conroy where they want him. There is no doubt about that. Telstra have done an incredibly good deal. They have basically leased—not sold—the pits and the pipes and can get them back later if they want them. And, if they do not, they will have done very well out of them in any case. They knew Senator Conroy would do virtually anything to come to a deal, and he did. He came up with a $43 billion outcome.

The fact that it grew from about $4.6 billion to $43 billion alone should have rung bells and people should have started saying that there is something not right here. As an accountant you always look at the possible return. You ask: ‘What do you intend to be the return on this? Do you have the technical capacity to operate this? Do you have experience in this? From where did you draw the knowledge and the business plan to do this?’ You draw on people with similar competencies to the competencies displayed in the program that you wish to go forward. We can see that those with similar competencies, such as the telco tycoons from Japan and Mexico, have serious concerns about exactly what Australia is up to. No, I was being very polite there—they think we are off the planet with the way we are going about this.

Forty-three billion dollars is not something you drop on the floor of a pub on a Friday night. This money will have to be paid back. Our job in politics is to explain to the Australian people that you can provide an outcome without spending that sort of money. It is not that the coalition do not believe in broadband—we do—we just believe in cutting the suit to fit the wearer and not leaving the outcome sitting on the nation’s credit card. In real terms, over 50 years there will be a 450 per cent increase in the price of phone calls. That is without adjusting for inflation. If we adjust for inflation, there will be about a 64 per cent increase in the price.

Let us dispense with the idea that this is about forcing down the price of telecommunications. It will force up the price of telecommunications. People will have to pay for this utility. In their current business case they talk about only a six per cent return. Because they will get themselves in more strife than the early settlers and they will be in debt up to their eyeballs, you can bet your life that, because it will be moved out with the monopolistic attributes that are being inserted in this, ultimately once someone else gets their hands on it they will not ask for a six per cent return. No way. If they want a six per cent return, they will put their money in the bank—or they could become a bank and lend the money out and get vastly better returns. They will drive up the return and you will have to pay it because there is nothing you can do about it. That will just be the way it is.

The reality is they will be driven to that outcome because, unlike when the coalition was in government, we will not have money in the bank, we will have massive debts. The massive debts will then drive the agenda of the decisions that are made. And because those massive debts will drive the agenda, you will not have the option of holding out; you will be forced into the process of a sell-down of assets to try and keep at bay those people to whom you owe money—in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a recipe for a very bad outcome, for something we cannot afford and we cannot prove, and even the Labor government cannot prove because they refuse to be transparent and table the business plan. They refuse to send the assessment of this process to the Productivity Commission. The only reason they refuse to do that, to be honest and go to the nation’s auditor on whether it is a prudent case, is because they know it is not. I could see that by watching Senator Conroy today on Sky Agenda as the sweat just came pouring out of him when he realised his immense faux pas, that he did not understand that the NBN was actually in the act he was promoting and discussing at that time. The most basic understanding was lacking in the most vital way.

If Senator Conroy does not understand that the NBN is actually noted in the act, what other sections has he been unaware of? When we go through it and look at sections such as 577BA it is a concern that they seem to abscond from the process of 51(1) of the Trade Practices Act. What are the ramifications of that? Who is going to tell us about that? We are just not getting the chance to really see this. What is the take-up and what are the actual requirements for people with regard to broadband? We note that, where it has been sent out, they have not got the take-up in the form that they expected. People’s desire to download movies quickly has not been expressed as we initially anticipated. That also goes to the question: are you overreaching? The classic response to that is: for $43 billion, you most definitely are. It is most definitely an overreach.

The Labor Party went to people who knew less than them, because the Labor Party was the holder of the knowledge, and put forward this idea of the NBN as the reason why the Labor Party, when it did not win more votes than the coalition at the last election, should actually be the government. They put forward that idea and they made a warrant that this was a good plan. It is quite apparent now that that warrant is failing the test. Therefore, the Labor Party’s legitimacy as the government is failing the test. Their legitimacy to hold the treasury bench was on the premise that the NBN would be a great delivery mechanism, and other people accepted that. But it is not the case. As this NBN house of cards falls down, the legitimacy of the Labor Party holding the treasury bench falls down with it. That is another reason why Senator Conroy was excessively glowing and sweating on Agenda this morning, because he knows what this means. I would love to be a fly on the wall when Senator Conroy goes to his cabinet meeting as they discuss what an absolute and outer stuff-up today was for the Labor Party.