Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The tragedy for Australians is that the $43 billion National Broadband Network is more about what we do not know than it is about what we do know. What the Australian people do not know still, despite the $43 billion spent, is who will get what, when they will get it and how they will get it. Will they get it by fibre to the home? Will they get it by satellite and/or a combination of wireless? When will they get it? And how much will they have to pay for the supposed pleasure of getting it? Those are just some of the critical unanswered questions left in the lap of the Australian people, who are footing the bill for the $43 billion network. Worse than that, these are the Australian people who are de facto bedfellows of this government. At the behest of the government, they are de facto bedfellows of the government in having to fund every dollar of the spend on the National Broadband Network. Out of respect for that investment, what do this government give them? Nothing but contempt and a shroud of silence around the $43 billion investment—so much so that the Australian people would sadly be justified in continuing to think that, rather than signifying a national broadband network, the initials NBN continue to stand for ‘no body (k)nows’.

What do we know? We know that the government has continued to refuse to provide a cost-benefit analysis of the $43 billion National Broadband Network. Yes, the government has, courtesy of the taxpayer, invested some $25 million in an implementation study. Of course, the difference between an implementation study and what would have and should have been a cost-benefit analysis is that an implementation study tells the government how to do something; it does not tell the government or us whether we should do that thing. That is the big difference. The other big difference between an implementation study and a cost-benefit analysis is that a cost-benefit analysis would at least shed some light on the degree to which this proposition might or might not be value for taxpayer money. So what we have instead thus far is an implementation study that says yes, the government’s $43 billion National Broadband Network can be built based on certain assumptions. These assumptions include the number of people that will want it and the amount of money that people will pay for the privilege. At this stage the assumptions are untested and very much unproven.

Given that we do not have the government’s response to the implementation study, we are still left wondering as to the basis upon which the government is proposing to implement the very study that it commissioned at the expense of the taxpayer. Of a business case which we believe exists, of some 400-plus pages, once again we are told that we cannot see it until after this parliament rises. Interestingly enough, some two estimates rounds ago the minister was very keen to let us know that at that stage, when we asked him whether we would see NBN Co.’s business case and, if so, when, he very clearly said that he in effect did not intend to provide a copy of that business case to us or to the Australian public—not then, not once it was done and, indeed, never ever. He has been dragged, kicking and screaming, to the brink of releasing a copy of the business case and is now trying to buy more time to take him out beyond the sitting period of this parliament. He is trying to buy more time with a really cheap bribe to the Independents of a briefing from the government in lieu of a 400-page business case. Please, Minister: if you have not even got around to reading it all by now and working out which bits you want us to know about and which bits you do not want us to know about, how can you credibly expect people like the Independents in this parliament to absorb what they need to know in a cursory briefing—a briefing that the government has had the temerity to offer the Independents and others but not the opposition, at this stage?

Given that there is a whole lot we do not know, there is still some hope that we may be able to discover some of that which we currently do not know, because this Senate has made Senator Conroy subject to an order for the production of documents. Today the Senate made an order that, on Monday, the minister front up and fess up with three sets of documents. So I still live—some may say naively—in hope that the minister will front up and fess up on Monday with , firstly, the red book—the advice to the incoming government—which actually shows the bits of it that are currently blacked out. In particular, he could perhaps shed some light on the concern that the government’s own company, NBN Co., now wants to distance itself from some of the recommendations made in the implementation study. So we look forward to seeing the unexpurgated version of the red book on Monday.

The second thing that we look forward to seeing when the minister complies with the Senate order on Monday is the documents that show exactly why and on what basis the government chose the early release sites: the first stage release sites in Tasmania—the three towns of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point—and the seven second stage release sites in Tasmania, which the minister told us in the most recent Senate estimates were based on engineering criteria. We also look forward to seeing the documents that explain the basis upon which the government chose each and every one of the first and second release sites on the mainland. Interestingly enough, NBN Co.’s annual report, tabled on 25 October—some weeks and a bit ago—indicates, in respect of the mainland, the criteria that mattered. It said:

First and Second Release sites will be used to test the design and construction methodologies.

These sites were chosen using a combination of commercial, construction and local authority acceptance criteria.

That does not necessarily sound much like the engineering advice that Minister Conroy says was used to pick the first set of sites in Tasmania. So we very much look forward to seeing on Monday the documentation that explains which sites were chosen for early release, both in Tasmania and on the mainland, and why. That will also, hopefully, go some way to explaining whether there a difference in the criteria used, for example, between Tasmania and the mainland in respect of sites to get first dibs; and, if so, why and how, if Tasmania is supposed to be the trial of the rollout for the mainland.

The third set of documents that the Senate looks forward to receiving when the minister complies with the order on Monday—and this will be a subject close to your heart, Mr Acting Deputy President Forshaw—is the agreed set of principles for enterprise bargaining, apparently agreed to and signed by the ACTU. That is right, Mr Acting Deputy President: agreed to and signed by the ACTU. And the minister used it in his answer during Senate question time on Monday to reassure this Senate and the Australian people that that would mean there would not be a cost blow-out, particularly in the wages that need to be paid to the workers rolling out the National Broadband Network. He talked about the ACTU heads of agreement as the basis for his reassurance that there would not be a wages blow-out in the rollout of the National Broadband Network.

He also, in that answer, talked about NBN Co.’s enterprise agreement with its workers and attempted to say that that somehow meant there would not be a wages blow-out in the rollout of the NBN. I have a couple of interesting observations about that vain attempt from the minister. Firstly, NBN Co.’s workplace agreement with its workers is exactly that: it covers its workers, some 400 or so of them. They are very well intended and good people but, putting it simply, they are largely desk jockeys—very good desk jockeys, no doubt—when compared with the rump of the workforce that will be required to build the National Broadband Network. In a sense they are but a piddle in the pond of the overall workforce required to build the National Broadband Network. To suggest that the wages bill to be paid to that group of workers is in any way determinative of the wages bill of the entire workforce to roll out the NBN is confused and probably misleading at best.

Secondly, there is NBN Co.’s enterprise agreement with its workers, which runs for some four years. The minister himself has said that the construction of the National Broadband Network will take some eight years. How is a workplace agreement that covers a four-year period any sort of reassurance that there will not be a wages blow-out over a period of eight years—because, whilst it is not the rump of the spending, every little bit of spending matters? Obviously, the money to be expended by NBN Co. on itself and on its workers is relevant in terms of the overall $43 billion spend.

There is the main part of the workforce, for which there is a significant skills shortage and which has to be engaged by contractors in building the National Broadband Network. The minister has relied upon the heads of agreement supposedly signed by and agreed with the ACTU to say that the workforce wages will not blow out in the construction of the National Broadband Network. Given the minister’s reliance on those heads of agreement, there is all the more reason why the Australian taxpayer deserves to see a copy of that agreement. The one thing we do have—the only thing we have, as I have continued to say—which is the implementation study, factored its budget, basically, and its recommendations for the National Broadband Network on an annual wage increase of some 2½ per cent for the workforce rolling out the National Broadband Network. Even NBN Co.’s own workplace agreement, which the minister used in his answer to the Senate on Monday, exceeds that by some 1½ per cent per annum. Even the minister’s own example talks about pay increases of four per cent a year in contrast with the implementation study’s figure of 2½ per cent a year.

If the rumours about the CEPU’s campaign for the workforce rolling out the National Broadband Network is part way correct, it is about seeking wage increases of some five per cent a year, which are clearly double those underpinning the recommendations in the implementation study. This clearly stands to significantly blow out the wages and the cost of the construction sector, particularly if we see realised the concerns of the construction sector that every one per cent increase in the wages bill translates to an extra one point something billion—I think it is $1.4 billion—in terms of the build of the National Broadband Network. There remains much more that we do not know than what we do know about the National Broadband Network.

The taxpayers—who are, I say again, de facto bedfellows with this government, at the behest of this government, and not necessarily willingly so in the build of the National Broadband Network—have to be wondering whether they should hop right out of that bed and have to be wondering why they should not do so, particularly for so long as the National Broadband Network, NBN, stands more for ‘no body (k)nows’ than anything else.