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

He is making it very difficult for us, and I will list the matters in play in a moment. This week while the national parliament is sitting the motion is related to telecommunications but, with the support of Senator Fielding and Senator Xenophon at the time, we put up a proposal to once and for all break these deadlocks when the parliament and the executive have a difference of opinion over whether material should be put into the public domain. Let us establish an independent arbiter and let us respect the will of the umpire. Let us respect the independent judgment. In this case, at the time we were talking about an independent arbiter of the kind that exists in New South Wales and has for many years—you send it out for that independent point of view and then you respect the view that comes back. If it is all commercial-in-confidence and it is not appropriate for it to be put into the public domain then so be it; we will cease pressing that point.

We referred that motion to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration and it reported on 2 February 2010. I have participated in a fair number of committees since I got here a couple of years ago, and I think that was among the worst duddings that we have had. Both of the major parties effectively ignored every piece of evidence that was put to the committee. Everybody who gave evidence to that committee said, ‘You need a mechanism to break these deadlocks.’ We have another one today and we still do not have a mechanism for breaking these deadlocks. I know this is an issue that Senator Cormann has been following very closely and that he also has a very keen interest in public interest immunity. What does it actually mean when the government says, ‘You can’t put that into the public domain. It’s against the public interest. Take my word for it’? We are still taking Minister Conroy’s word for it on the original RSPT tender documents that are now several years old. We are having to take his word on the documents that we have requested today. The report from the finance and public administration committee—apart from, as usual, the diligent work of the staff—was virtually useless, because the evidence that was taken was simply disregarded.

In March we brought the CCS bill back for debate again, and the opposition put so many people on the speakers’ list that we paralysed the national parliament, the Australian Senate, for a day and a half while more and more people were put on the speaking list. It has never been the opposition’s intention, in my view—perhaps until recently—to debate the merits of the bill. Vote against it if that is your will, but you have done everything that you can and tried on every procedural trick in the book in the last year and a half to prevent this thing from coming on today. What is in the motion that we are debating now? Oh, it suggests that we hold up debate on the CCS bill until such time as this material has been put into the public domain! In April, the Senate demanded the implementation study that was produced at taxpayers’ expense and was worth approximately $25 million. The minister said no and defied an order for production for documents that the Senate put forward. He ended up handing it over in May with glowing reviews that it totally supports the government’s case and so on. It had some numbers in it that the coalition did not particularly like, but at least it was in the public domain.

Since the implementation study was tabled we have had the draft heads of agreement with Telstra, which substantially changes the assumptions that McKinsey and KPMG were given to work with, and we have still as yet seen no government response to that implementation study. That was why we put that up as one of the two documents that we were requesting. Nobody outside the minister, NBN Co. obviously and a handful in the minister’s department have seen the business plan. I think it is entirely reasonable in the last sitting fortnight of this year, while a national parliament is proposing to debate the CCS bill; to debate Mr Turnbull’s, the member for Wentworth, private member’s bill; to debate the amendments that Mr Turnbull has put forward to the CCS bill; two motions for standing committees; and a new NBN bill that is going to come into this place I believe next week. Against a backdrop of all that activity—it is NBN week in the national parliament—the business plan is being withheld, apparently because it is so full of good news that we are not going to be able to see it. It is an overflowing pot of gold and that is the reason we are not going to be able to have that in our debate!

We want this document because it was meant to have gone to NBN’s board in May. That is how long this has been in play. It has been bouncing backwards and forwards within NBN Co. since approximately May. At the time, in Senate estimates committee hearings some time in the third or fourth week of May, Senator Conroy actually told the estimates committee that we would never get it. He said:

... it would be absurd to suggest or even think it is going to happen ...

That is what he told that estimates committee: ‘You’re never going to get it. You’re going to be shareholders in NBN Co., the business plan is extraordinarily good news all round, but you are not going to have it.’ Since then we have seen a gradual withdrawal from the proposal, because at the time I and a number of coalition senators contested that—that is, that there was no way that this material should not be put into the public domain—and now we see gradual backsliding to the point where at some stage it looked as though that material would go to cabinet last week, that it would then come up and we would be able to evaluate it in the course of the debate on all of these matters that are in play at the moment.

We know for a fact that NBN Co. disagrees with some of the findings and some of the more important principles in the implementation plan. So there are major issues in play here that we are expected to be debating this week and next week and yet this material is not going to be put into the public domain.

There are a couple of things that need to happen. I think it is still possible for the Prime Minister and the communications minister to reconsider and, immediately after that cabinet meeting on Monday, for these documents be put into the public domain so that we can continue and at least play a part and try to do our job in evaluating this material while we are here on Capital Hill debating all these matters.

The second thing that needs to happen is that these deadlocks need to be broken. I believe Senator Cormann moved a couple of other matters earlier in the week, Senator Fisher moved another one through the chamber this very morning, and we still have material that is outstanding from years and years ago—that we have to just take the minister’s word for it that it is not in the public interest that it be handed over. So I will draw senators’ attention to the agreement that was signed between Senator Brown and the Prime Minister that was an important part of what allowed to the Labor Party to form government in the first place. It is in the agreement that is on the Australian Greens and the Senate office website. It is clause 3(e) in the agreement. I will just read it. I tried to do this in my two-minute statement by leave yesterday and ran out of time:

e) Refer issues of public interest disclosure, where the Senate or House votes on the floor against the decision of a Minister, to the Information Commissioner,—

this is a new post that has only just been established—

who will arbitrate on the release of relevant documents and report to both Houses.

There is your independent umpire. The government has agreed to that. We will be moving very, very shortly to make sure that that agreement is put into effect so that never regain we are faced with having to take the minister’s word for it that it cannot be released, it is not in the public interest, it hasn’t been to cabinet—take your pick of whatever your excuse might be.

But, of course, we will not be supporting the opposition’s motion, which effectively gags the minister. The minister has tried to blindfold the parliament; the coalition’s response is to try and gag the minister. Both sides are behaving very, very badly. That material needs to be put into the public domain so that all of these debates, not just the CCS bill, that are going on concurrently in the national parliament can take place with senators and members able to do their job.