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

Since this has to do once more with the implications of a cost-benefit analysis, I draw the minister’s attention to interpretations of public benefit by the ACCC. According to the ACCC, public benefit is defined as:

… anything of value to the community generally, any contribution to the aims of society including as one of its principal elements (in the context of trade practices legislation) the achievement of the economic goals of efficiency and progress’. Plainly the assessment of efficiency and progress must be from the perspective of society as a whole: the best use of society’s resources. We bear in mind that (in the language of economics today) efficiency is a concept that is taken to encompass “progress” and that commonly efficiency is said to encompass allocative efficiency, production efficiency and dynamic efficiency.

That definition would be very broad if applied properly, and it would obviously mean that you would need a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN Co. and Telstra agreement. So how are you going to determine the public benefit test without one?

Question agreed to.