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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

In moving that the Senate take note of that wholly unsatisfactory explanation given by Minister Conroy, I ask: how is it that, of the 425 questions asked of this minister's portfolio by the coalition, there are still some 271 outstanding? That is like 65 per cent; that is about two-thirds. Do not leave, Minister Conroy, because you are going to leave your CEO of NBN Co. in the lurch to the defend himself. How is it that of those 271 outstanding answers, three-quarters of them are due from NBN Co.? Three-quarters of the answers are due from the body in charge of building the biggest infrastructure spend in the history of this country.

It gets worse than that. The coalition asked some 201 questions of NBN Co. and NBN Co. has not seen fit to answer one of its questions—not a question has been answered by NBN Co. Not one question has been answered by Mike Quigley, the CEO of NBN Co., who told the Australian Financial Review earlier this year of oversight that might be had of his little but very big spending company. He said:

There comes a point at which it just kind of becomes dysfunctional; every man and his dog oversighting the place.

I will tell the Senate what is dysfunctional in my view: the CEO of the company in charge of the largest infrastructure spend in the history of this country not seeing fit to answer a single question put to him on notice by coalition members of the Senate estimates committee—the very instrument of accountability of this Senate. Forget about oversight from 'every man and his dog'; what about oversight from this Senate, the members of this Senate and the Senate estimates process? The only dysfunctionality is the CEO of NBN Co. thumbing his nose at this Senate. That is entirely dysfunctional.