Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

There is a terribly botched process surrounding the Australian Network tender. It is a terribly botched process that is in desperate need of having some transparency applied to it—some sunlight applied to it, as the govern­ment may say—and actually giving some idea of what has gone so, so wrong. It is important to understand that there are lives hanging in the balance, in terms of jobs and livelihoods, on this. Staff of the ABC rightly want to know why this tender process has been so delayed. This is an issue that I pursued during Senate estimates. We saw absolute obstructionism from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade at that time. Now, of course, it is clear why. Clearly they knew to some extent that they were about to be stripped of responsibility for this. Clearly they knew at the time that this process was going to be further delayed. Clearly they knew at the time that there were a number of serious problems in this regard.

This process has seen the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Rudd, stripped of responsibility. Whether that is because the Prime Minister did not want the Australian Network to turn into the 'Kevin 24/7 Network', or what the process is, who knows? But we should get some transparency applied to this. We should understand whether there is a genuine concern when it comes to the conflict of interest that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy may potentially have in terms of being the minister responsible for the ABC and now finding himself as the minister responsible for the Australian Network tender.

This is months behind. We have a further six-month delay, putting all the lives of ABC staff into a state of limbo as they do not know whether they will keep the contract or not, and the government comes up with some ridiculous excuse about the Middle East situation causing the delay.