Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not agree with the opposition's dissenting report on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011 and voted against the opposition's amendments in the House. The opposition is again proposing similar amendments, and the government will be voting against them again for the same reasons we outlined in the other place.

The amendments basically propose that NBN Co. participate in a scheme by which it buys back fibre infrastructure randomly installed by developers and relieves other greenfield providers of operational requirements applying to NBN Co. knowing that they offer a layer 2 bit stream service on a wholesale-only basis. That is where it goes to the undermining of the economics of NBN Co. But let me deal with a couple of points that Senator Birmingham made. He suggests that we are forcing people to use NBN Co. This is not the case. We are simply the provider of last resort—exactly the same as Telstra are today. Telstra are the provider of last resort. Obviously, telecommunications being a utility, you want to ensure that everybody gets access. So NBN Co. is replacing Telstra as the provider of last resort. The amnesia of those opposite is simply that they have forgotten that they privatised a vertically integrated monopoly. They created this monstrosity, they created this situation where Australians have been getting slower broadband and more expensive broadband than other countries around the world because they privatised their vertically integrated monopoly. Then they keep trying to pretend that a wholesale-only monopoly is a bigger, more evil monopoly than a vertically integrated retail-wholesale company that, together, discrimin­ates against every other telecommunications company in the country on the basis of favouritism for its own retail company.

You want to talk about infrastructure competition, suddenly clutching to your bosom infrastructure competition, when you privatised a vertically integrated monopoly that eradicated virtually all other infrastructure competition. Let's ask one person who might know something about infrastructure competition in this country. Let's goes to Paul O'Sullivan the chief executive of Optus, who said recently in a press conference: 'I can tell you about infrastructure competition. My company lost $5 billion at the hands of Telstra.' And what did the chief executive of Telstra say in a book he wrote a few years later about infrastructure competition when he left the country. He was an American executive—not Mr Trujillo, you may have guessed. A previous American executive wrote in his book of his time at Telstra, 'We were prepared to lose $4 billion'—this is back in the 1990s, so think back, $4 billion in the 1990s—'just to protect future revenue streams of over $20 billion that we think Telstra might make.' Telstra's chief executive fessed up. They were prepared to lose $4 billion at the time to put Optus out of business; $5 billion of losses for Optus Vision sold to SingTel for a dollar. That is what infrastructure competition, now clutched to their bosom, delivered to this country: a collapse in infrastructure competition.

Do you know how many out of the 5,000 exchanges around Australia, many of them in regional Victoria, have got a competitive deslam in them—that is the competitive mechanism you need? Five hundred out of 5,000 have got another company's infra­structure inside their exchanges after 10 years. It opened up recently, you might be surprised to know, with the threat of entry of NBN and the change in the level playing field, or the unlevel playing field. So there are a few more that have opened up recently. Five hundred out of 5,000 infrastructure competition, courtesy of those opposite. They privatise the ugly 800-pound gorilla into the marketplace with no real powers for the ACCC. Then, to fatten up the cow for the sell-off, they would not put in place any serious regulation of it at all. So those opposite who want to pretend they are interested in competition, who want to pretend they are interested in the battler, have got a track record that they would to just completely wipe from their mind.

I would urge senators not to be fooled by the silken words of Senator Birmingham, who talks down his own capacity at the expense of the Productivity Commission. As to the withering exchanges at Senate Estimates, I hope you do come along to a few of those Senator Xenophon. Occas­ionally he pops in there—I mentioned you there Senator Xenophon—and make a positive contribution. Senator Birmingham's silken tongue is always at Senator Estimates. You should come along, it's good fun.