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

We have here an example of Senator Conroy refusing to live by the types of standards that he used to call upon from others. The Senate passed a resolution yesterday asking for certain documentation to be tabled and made available to it. The Senate, with the support of the coalition, the Australian Greens and the crossbenchers, passed a resolution seeking some fairly simple and straightforward information. We wanted to see information regarding the advice the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave to Mr Rudd prior to the initiation of the Australia Network tender. We wanted to see the reports of the independent evaluation board, the tender evaluation board, provided to Mr Rudd or Senator Conroy in relation to either the first incarnation of this tender or the second incarnation of this tender. It is pretty straightforward information that the Senate sought.

So, firstly, I note that time would not have been a factor in this. We were specific rather than broad-ranging in our requests, and I note that the motion was passed in the Senate not just with the support of the coalition, not just with the support of the crossbenchers, but, to get passage through the Senate, with the support of the Australian Greens as well, which demonstrates the broad concerns that are held in relation to the handling of this corrupted tender process. We sought those documents for fairly clear and specific reasons. We sought the documentation in terms of the advice provided to Mr Rudd prior to initiating the contract because of serious reports indicating that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade actually advised Mr Rudd not to go down the tender path but to instead renew the ABC's contract. In fact, the government, who it seems are now bending over backwards and corrupting all sorts of processes to keep the ABC in this contract, could have spared themselves all this grief, all this pain, had they simply accepted the advice of DFAT in the first place. But Mr Rudd refused to accept that advice because he obviously wanted to change things.

So then we sought the documentation, the reports of the independent tender evaluation board, as provided to either Mr Rudd for the first incarnation of the tender or Senator Conroy for the second incarnation of this tender. We sought that information because it has widely been reported—and Senator Conroy has effectively confirmed in this place that the reports are correct—that on both occasions the four departments involved in the independent tender evaluation board all recommended that the Sky bid be adopted.

Yet on both occasions the government has found a way and an excuse to get out of accepting that recommendation. Firstly, they suddenly said that issues in the Middle East were so significant that they needed to change the tender—and miraculously at that time they needed to strip the tender away from Mr Rudd and give it to Senator Conroy. And the second time around they said the leaks themselves were a reason to end the tender process. But it would appear that it has been a month or more between Senator Conroy getting advice from the tender evaluation board and axing the tender. So he had plenty of time to start the negotiations he referred to in the chamber today and to conclude those negotiations and do a deal with the successful tenderer—if that is what he wanted.

But quite clearly that is not what he wanted. Senator Conroy, the Prime Minister and the majority of the cabinet clearly had a predetermined outcome from this tender in mind and they have been unwilling to accept the fact that the independent evaluation board came up with the other option, that the independent board recommended Sky instead of the ABC. The government should come clean. If they wanted the ABC all along, they should simply say so and acknowledge the fact that they stuffed Sky around, at great time and expense. They should come clean that they have cost the Australian taxpayer, at great time and expense. And Senator Conroy should come clean that it has been all about not letting Mr Rudd have his way and that, once again, the government is keeping secret the sort of documentation it used to call to have released. (Time expired)