Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

And one or two others. What a qualification for running Australia's biggest business—$55 billion of taxpayers' money, not Senator Conroy's money, not Senator McLucas's money but taxpayers' money.

Senator McEwen interjecting—

Thank you, Senator McEwen. You might recall Senator Conroy started this. So, if you are talking about personal attacks, you should start where they emanated.

The Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill is an important bill. We would like to question Senator Conroy at length on why we need an entire new bureaucracy to administer the universal service obligation. Are we going to get an opportunity? We will probably have Senator Conroy talking for the next 10 or 15 minutes and then the debate will be finished. I note Senator Ludlum has wisely left because he is not going to get an opportunity to question the minister about this important piece of legislation. I know that Senator Fisher, who is very, very skilled in this area and who has a real interest in the Telecom­munications Universal Service Management Agency Bill, is barely going to get an opportunity to raise some of the particularly important issues that are relevant to this bill.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has been administering the universal service obligation for some time. We would have thought that it has the expertise to continue doing so, even if the universal service obligation moves to a contractual model from the current regulatory platform. The government has not justified the need for a new entity to administer the public interest telecommunications services, and I want to question Senator Conroy about that particular aspect. He will give an answer, I assume, but it will be, like most answers given by the Labor Party, total spin. I will then want to question him further after he responds to my question.

I understand that the government, with the connivance of the Greens, is going to be moving amendments to its own legislation before the chamber. Have we heard about them yet? Certainly, the amendments have been distributed, but it is very difficult to understand what those amendments are about. These are amendments to the govern­ment's own legislation. We are now going to have some 12 minutes for the minister to answer our questions and the questions of the Greens on this legislation and to deal with government amendments that have been circulated in the chamber but which have not been debated at all. What way is that to run the Parliament of Australia? What way is that to allow legislation to be properly scrutinised, debated and, hopefully, improved? Whilst the coalition generally supports the bills before the chamber there are amendments and improvements that could be made and there are different issues that need to be addressed. But are we going to have time to do that in the next 10 minutes?

What I highlight in my very short contribution to this debate is that the way the Labor Party and the Greens run these chambers means that we are rapidly becoming like the totalitarian regimes of yesteryear Europe. There is no opportunity to debate serious legislation because the Greens and the Labor Party say, 'No, we know what's right; we know what's best for Australia,' and they forget that parliament is about allowing the representatives of the Australian people to question, to propose and to amend legislation of the government.