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

At the release of the coalition broadband policy in April 2013, when asked about the independent review and cost-benefit analysis he was planning for the NBN, Prime Minister Abbott said:

Look, it will be a fully independent review. It may be the Productivity Commission although we're conscious of the fact that the Productivity Commission has a very heavy workload. It may be Infrastructure Australia. But one way or another there will be a full independent review of telecommunications going forward, of broadband going forward and that will obviously include a cost-benefit analysis.

Sadly, this has proven to be just another coalition broken promise. The question is: why did they break this promise? It is quite clear that Infrastructure Australia and the Productivity Commission would have been too independent for Mr Turnbull's liking—so independent, in fact, that they would have likely come to the same conclusion that the last NBN expert panel arrived at, that fibre to the node is not a cost-effective upgrade path to fibre to the premise.

The minister knows a bit about evaluating risk and the risk of receiving actually independent advice was clearly too great. What Mr Turnbull needed was someone who would put objectivity to one side and come up with the result that the government and Mr Turnbull wanted. Who could that be? Who could fit this bill for Mr Turnbull? It was none other than Liberal stooge and part-time Australian columnist Henry Ergas. This is the same Henry Ergas whose credibility was shredded by the Australian Competition Tribunal in a judgment made in 2004.This is what the tribunal—whose president at the time was the eminent Justice Alan Goldberg, AO, QC—had to say about Mr Ergas:

Mr Ergas ... appeared reluctant to respond to questions whose answers might have been adverse to the case put by the party calling him … Such an attitude and conduct of an expert witness leads to a conclusion of partiality and an inability to express an objective expert opinion upon which reliance can be placed.

This is the Australian Competition Tribunal saying quite clearly that Mr Ergas has an inability to express an opinion that you can rely on. Not my words; the words of the Australian Competition Tribunal, with the eminent Justice Goldberg as president. If this were an audition for future Liberal Party work, Mr Ergas would pass with flying colours.

Mr Ergas is the person Mr Turnbull has turned to for years to do his dirty work. In 2008, Mr Ergas was hired by Mr Turnbull to do a root-and-branch review of Australia's tax system. It was a review so impressive and of such quality that it has never been released publicly. When Mr Ergas is not writing reviews that are kept in the bottom of a drawer he is writing dodgy NBN analyses. In 2009, in a now notorious paper on the NBN, Mr Ergas predicted that NBN prices would be $133 a month for metropolitan customers and $380 a month for non-metro customers.

Madam Acting Deputy President Stephens, I have some inside knowledge. I know you are connected to the National Broadband Network at your home. Can I ask you: are you paying $380 a month for your service?