Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I can perfectly understand how one could be lulled into a sense of deep slumber through Senator McLucas's defence of the NBN. It is wise for us to consider exactly how the NBN came about. The NBN may have been conceived through a determination to bring the benefits of high-speed internet to Australian consumers, but it was a program that was supposed to cost $4 billion—until the giant fingers, the passion fingers, of Senator Conroy and his colleague, his mentor, the man who he admired so much, former Prime Minister Rudd, got on a plane together and got a box of peanuts and a napkin and a pen and the rest is history—on a VIP jet it was determined, over some popcorn and peanuts and a napkin, that tens of billions of dollars would be spent. The NBN was drawn on the back of a napkin, and the Australian people have been paying the price for that lack of planning ever since.

Since that time Senator Conroy has been involved in what can only be politely termed legacy sandbagging, where he has sought to run interference and pile up case after case after case about why his napkin plan was suitable and appropriate for Australia. Let me tell you, right from the word go it has failed the public interest test. It has failed the public interest test not because having a fast broadband network across the country is not in the interest of Australians—it probably is; should the government be doing it, there is a matter of politics in that—but the fact is that it has gone from $4 billion to $8 billion to $16 billion to $32 billion to about $49 billion of taxpayer money being thrust into it. Senator Conroy likes to criticise the fixing that is being been done by this government, but the fixing being done by this government is because of the falsehoods spun out of the previous government. The 2010 corporate plan claimed that the NBN would pass one million premises with its fixed line network by 30 June 2013. We can understand there is a bit of hyperbole around that one million premises, but no-one really thought the then government would have overestimated their own abilities by nearly eightfold.

The fact is after three years, it managed to reach 165,000 premises—not the one million that Senator Conroy and his ilk said—and it cost so much more than was scheduled. That is because there was a complete lack of planning, a complete lack of consideration of the national interest, a complete lack of any prudence and any cost-benefit analysis, and that is because the people around it were not grounded in reality.

I know that Senator Conroy seeks to blame former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for the failings of this. Kevin Rudd has many failings on which we could expound for a long time in this chamber, but we are not going to, because Mr Rudd was driven to make these irrational and not sensible decisions by none other than Senator Conroy and his famous napkin. Senator Conroy could have retired and gone into the void of the Kevin Rudd legacy. He could have retired, got out of parliament and hidden away from the poor decisions. Senator Conroy did not want to do that. So he stayed in this place and has tried to monster and bully people into accepting his version of events. Unfortunately, the truth is somewhat departed from where Senator Conroy is locating himself, and this is the point about the NBN. Yes, it has some benefits—