Senate debates

Monday, 26 March 2007

Questions without Notice

Broadband

2:24 pm

Photo of Claire MooreClaire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Coonan, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. I refer the minister to her comments on ABC TV yesterday:

... prospects are reasonable that there will be an opportunity for a provider or a group of providers to ... roll out a fast fibre network very soon ...

and that ultimately the provider will probably be Telstra. Hasn’t Telstra clearly informed the Australian Stock Exchange that it will not be proceeding with a fibre rollout without regulatory reforms, which you have ruled out before 2009? Minister, doesn’t that make your claims that ‘prospects are reasonable’ a complete nonsense?

Photo of Helen CoonanHelen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | | Hansard source

What is the complete nonsense, of course, is that there is no capacity to have discussions with providers of commercial proposals about any regulatory underpinnings they need. What I have ruled out is a complete roll-back of the specific provisions of the Telecommunications Act. I am sad to say that the Labor Party have not ruled that out. The Labor Party have left themselves hostage to whatever request the telecommunications providers might wish to make of this ditzy plan to try to roll out to 98 per cent of the population an $8 billion proposal, which would be lucky to go beyond the major cities.

What I have said about the regulatory regime—and I can take the senator to many public statements I have made—is that my door is open and I am willing to discuss the proposal with telecommunications providers who may want to speak to me about these arrangements. I had never ruled out any minor adjustments to the telecommunications regime. I have always been interested to see where the barriers are, if they exist in the regulatory regime, to have a look at what might provide incentives for companies to invest.

The last amendment to the Telecommunications Act was specifically to allow the kind of investment we are talking about to enable the regulator to take into account the costs and risks to the investor of a risky new commercial rollout, as indeed it is appropriate to do. This is risky. Because it is very expensive, the return on such an investment is not something that is always easy to predict, and that is why no-one has done it so far.

What I have done about the regulatory regime is to say that we continue to look at it and we continue to monitor the position. In fact, I think I can recall Senator Conroy accusing me of not talking to Telstra, being incapable of talking to Telstra and being incapable of speaking to telecommunications providers. When it transpires that not only do I talk to all of the people in my portfolio but I am interested in proposals which are capable of providing a commercial rollout to the population, then, goodness me, what is wrong with that? I think the senator really has posed her question on a false premise. In due course, of course, we will know whether or not these commercial proposals that appear on the face of it to be viable will be able to do something that the Labor Party can only countenance if they throw $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ hard-earned money at it. We think that a more efficient way of doing it is to make sure that the market can work properly, that the regulatory underpinnings work and that in those circumstances the taxpayer will get the same result but not at the expense of $4.7 billion.

Photo of Claire MooreClaire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Minister, isn’t the government now just scrambling around for a policy response to Labor’s broadband initiative, open door or not? Isn’t it a reality that there is just no plan to supply the communications infrastructure required for the 21st century?

Photo of Helen CoonanHelen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | | Hansard source

Thank you for the supplementary question. I am sure that the senator wishes that were the case, but, sadly, it is not, because discussions between me and other providers have been going on for a number of weeks with really nothing to do with the Labor Party proposal. You cannot sensibly discuss the Labor Party’s proposal in any event because it is a daft idea to knock off $4.7 billion from the Communications Fund and raid the future to pay for the past when they cannot get their head around the economics of telecommunications and what is a commercial proposition and what is not.