Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) and the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Senators Minchin, Macdonald and Milne today.

Today the government has announced significant changes to the regulation of telecommunications. I took the opportunity to ask Senator Conroy, as the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, about one of the announcements that he—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Would senators on my right and my left please move out of the chamber or resume their seats.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I asked Senator Conroy today about one of the policies that he has announced today as part of his package of telecommunications regulation changes. One of those policies is in fact to propose the forced break up of Telstra, one of Australia’s major corporations, a major employer, and the principal provider of telecommunications in the country today. One of the audacious things among many that Senator Conroy purported to convey to us today was that in fact the government is not proposing to force the break up. No-one believes that proposition. All the financial press today are reporting that the government is proposing the forced break up of Telstra. That is what this government has in fact announced and it has had a dramatic impact on the value of the company already. This announcement of the forced—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I have asked senators on my right to please leave the chamber or resume their seats. I can understand the whip having to move around, but not everybody else.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President, I appreciate your indulgence. Today’s announcement by the government of its policy of forcing the break-up of Telstra contradicts everything that the government has said, to this point, whether as an opposition or as a government. It certainly contradicts what the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said as recently as the May estimates and what former spokesmen in this area have said.

The Labor Party never told the Australian people when it went to the last election that after it got elected it would sneak through the forced break-up of Telstra. It has never been Labor policy to propose the forced break-up of Telstra. Indeed, as we all know, it was the Labor Party, when in government back in the early 90s, that actually created Telstra—this company which it now says is too big and too much of a monster and has to be broken up by force of law. This is their creation. At no point since then have they dared to suggest that they would want to see this company broken up by force of law.

The government will, of course, go on pretending that it is not about forcing the break-up, but it is evident from the statement made today that the government intends to hold a cannon—not merely a handgun, but a cannon—to the head of Telstra to force it to behave in the fashion which this Labor government wants to dictate to it. This is a radical and risky policy which the Labor Party has announced today. This is a company which employs 30,000 Australians. This is the Labor Party which professes a concern for employees—there are 30,000 in this company who are now being put at risk by this policy.

There are 1.4 million shareholders. We know the Labor Party totally opposed the sale, but apparently this is the punishment that mums and dads of Australia who bought shares in this company are now having meted out to them by the Labor Party. Today, already, within minutes of the government making this announcement, the mums and dads of Australia who own shares in this company have seen $2 billion wiped off the value of their shares by this government.

This company has nine million customers. This company is critical to the telecommunications infrastructure of Australia, but this risky, radical and careless government is now going to adopt Telstra as its plaything. Why break up this company? Why take all this risk if, indeed, the government is serious about building a national broadband network? The government says that it wants to borrow up to $43 billion to roll out, right across Australia, a whole new optical fibre network—fibre to the premises—to service 90 per cent of Australian homes in order to provide them with a new wholesale-only, fixed-line network to compete with Telstra. If the problem with Telstra is that it is this so-called monopoly—which of course it no longer is—that we cannot have and must break up, why on earth would you do that if you were going to build a $43 billion telecommunications network to compete with it?

The question the government has got to ask today is: why is it undertaking this radical and risky policy if it is serious about building this network? What we see today is the government itself implicitly accepting that its $43 billion NBN is pie in the sky. It knows that this is a radical and risky proposal which it has put on the desk, that it will never be able to raise the money, that this will never be commercially viable and that there are so many questions about this NBN that it simply cannot answer. And the money that is going out the door on this NBN is unbelievable—a CEO being paid $40,000 a week to run a company which has no employees, no revenue, no customers and no nothing!

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note and to make the observation that Senator Minchin has made some announcements today himself. One of them related to the relevance of fast broadband when wireless is popular with the Australian population. Labor’s policy provides both for fast broadband and for wireless. One of the things that—

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To whom? Where is your analysis?

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Fisher seeks to interject. Our proposal is very clear. We are going to provide a combination—we will provide fast broadband to as much of the Australian population as we can and, for those who live where we cannot, we will provide wireless. Nothing that the Labor Party is proposing to do—

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is that a promise?

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, we keep our promises, Senator Fisher. That is what distinguishes the Labor Party from the Liberal Party. We do keep our promises. One of the promises we made to the Australian people at the last election was that we would introduce fast broadband to this country. You did nothing about this issue for the 11 or 12 years that you were in government, but Labor is going to do something about it. We are going to introduce fast broadband to this country.

This is the way of the future. If you have children, you know how important broadband is to them. As soon as they get home at night they race not to the fridge, not to the television, but to the computer. They turn on their computer and turn on the internet. They start facebooking or they start twittering or they start youtubing. Yes, Senator Kroger, this is what they do. This is the future for Australia. We have politicians now, even Mr Turnbull, doing this. The Deputy President will know the Premier of South Australia is a big twitterer. He gets involved in twittering.

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

He is a big twit.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, he is not a twit. He is a twitterer. There is quite a distinction, Senator Macdonald, between being a twit and twittering, as you ought to know.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ludwig interjecting—

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Senator Ludwig points out, he comes from Queensland and he knows a lot more about you, Senator Macdonald, than I do. This is all about the future. The future involves fast broadband. That is not to say that we will not have wireless. Of course we are going to have wireless. Lots of people will have wireless, maybe in Maitland, for example. I do not know whether they get fast broadband over there, but they would like some wireless.

What fast broadband enables you to do is have wireless in your own house. That is what a lot of families do. They connect to ADSL at the moment, but they have a number of laptops. The children, in particular, have laptops at school thanks to our education revolution. They can go home and they can access the computer so they can download their movies, their TV programs or whatever else it is that they might want to do on the internet.

Our fast broadband is going to speed that up. We are going to speed up access on wireless. I am not an expert on this, but I understand that this new fast broadband might be up to 10 times as fast as wireless is able to provide at the moment. In other words, we will still give people the option of having wireless but will enable that at a much faster speed so that people can access whatever they want to do on the internet at a very much faster speed. We are all about choice—not about Work Choices; we know what Work Choices was all about. This is about choice: broadband, wireless and freeing up the system that at the moment is quite restrictive.

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given today by Ministers Conroy and Wong, and in particular Minister Conroy’s answer to Senator Minchin when he had the cheek to suggest that the government’s legislation today gives Telstra choice. Minister Conroy had the cheek to suggest that today’s legislation gives Telstra choice to structurally separate or not, or else ‘We’ll do it for you.’ That is the choice: Telstra can choose to cooperate with the government or ‘We will do it for you.’ The government says the only choice left open to Telstra is to cooperate so that the government can, says Minister Conroy, deliver equivalence of access and equivalence of service to the National Broadband Network so that everybody will get the same and nobody will be worse off. That sounds a bit like a promise made elsewhere by this government: no worker will be worse off, no business will be worse off—for example, with its award modernisation program. It is the same sort of promise with the same sorts of underpinnings: no analysis to prove that the promise is deliverable, when there is the same competition between supply and demand.

In saying to Telstra, ‘Choose to cooperate,’ what is the government saying to Telstra’s workers in the face of warnings from the Telstra workers’ union, the CPSU, that Telstra’s workers face competing supply and demand sides of the equation? Is the government really saying to Telstra’s workers, ‘You won’t be worse off through this’? The CPSU says that not only do Telstra’s workers need their award conditions transferred to the government if Telstra structurally separates, in order to ensure that workers are not worse off, but there is a double-sided hit for Telstra’s workers in structural separation, because Telstra’s workers are also Telstra’s shareholders in many cases. So what is the promise that the government is making to Telstra’s workers?

The government and Minister Conroy know this game. Minister Conroy knows why he can have the cheek to suggest that Telstra has a choice—‘choose to cooperate’—because it is the same so-called choice that the government has foisted upon every other participant, every other stakeholder and would-be participant in the National Broadband Network. It is silencing them with the process of having them hope that they will be able to participate in the process. It is saying: choose to cooperate and we will look after you; choose to not cooperate and we will do it without you.

Experts talk about the National Broadband Network as the biggest infrastructure spend ever. Mark McDonnell, an analyst at BBY, said:

... few analysts have been moved to describe it as a rational investment proposal.

When it comes to risk, this is about as high risk as it gets.

... lacking in any measure of financial or commercial rigour.

How does a government get away with no cost benefit analysis for the biggest infrastructure spend ever? There is no cost benefit analysis to show who will want this thing, how they will get it or whether they will be prepared to pay for it. There is no analysis from the government. On the other side of the coin, there is no indication to consumers as to who will get what, when they will get it, where they will get it, how they will get it and what price they will be required to pay for it. No, no—we have a government confident to make promises because it knows it is able to silence the would-be and should-be critics by a supposed choice: choose to cooperate or not.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to join this taking note debate today, and particularly to follow Senator Fisher. As a woman in this chamber, it is interesting to note that all four questions asked by the government today were asked by women. I note that only one question asked by the opposition was asked by a woman. In taking note of—

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We don’t have a quota system, though. I got here on merit.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And so did I. I would like to observe that before taking note. Hopefully, I will get an opportunity to get to the subject of the Traveston Crossing Dam, because I am sure there is plenty to say about that. What a great day this is for communications in this country. I commend Minister Conroy for the work that he has undertaken over the last 18 months or so, his openness to consult, his ability to manage the enormous portfolio responsibilities that he has and his ability to announce historic reforms to telecommunications regulation today.

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, announced fundamental reforms today to existing telecommunications regulations in the interests—and this is the important thing—of Australian consumers and businesses. The reforms will drive future growth, productivity and innovation across all sectors of the economy by addressing Telstra’s high level of integration to promote greater competition and consumer benefits, by streamlining and simplifying the competition regime to provide more certain and quicker outcomes for telecommunications companies, by strengthening consumer safeguards to ensure service standards are maintained at a high level, and by removing redundant and inefficient regulatory red tape.

I think the important message out of today’s announcement is that consumer safeguards will be strengthened. For a person who comes from rural Australia, that is something that I know my constituency will particularly welcome. We have had difficulty ensuring access by rural, regional and remote Australians to telecommunications generally and broadband and mobile phone services in particular. I am thrilled that our government, the Labor government, has ensured that access to telecommunications services will be a priority wherever you live. I am particularly proud of that.

The universal service obligation requires Telstra as the universal service provider to enable all people in Australia to have reasonable access on an equitable basis to standard telephone services, including payphones. The legislation will strengthen the USO by enabling the minister to specify the standards, terms and conditions of services, connection and repair periods and reliability requirements of the standard telephone service. Telstra will be required to meet new minimum performance benchmarks. Failure by Telstra to meet the requirements will expose it to a civil penalty of up to $10 million.

The legislation—and I welcome this as well—will also include more stringent rules on the removal of payphones and new provisions to allow people concerned about payphone removal to apply to the Australian Communications and Media Authority to direct Telstra not to remove a payphone. Failure to comply with the new rules will expose Telstra to civil penalties or on-the-spot fines.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to get to the Traveston dam issue, but I certainly will listen with interest to Senator Macdonald’s contribution.

In closing, this is a really important day for telecommunications in Australia. We will see a revolution in terms of access to services and the ability of services to be provided, particularly to those who, over the last 10 to 15 years, have been missing out—we know that. Australia’s access to broadband services in particular lags behind and, as a result of it lagging behind, our children, our businesses and our opportunities, particularly for those in rural Australia, have been limited.

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

The hypocrisy and mismanagement of the ALP knows no bounds. If they had not stopped the OPEL contract, which was in place at the change of government two years ago, all of the people that Senator McLucas and Senator Farrell talked about benefiting from broadband would have had broadband today. This thing that Senator Conroy has announced today might happen, but I regret to say I probably will not be alive by the time it is in place. We could have all been using it today if it had not been for the Labor Party.

I wanted to draw attention to Senator Wong’s answers, or lack of answers, to the questions over the Traveston Crossing Dam on the Mary River in South-East Queensland, the home of the critically endangered lungfish and the Mary River cod and turtle, all of which could be destroyed as a result of this dam, which the Labor Premier of Queensland is determined to construct. A few months ago, just before the Queensland state election, she promised Queenslanders that it would be delayed for four years—that is, two state election periods—before any work was taken to construct the dam. In another massive breach of trust and promises that this Premier of Queensland is becoming renowned for, she has upgraded the work and has just this week sent to the federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts the draft proposals for the Traveston Crossing Dam. She tells Queenslanders every day, ‘The dam will go ahead.’ I do not know how she can be so confident, unless her lobbying, which has been reported in major Queensland and national newspapers in the last couple of days, of the Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, is achieving results. Why else would she spend the time talking to Mr Rudd—in her own words, ‘lobbying’ him—for this dam approval if she did not believe that the close political association between Ms Bligh and Mr Rudd would not bear fruit?

We all know that, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, introduced by my Liberal colleague, former minister Robert Hill, the decision on the dam has to be taken by the environment minister on certain grounds and bases, mainly on the science and environmental aspects. But here is the Queensland Premier talking to the Prime Minister. Can anyone imagine that the time for a decision will come and Mr Garrett will say, ‘Oh, sorry about the lungfish; I’ll stop it’? If he does that the Queensland Labor Premier will stand guilty of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a dam which nobody wants but which she is determined to press ahead with. How is she going to get the approval? If Mr Garrett has an ounce of environmental sensitivity within his body he will refuse the application. The Queensland Premier should know that, but she is circumventing that by approaching the Prime Minister and lobbying him over the dam, as the headline in the Australian says.

I am not one of those conspiracy theorists, but I do wonder how Mr Garrett, when he was head of the Australian Conservation Foundation, and Mr Rudd, when he was a senior adviser to Premier Wayne Goss, worked together to stop the Wolfdene Dam. It is well recognised in Queensland that, if the Labor Party had not stopped the Wolfdene Dam, we would not have had the critical water situation that we have had in South-East Queensland for 10 years. One could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps Mr Rudd and Mr Garrett feel some guilt at having stopped water to South-East Queensland and, for that reason, will roll over and give Anna Bligh what she wants with the Traveston Crossing Dam. I certainly hope that does not happen. I think that we have made it very clear that we on this side—and, on this rare occasion, the Greens agree with us, even though they gave preferences to Ms Bligh to help her win the election, knowing that she would construct a dam—will be watching Mr Garrett very, very closely as he makes his decision on this awful abomination of a proposal for a construction.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to take note of an answer given by Senator Wong regarding the Green Loans Program. I want to remind the Senate that the Green Loans Program was announced by the Labor government last year. This was a big opportunity for people to borrow money at no interest in order to implement green initiatives, and this was a good idea. But the good idea has translated into a complete shambles under the so-called oversight of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Mr Garrett. I think that it is time that the government found somebody in the department who can administer this with some degree of competence. I want to outline to the Senate what a complete shambles and mess this is in.

It was announced last year and meant to start in January this year. It did not start in January and was postponed until July, when it finally got under way. Since then, some 800 assessors have gone out and assessed 25,000 households—25,000 assessments have been done by 800 assessors. The contracts for those assessors say that they must be paid within 30 days for the work that they do, but what has happened? They have not been paid within 30 days. That is a breach of their contract. These, too, are members of working families; these, too, deserve to have their money within the 30 days specified in the contract.

But worse than all the talk from the government is the reality of these assessments on the ground. The assessments were made, but then the assessors tried to generate the reports from the assessment. The report is what you needed as a householder to take in your hand to the bank—to the provider of the loan—so that you could get the loan, and not one report has been issued. There have been 25,000 assessments and not one report. And why not? Because the government-designed software has failed—it has got mistakes in it and is generating inaccurate reports. The assessors cannot generate the reports because the software is wrong, and it is still not fixed.

I heard Senator Wong tell the Senate today that it was fixed in late August. Well, that is news to the people out there who are assessing these projects, because they have not been able to generate accurate reports. Minister Wong herself acknowledged that the reason people have not been paid is that the invoices are all wrong. What sort of a shambles is that? Add to that that there was supposed to be an online facility through which the assessors could book the various assessments, but it has failed; it has not happened. They are stuck with a call centre where they have to hang on the phone lines for up to half an hour, in the worst case scenario, in order to be able to register the booking that they are trying to make. Where is the online booking facility? Why has the call centre not got more people in it?

If the government have failed to deliver the online booking facility, they should at least give people the opportunity to get their bookings organised; the government should honour the 30-day contract—if they say they are going to pay, they should pay within 30 days; and, if the software is wrong, the government should get it right. The government promised that the reports would be issued within 10 days of an assessment being completed, and here we are, nearly three months down the track, and there are still no reports.

This matters very much, particularly to people who believed the government when it said that they would get their report in 10 days. After their assessment, expecting to receive their report in 10 days, some of them went and paid a deposit on equipment—on technology—so that, when the green loan came through, they actually had the money to pay for it. The green loans have not come through, and the result is that people have lost their deposits. That is plain wrong, and I am calling today on the government to go back and sort out the green loans. We desperately need them. People want to take this opportunity to borrow money and be able to put in energy-efficient technologies. They want to be able to do it, but this is a complete and utter shambles from the government, overseen by a minister who, clearly, has not taken the time out to get this right.

There has not been one green loan, and it is more than a year since this program was announced. It is time that the government got its act in order, supported the assessors, supported the community and reimbursed those deposits that people have lost. Let us get this program rolled out, make it efficient and, for goodness sake, get some accountability going, because—as it currently stands—this is one big shambles of a program.

Question agreed to.