Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (11.46 am)—Senator Conroy’s final point was: how quickly can you do my town? Well, how quickly can he do the country? How quickly can he absolutely make a complete and utter stuff-up of this? This is like groundhog day. It is the groundhog day we got with the Henry tax review, where they refused to launch the report. It is like the groundhog a day with the guide to the basin plan of the Murray Darling-Darling Basin Authority, another report they refused to release. Now we have a further groundhog day. This plan is uncosted and has no acumen behind it. What we are going to get is the same result we got in the ceiling insulation debacle, the same result we got in the Building the Education Revolution, the same result we got when we sent out $900 cheques aimlessly around the countryside, the same result we got when they went on their war against obesity. I never knew quite what happened to the fat people after that—whether it was a win, a draw or a loss—but this time it is serious money and it is borrowed money, and it goes on our nation’s credit card. How on earth are we going to pay it back when these people refuse shine a light, as Ms Gillard said? They will not table the business plan and they will not send it to the Productivity Commission. They go through the nefarious process, where after everybody has gone, in many moons’ time, they will release the business plan.
That is very similar to how they dealt with the Murray Darling Basin Authority when they locked one group, the fourth estate, in one room and the other group, the politicians, in another. That is how this crowd shines the light. But let us just make sure right at the start that we debunk one thing. Senator Conroy says it is not going to bring about a price increase, and about the only bit of information we can get is from the McKinsey report. The McKinsey report says that there will be a price increase of 450 per cent in real terms. If you take into account inflation, that is still in excess of 60 per cent over the next 50 years. That is in real terms, so let us get it out of our minds that this is somehow going to save us money. This is not going to save us money; this is going to cost us money.
Senator Conroy accused Senator Abetz of running out of content. The problem we have here is that we just do not have any content, we just do not have any information. To be sprung by Conroy, as he is so called, is like being hit in the back by a rainbow. It is beyond belief.
Senator Carol Brown—Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: I ask that Senator Joyce refer to the senator by his correct title.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Trood)—I think, Senator Joyce, the minister is entitled to be referred to by his appropriate form.
Senator JOYCE—Senator Conroy?
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Trood)—Senator Conroy or minister.
Senator JOYCE—To be sprung by Senator Conroy is to be hit in the back by a rainbow. In his performance this morning, he was sweating profusely and glowing like a pig because, all of a sudden, it is all coming crashing down around his ears. He does not have an understanding of the most basic terms of his own legislation. He does not have an understanding of whether it involves the term ‘NBN’. ‘No,’ he repeated; ‘No,’ he repeated thrice; ‘No,’—it is in here 62 times. Now he is querying the trade practices implications section 577B(a), so the only way to do this is to actually refer to section 7, where it says that you can do what you may and it will be accepted for the purposes of subsection 51(1) as being part of the Competition and Consumer Act. It does the same in subsections 8 and 10. What this arrangement does is allow them to walk around—and in some instances, absolutely leave behind—the proper oversights as conducted by what was known as section 51, part 1 of the Trade Practices Act. These are the sorts of technical details that are very important for people in the business community, and we cannot get them because the government will not be upfront and transparent. It is absolutely essential for all the people involved in the business arrangements to know what is going on. It is our job to ventilate those issues, and it cannot be done when we go through the nebulous process where they will not actually deliver and cough up the details. It is a case that they will deliver the study material after the exam. They want us to vote on it and then they will give us the material to study.
As an accountant you have to come up with business plans; people are coming up with ideas all the time. The first things you ask are: ‘How much is it going to cost, what are your cost tolerances and how much do you think it might blow out by?’ You would want to know what it will return and whether it would be safer just to leave your money in the bank. Even in the McKinsey report, it says that this is going to return six per cent. If I were going to go out and find $43 billion, borrowing the majority of it, just on a hunch I would suggest to the person that they had better get a better return than six per cent—Senator Ludlam interjecting—
Senator JOYCE—About six percent, which is the bond rate. Why on earth would you go and invest in something when there is not the return there. You will have to get the return. How are you going to get it? You are going to get the return by jacking up the price of phone calls.
Senator Ludlam interjecting—
Senator JOYCE—I take the interjection, Senator Ludlam. Remember they are punching this one back out. Even they say they are going to sell it again. For them to sell it, it has to get a commercial return. If it is going to get a commercial return, you are going to be paying far more for your phone calls than what they put down. This is the reality: even they are not saying that they are going to hold on to this. They believe they can punt this product back out. It is all starting to collapse in on itself. It just does not make any sense. Why would you risk so much of our nation’s money, why would you not just borrow it and invest it in the bank? It is just beyond belief that, on the most basic principles, we will be charging down this path. This is the most substantial capital infrastructure project in our nation’s history not by reason of its merit but by reason of what it is going to cost us.
When people say, ‘Compare it to a hospital’ you cannot. One is there to save people’s lives; the other is there as an alternative product to products that are already available and, what is more, it could be done at a vastly cheaper rate. These are the discrepancies. As an accountant you would ask: what technical capacities do you have to roll this thing out?’ I think we need in excess of about 25,000 technicians to work on this. We have, I think, about eight. Where are these people going to come from? How is this going to work? Is this something that just goes on forever because we do not have the capacity to actually deliver it in a technical form? These are the sorts of things that we need transparency about and that we need to have laid on the table. Why do we not have this information?
As an accountant you would start looking at the track record of the person who is about to go down this path. You would ask the question: what was your role in previous enterprises and how you have gone so that we get a sense of competency and comfort about where you are and that you are not taking yourselves down a blind alley to be quietly strangled. The government’s competencies are clearly betrayed in the ceiling insulation debacle where we spent $1½ billion putting fluffy stuff in the ceilings for the rats and mice to urinate on and then spent another billion dollars trying to get it back out again whilst 190 houses caught on fire and, unfortunately and tragically, four people lost their lives. Their competencies were reflected in the costs blow out in the Building the Education Revolution. For what purpose we do not know. There was no cost control whatsoever. Their competencies are reflected in the $900 cheques. Their competencies are reflected in the fact that we have just had the biggest deficit in our nation’s history. Their competencies are reflected in that we now have the biggest gross debt in our nation’s history. These are the competencies of this client who wants to build this telephone network—broadband network. Bells are ringing in the Australian nation now. We have people turning up from Mexico saying, ‘This is perverse, where are you people off to?’ We have senior telecom illuminati from Japan turning up and saying, ‘We just don’t know where you people are off to.’
All of a sudden it is starting to dawn on the Australian people that this is not for free; this is borrowed money and borrowed money demands a return and you are not going to get it from this. So you are going to have to try to work out a way to manipulate the process to create a monopoly so that with a monopoly you can demand a return. Who pays for that? It is the same person who currently cannot afford the power in their house. It is the person who cannot afford the food in their trolley. It is the person who cannot afford to keep themselves warm in winter and cool in summer. It is the person who is struggling with the fuel bills. They are the people who end up paying for all of this. It is our job here to protect those people because those are the basic necessities of life. They are important. People are voting with their feet when this thing is tested, people are not going for the wider suites and broadband nirvana, they are going for the basic service because cash is king in people’s lives and they want to make sure they protect that.
What is the process in this Groundhog Day that the Labor Party have presented to us? As I walked out the door, I heard the minister say, ‘It is time for the coalition to tell the truth.’ What a perverse statement. This is all about trying to get the truth out. This is about us in the coalition trying to grab what details we can on behalf of the Australian people to clearly spell the case of whether this is a prudent investment or an extremely dangerous frolic. There is the frivolous nature that is demonstrated by the minister when you debate him on national television. He talks over you all the time and he tries these oblique sort of giggling references as if it does not matter. This is other people’s money. There will be some lady at a checkout who will work late into the night to pay tax to pay this debt back. There will be a manual worker laying bricks to pay the tax to pay this debt back. There will be someone in an office who will work late into the night to pay the tax to pay this debt back. They have a right to know what this is all about. They have the right to know how much longer into the night they have to work to pay for this and we have a responsibility to try to tell them. The government have an obligation to be transparent, open and honest, and lay the details before the chamber, before the Senate, before the parliament for the proper ventilation of this.
This is something that is remiss. This is the crux of the issue, this is why the government are so sensitive about it and here it is: the NBN is the reason the Labor government is in government. That is what they put forward. It is the reason the Independents backed them. The NBN is the key in this house of cards and they know full well that if we pull this card out, if this card falls, the whole show comes down. That is why Minister Conroy was sweating so profusely on television this morning. It is not by reason that he managed to play soccer, have a shower, put a suit on and come up. It is by reason that all of a sudden it is starting to become apparent that he is not across the detail and the whole substance of this. The whole reason that led to the government being formed is going to come crashing down around them.
You can always take them to the place where they are weakest, because you take them to the detail. In the details they struggle. In the details they drown. In the details they are found lacking. They are the people with the big brush strokes who cannot get the fine art of the detail right. They never have and never could. When they cannot get the fine art right, what do they do?
Senator Lundy—You just belled the cat, Barnaby.
Senator JOYCE—They just run back to the people overseas and borrow more money off them to try to prop up the show.
Senator Lundy—That’s beautiful.
Senator JOYCE—On and on it goes.
Senator Lundy—It’s all we needed.
Senator JOYCE—They have borrowed up to $1.6 billion a week since Julia Gillard came to power. We will pull this card out and your house of cards will fall over.
Senator Lundy—It’s not about the policy.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Trood)—Senator Lundy, if you wish to participate in the debate, there is an appropriate way to do that.
Senator JOYCE—I can understand why Senator Lundy is emotive about this, because this is the reason the Labor Party are in power. If this NBN falls flat on its face—and that seems awfully likely—then decisions will have to be made about whether they deserve the mantle of running the government. That is the decision that will go back to the people. This is why this debate is front and centre.
If I were on the Labor Party frontbench I would like to be present when Senator Conroy makes his way to the cabinet meeting so I could ask him where on earth this is going. This thing is coming off the rails. People are losing faith in you. We have even got statements now of concern by the Independents and the Greens about the lack of transparency. You lack transparency when you do not want people to understand what you are up to and you are trying to hide the facts. The Labor Party are hiding facts. They are treating the Australian people once more—it is like groundhog day—like fools.
Currently the minister is, for all intents and purposes, in contempt of the Senate. That is how far this thing has descended. He refuses to acknowledge the will of the Senate as conducted by a vote. Why would we have this contemptible approach? Because they are terrified of the transparency and the consequences that that will bring to their government. This precarious and unstable process has brought us the NBN, which is starting to look awfully like the school halls program, the ceiling insulation program, the war on obesity, the war against inflation and the other wars and revolutions we have got. It is a reflection of the manifestation of the same approach we saw when they could not even hold their commitment to the Australian people to keep the person who was elected as the Prime Minister. They had to remove him.
This is the substance and the structure of the management critique of the people who are going to build a new telephone company. Whether you like it or not, if you are a taxpayer in Australia you are going to be a shareholder in this. Whether you like it or not, if you are a citizen of this nation you will now have this process forced on you. It is not something that you are desirous of as it will save you. They painted a false and misleading picture for the Australian people at the election and in this point in time they are not able to back it up with the detail.
When are the Labor Party going to deliver the detail that we and the Australian people have a right to know? When are you going to have a minister who understands what is in his own legislation and who is not so flippant and casual with the facts, like he is flippant and casual with the money? When will Minister Albanese in the other place concur with the comments made by Minister Conroy on television this morning? Minister Conroy said this has no relationship to the NBN, but Minister Albanese says it does.
When are you going to be upfront and truthful about the exact implications of section 577BA? If you did not put in that section, those issues most likely would not be compliant with section 51(1) of the Trade Practices Act. If you had been transparent and had not put in that clause, they would not be compliant with section 51(1). Why did you have to say, regardless of what might appear, these things are going to be compliant with section 51(1)? You said, ‘We are going to deem these things to be compliant with the Trade Practices Act,’ when quite obviously they will not be. But you do not know that, because you do not know the details. All you know is the text message that came via your phone. You never know the detail. You never sit back and actually read what you are about to deliver.
We have to make demands of the Senate—and I hope we get the support. Either you support transparency and accountable government, especially with the largest infrastructure project in our nation, or you do not. Either you respect the value of money or you do not. As an accountant I spent a lot of time with people who did not respect money and I saw those people at the end of the day getting to live in their son’s or daughter’s caravan because they lost their house.