Interesting read from yesterday's senate debate (see Hansards)....

Interesting read from yesterday's senate debate (see Hansards). Obviously from the coalition's perspective. How does CONroy get out of this saving face - perhaps only by senate numbers altered by election?

Senator Macdonald:

I am pleased that Minister Conroy has come into the chamber, because he will know better than I that, when Telstra was having a little tiff with the former coalition government a few years ago, Senator Conroy became very palsy-walsy with Telstra. He went to them and said, Ive got no idea of what a communications policy should involve. I have no staff; I have no ability. So you tell me what you would want. Telstra gave him some advice and mentioned a figure of $4.7 billionand, lo and behold, that became the Labor Party policy. When Labor won government, Minister Conroy suddenly found that it was not quite that simple. He first of all destroyed the OPEL network, which was up and running and which, by now, would have been providing high-speed broadband to most of Australia. Senator Conroy, capriciously again, simply cancelled that contract and threatened those involved that, if they wanted to have an interest in telecommunications in Australia in the future, they had better forget about any High Court action against the government.

Then we went through an expensive farce involving the offer to tender process, which cost the Australian taxpayer $20 million. At the end of that, Senator Conroy realised again that his policy and that of his government was up in the air, all over the ship and going nowhere. Then he had this brilliant idea that he would put in $43 billion worth of someones money. Because we have not seen the implementation study we are not sure whose money it was going to be, but we were all led to believe that 51 per cent of that money would be Commonwealth investment and 49 per cent would somehow be private investment. With the $43 billion, Senator Conroy was going to build this National Broadband Network, which would effectively take over the trunk lines, if I can call them that, of Telstra, Optus and anyone else who might have them. And the government would not brook any competition from Telstra or Optus because the figures, if you look at them, mean that for $43 billion this NBN network simply cannot operate. It is a commercial lemon. There is no way in the world it could make a profit or even hold its own in competition with Telstra, who effectively have a similar sort of network amongst the high-using parts of our country.

What did Senator Conroy then work out? If he went into competition with Telstra, with the $43 billion and the amount that he would have to charge customers to get the network to even remotely look like paying, he would be out on his commercial ear, one might say. Quite clearly, Telstra with its existing network, and Optus and the other carriers, would be able to provide a service at about the cost they are providing it now. The NBN, on even the simplest back-of-the-envelope figures, would have to double or triple the monthly payment for those people wanting to use the NBN service. Who would go to the NBN service when they could get a service from Telstra or Optus or Vodafone for about one-third of the cost? Nobody. Competition is not what Senator Conroy wants, because NBN would fall flat on its face commercially.

So what did he do? He then came along with the bullyboy tactics and said to Telstra, We want you to give us your network and for you to get out of the wholesale area so that we wont have any competition in that area and we mightjust mightbe able to make ends meet. This bill actually puts into legislative form that confiscation of property to ensure that Telstra is not there to compete with this NBN, because, if it did, the NBN would have no chance of being commercially successful. Even as it is, it will not have much of a chance of being profitable.

This comes from a government that cannot even run a giveaway insulation program. Surely, if you are giving away insulation, you could devise a program that would work. It is not rocket science; in fact, anyone could do itanyone, that is, except Mr Garrett and the Rudd government. They have made such a mess of that simple piece of policy implementation; how on earth could they possibly run this National Broadband Network?