Macdonald, Sen Ian

Senator IAN MACDONALD (Queensland) (18:03): I want to speak in the committee stage again. I have been asking a number of questions of the minister. I must say I have not received a lot of answers. I know Senator Birmingham, who is dealing with this matter on behalf of the coalition, will be in the chamber shortly to take up where he left off. He was speaking, the Senate might recall, when the Senate adjourned for question time. It is important, because this has been a truncated debate, that we reiterate briefly what this is all about, for those who might be listening. Senator Conroy: Listening for the third time! Senator IAN MACDONALD: Senator Conroy interjects and says that nobody listens to this debate on the TV. Senator Conroy: That is an outrageous assertion! I never said that! Senator IAN MACDONALD: Senator Conroy, can I say to you: since I last spoke I have had a couple of very interesting emails—unfortunately, I have come from the other side of the building, or I would have brought this letter down, because I would have liked to have read it to the chamber. Suffice to say that a constituent—well, actually, not a constituent of mine; he is from New South Wales—indicated that he had been listening. He was grateful that we were standing up for those people who work for the private contractors who are dealing with the greenfields sites that are going to be put out of business by this government's activities—yet more unemployment. He thanked me, and Senator Birmingham as well, for standing up for them and for putting the government through its paces and for trying to get the government to answer questions. He did say that he was disgusted that the Senate had to call quorums to make sure that the minister was in the chamber and listening to the questions and actually responding to them. Senator Conroy: I was in the chamber at all times. You should stop telling lies in the chamber! Senator IAN MACDONALD: Senator, we made it quite clear this morning that we expected you at least to listen to the questions and perhaps try to give answers. But of course there was a period when you just disappeared; you were up the other end, talking intently, and when we asked questions there was no-one here to even attempt to answer them. Senator Conroy interjecting— Senator IAN MACDONALD: This sort of thing, Senator Conroy, is a demonstration to those who do listen to these debates of the absolute arrogance of this government in dealing with the NBN and in dealing with the carbon tax. The government and the Greens in partnership, in alliance, in coalition in government, just ride rough and ram through any bit of legislation. We are going to see later this month and next month an absolute spectacle from the Greens political party, who have always pretended that they are bastions of free speech and have always said they want to allow full debate in the chamber, wanting issues like the spending of $55 billion of taxpayer money to be fully debated. With perhaps the biggest tax ever to be imposed upon the Australian public, what are the Greens political party going to do with all the great principles that they used to have about allowing free debate in this chamber? I read in the paper—of course it has not come to the chamber; who would expect the Greens and the Labor Party to follow the processes and do things through the democratically elected parliament?—that the Greens and the Labor Party are going to guillotine the debate on the biggest taxation imposition on Australia for many, many years. It is a taxation imposition that will do absolutely nothing for carbon emissions from Australia. Indeed, we know from the government's own figures that at the end of 2020 the emissions of carbon from Australia will have increased. The only thing that will have happened is that Australians will have been slugged with a huge tax which we know will increase the cost of living and will make electricity, gas and transport dearer. That is what the Greens political party, in collusion with the Australian Labor Party, will do with that. The way the government has dealt with this bill and the carbon tax bill shows the absolute arrogance of the Labor Party and the Greens when it comes to democratic institutions like the Senate of our national parliament. I asked a number of questions earlier. I am concerned, as I mentioned previously, about the cost of the National Broadband Network as proposed by the Australian Labor Party. In the 2007 election they promised a national broadband network that would cost the taxpayers $4.7 billion. We are here debating another bill which is part of the series of pieces of legislation that will impose a $55-plus billion National Broadband Network on Australia. In answer to a previous question, Senator Conroy, the minister, said that the corporate plan had determined that the prices would come down. This is a document written as a corporate plan. It says, 'We propose this. Our plan looks forward and what we want to do is bring the prices of telecommunications down.' What we then find is that someone—and Senator Conroy was a bit reticent on who it was, but I think it was the NBN Co.—has actually made an application to the ACCC for a special access undertaking, which is lodged with the ACCC, that proposes yearly price rises of up to the CPI plus five per cent. Everywhere else in the world and here in the last 10 years prices of telecommunications have come down with competition, and Senator Conroy says, 'That is what the corporate plan says too—that prices are going to come down.' Yet if the prices are coming down, Senator Conroy, as proposed by the corporate plan, why was it that NBN Co. applied to the ACCC for special access undertakings which propose yearly price rises of CPI plus five per cent? Senator Conroy told us earlier, 'No, you're wrong because the corporate plan'—the bit of paper with a hope written on it, and that is all I can say the corporate plan is—'actually talks about prices going down.' But what actually happened last week is that NBN Co. applied to the ACCC for permission to increase prices not just by CPI to maintain equity but by CPI plus five per cent. We know that that is true because this financial white elephant cannot make money. The only way it can be propped up, as Senator Birmingham has mentioned several times before, is if the Labor Party uses various tricks of the trade like this fibre deployment bill that we are debating to try to shovel some revenue into the NBN Co. so that it will not make as big a loss as it is obviously facing in the future. In this committee stage, I ask the minister again: if, as he indicated, the corporate plan says prices are to come down, if Australia's history with competition in the last 10 years has shown prices coming down and if telecommunications prices around the world are coming down because of competition, why is it then that NBN Co. has applied for yearly price increases of CPI plus five per cent?