Mr OAKESHOTT (5:17 PM) —I will try to be brief in response to comments from the member for Cowper and the amendment before the House. A lot of work has gone in today to try to get a resolution that is an outcome for the greater good of better ICT services in regional areas and less about political positioning and rhetoric. I am, I guess, not surprised by the lack of shame and the enormous inconsistency in the amendment put forward today. I start where the member for New England finished and put to the member for Cowper the question of whether or not they are supportive of the substance of the bill. If they are not, proposing amendments in detail that are implying support for the bill is hypocrisy and inconsistency of the highest order.

So I am assuming, based on what I have heard from a neighbouring MP in public domains for the last six to 12 months in and around the Coffs Harbour community. Even though it is one of the first rollout sites, the member for Cowper has been quite open about the fact that he is not supportive of the NBN. He has been quite open about saying, ‘This is a cost that the country cannot afford.’ He has not considered, in my view, the issues around the innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities that come with the rollout of better ICT in regional communities such as the mid-North Coast. He takes that position publicly and then comes down to Canberra and moves amendments to make the cost higher. If the criticism has been that the cost of the NBN is too high, the amendment he is moving today would increase that bill. No shame is being shown at this point about that inconsistency. As well, with a rollout site in the community and the member running around at home in the electorate of Cowper saying publicly that he does not support it and then sneaking down to Canberra and moving amendments in detail about the policy, potentially to show off to parliamentary colleagues that he gets the detail—again, that is dripping with hypocrisy and is shameless in the duplicity between what you are doing in your electorate and what you are doing here in Parliament House.

Also, there is a moment where we need to reflect on why we are even having this debate. It took a tight parliament to achieve an outcome on uniform national wholesale pricing. If we really want to cut to the chase, it took some Independent members, negotiating on behalf of regional Australia, to get something that is very important for regional communities as regards pricing and the cost of living. Why on earth wasn’t this done before? There have been plenty of coalition governments, going back to the 1940s, where this could have been negotiated and has not been. It is dripping with shameless hypocrisy and inconsistency, once again, for a speech that I just heard to criticise the member for New England and me for taking the position that we have in making uniform national wholesale pricing an issue in the first place and getting the concept into this parliament in the first place. For some reason, we are being criticised because of that.

We have negotiated all day to try to get an outcome that captures the spirit of what we are trying to achieve in regard to uniform national wholesale pricing. I am very pleased that we now have that locked down with a resolution to come in the parliament, and I am very pleased that we have a community impact statement that will be attached to any future policy decisions around technology, speed and price.

I am also pleased for the sake of taxpayers that we have saved a substantial amount of money today by not having to see a recall of the Senate and a recall of the House of Representatives to get this issue resolved. Potentially somewhere in the order of $2 million and $4 million of taxpayers’ money has been saved by that work today. Again, will we get thanks from the member for Cowper or will we get criticism? We will get criticism—and he is not supporting the substance of the bill. (Time expired)