Mr FRYDENBERG (5:22 PM) —I rise to speak on the amendments before the House, and particularly the constraints placed on the ACCC by this government and the abuse of process and power that that represents when it comes to the NBN.

Not only is this government creating a $50 billion white elephant when you take into account the debt, the equity and the payments to Telstra but this has morphed from a $4.7 billion original investment, and it has now received comments from groups like the Economist Intelligence Unit, which compared it to the Korean national broadband initiative. It said that in Australia we are getting one-tenth of the speed of Korea and 24 times the price.

Why has this government, in the dead of night last week, introduced nearly 30 pages of complex amendments not subject to scrutiny? Why does it not have the courage to put its amendments before the House in a proper way? And why, when it comes to the ACCC and the issues that we are debating at the moment, has it allowed the NBN Co. to have the benefit of a statutory authorisation to allow it to escape the proper scrutiny of the ACCC when it comes to the bundling of services, cross-subsidisation and uniform pricing? These are important matters, and the government’s initiatives are going to reduce competition.

What is more, Senator Conroy should know better as the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, because in March 2010 he went on Lateline, and these are his words. He said he was putting in place:

So now the minister is damned by his own words, because the amendments that he has sought to bring have actually reduced the influence and the authority of the ACCC.

We should not expect anything different from this government because it has not subjected the NBN to proper scrutiny, with no parliamentary oversight from the Public Works Committee, even though it is the greatest public works initiative undertaken in Australia’s history. It is not subject to FOI, even though it was the Rudd government that went to the election and promised to:

It has not done that, because it is exempting the FOI.

It has not put it before Infrastructure Australia. Infrastructure Australia is a body set up with specific expertise in the telecommunications sector, and the government will not refer it to Infrastructure Australia. I was with the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit the other day, and we had the head of Infrastructure Australia there. He confirmed that that was the case.

The government will not allow scrutiny by the Productivity Commission, even though the Greens requested that the Productivity Commission investigate the NBN prior to sale. Why will it not allow the Productivity Commission to use its expertise now? And why will it not fully release the business case that it had undertaken? It only released a couple of hundred of 400 pages, and it made the Independents sign confidentiality agreements.

It has been said by the member for New England and others that we do not have an alternative policy. Yes, we do. We have an affordable and effective alternative broadband policy, one that is costed over the next seven years at around $6 billion. It is one that uses the variety of technologies: wireless, satellite and fibre. It is one that actually leverages off the private sector and does not just create a new government monopoly. It is one that will not run away from the ACCC, FOI or the Productivity Commission.

We on this side of the House proudly support privatisation. We on this side of the House proudly support competition. We on this side of the House proudly support an affordable broadband network. But we will not support this government running away from proper scrutiny.