Mr TURNBULL (6:33 PM) —We just spent the best part of an hour in the previous debate discussing the issue of uniform national pricing. So there has been plenty of debate and there have been plenty of opportunities for the government to deal with this. This motion before the House is completely inappropriate. I will come to its wording and inappropriateness in a moment, but it is important to understand its political genesis. The member for Cowper had an amendment to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2011 which would have provided, in clear statutory language, the obligation on NBN Co. to charge the same price for broadband in megabits per second whether it was delivered through fibre in the city, through wireless in the bush or through satellite in the more remote areas.

The country Independents were initially very attracted to that and we made some changes to the language of the amendment to suit the request of one of the country Independents who was very enthusiastic about it. But then, as the debate was getting dragged on by speaker after speaker from the government, we realised that our friends on the crossbenches were locked in a tender embrace with the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy. They emerged with a sense of achievement because they had received an undertaking from the government to prepare a community impact statement on all future policy decisions on technology. Well, that is hardly an achievement. It is no substitute for statutory language.

But that is the deal they have done: they gave up a very clear amendment which would have given their constituents a very clear guarantee that could not be taken away by any government. It would need a vote of both houses of parliament to take it away. They gave in for these warm words from the government. After doing that and debating it for over an hour, we now have the farce of this so-called motion. This motion asks the House to note that:

For our part, we do not know whether the government will do that or not. We are not going to give any imprimatur or approval to a statement of intention. The government has broken more promises than they have had hot dinners. They are always promising things and breaking those promises. They also want the House to note that:

How on earth can the opposition vote for that? We cannot say that we agree, note or endorse in anyway the government’s statement of intention. The fact that they voted down the member for Cowper’s amendment suggests that they are not committed to uniform national wholesale pricing at all. They want us to note that there will be:

It is fine for the government to state that as their intention. They can put it on the NBN Co. website if they like, but why should the opposition, who does not believe the government when they say they are committed to fairness for the regions, be expected to endorse that?

Finally, they have asked the House in this urgent motion to note that the NBN has achieved uniform national entry level pricing across technologies. It has not achieved anything. It has not even started operating. At this stage, it has got many times more employees than it has actual customers. It is an extraordinary organisation. This is a presumptuous and impertinent resolution. We are not going to dignify the government’s deal with the country Independents. If they want to substitute not warm but lukewarm words for real statutory language that would protect the rights of their constituents, as we sought to do, that is their problem. They can live with that. But we are not going to give special leave for this absurd motion. If, by some miracle of arithmetic—and I do not expect a miracle on that score—special leave were to be granted, we would certainly vote against the resolution.