Senator ABETZ (12:15 PM) —The amendment dealing with the objects of the legislation are very, very important for us to consider, because this is all about whether this is affordable and whether or not the business case has actually been made out. From a 400-page business case, the Labor Party say they have given us a 50-page summary.

Senator Conroy was not able to count the number of times ‘NBN’ is mentioned in the legislation. Remember that he appeared on national television saying that the legislation before us does not deal with the NBN, when the NBN is mentioned in the legislation not once or twice, not 50 times, but on 62 separate occasions. That is the ignorance with which the minister has clothed himself to enter this debate. That is the ignorance with which the Labor Party, the Greens and the crossbenchers are now saying that we should rush this legislation through the chamber without proper consideration.

The summary is not 50 pages; there are in fact 36 pages. You might think, ‘Well, what’s a factor of 14 pages?’ But if you go to page 6, you see that it does not even have a full sentence on it—it is blank. And so it goes on and on throughout this document. To say that it is a 50-page document is simply wrong. One might say that it has 36 pages. Yes, there are 36 separate pieces of paper but without type on them. That is the scandal with which the Labor Party come into this place, trying to hoodwink the Australian people.

This summary document is one of the most flimsy and most pathetic documents I have read. It was prepared by NBN Co. themselves—and guess what? NBN Co. say it is a robust document. It is their business plan. Would they say, ‘We don’t have a robust case; it’s going to go broke; it’s no good’? I have never heard of a business plan that does not seek to promote itself.

I recall as a young lawyer being in the magistrates courts, and the prosecutor would always say, ‘We have a strong prima facie case against the accused.’ I got sick and tired of that after a while and I said, ‘Your Worship, have you ever heard a prosecutor admit, ‘We’ve got a pretty weak case on this fellow’? Never once. It is the same with business plans. They never once will say, ‘This is a weak business plan.’ They will always say that it is robust. And you know what? In the very second paragraph of the summary, we are told that ‘the business case includes robust sensitivity analysis throughout the plan’—robust.

This is what has convinced the hapless crossbench senators to now support this—because that is what the summary says. But they have forgotten that the government itself does not believe that this is robust, because it has engaged the services of Greenhill Caliburn business assessors to assess—and the government uses these words—‘the robustness of the plan’. The government itself does not accept on face value that this is robust and will hide from us the report from Greenhill Caliburn on whether the business case is robust until after we have voted on this legislation and until after the parliament has risen.

This is an absolute abrogation of duty and responsibility by the Australian Greens and crossbench senators. I would have thought that they would have learnt their lesson—waving through government programs that have seen the deaths of four of our fellow Australians and 200 roof fires with the debacle of the pink batts scheme. They were convinced that the government had it all in hand and that we did not need to scrutinise it in the way the coalition said it should be scrutinised, so they just waved it through. It is on their heads that there have been 200 roof fires—just as much as it is on the head of the hapless Minister Garrett.

We could move on to the Building the Education Revolution, where there has been blow-out of over $1 billion. Indeed, the pink batts scheme, costing the taxpayer $1 billion has now blown out, with remedial work being needed, by another $1 billion. That is $1,000 million to be funded by the Australian taxpayers because the crossbenchers and the Greens were not willing to do the hard yards, the hard yakka, in relation to assessing government programs. If they failed so comprehensively in relation to the pink batts program, the Building the Education Revolution program and the $850 million blow-out on the Green Loans scheme—or should I say scandal—surely, after all those experiences in the three long years of Labor that we have had thus far, they should be saying: ‘The amber light is flashing; we should take some caution in relation to this. We should be provided with the full information.’ But no, they have gone cap in hand with the government to allow a $43,000 million program to be waved through this parliament without any proper and fair assessment.

And what should make the amber light go red for those opposite is when the hapless Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, who is in the chamber, appears on national TV and says that the legislation we are now dealing with does not involve the NBN; that it is not mentioned. The problem is that the minister had never creased the spine of the bill. He had never opened the bill. If he had he would have seen that it is mentioned 62 times. That is the sort of ignorance with which the Labor Party have entered into this debate and somehow—I still do not know how—have conned the crossbenchers.

I refer to the media release put out by my good friend Senator Xenophon. It is headed ‘Government agrees to publicly release full NBN summary’. That is like saying that this is a full half glass of water. How can you have a full summary? You either have a summary or part of it or the full document. We in the coalition are demanding and requesting the full document because there is no doubt that this summary is flawed. You do not have to go far into the document. Indeed, on page 4, under ‘Business Environment’, part of this business plan is a simple, pathetic regurgitation of what the government’s objects are in relation to the NBN.

Senator Ludlam —Mr Chairman, I rise on a point of order. I seek your guidance. This debate is about perfectly reasonable amendments to the objects clause of the Telecommunications Act. Does Senator Abetz need to be remotely relevant to the amendments or is he able to just discuss whatever matters come into his head? I just seek the guidance of the chair.

The CHAIRMAN —Senator Ludlam, I have been listening carefully to Senator Abetz and I can assure you that he is being relevant.

Senator ABETZ —Thank you, Mr Chairman. I can understand the Greens’ huge embarrassment, having voted for the gag time and time again to truncate discussion on this because they do not want these matters aired. I was wrong about the page number, so the point of order by Senator Ludlam was helpful to me. I was, in fact, referring to page 7, where the summary of the business plan says ‘Key objectives’. All the NBN Co. does is regurgitate:

How is that in any way, shape or form giving us information about the NBN’s business plan? All they are doing is regurgitating the propaganda of the government, and they cannot even do it properly. I draw the attention of those in NBN Co. who drafted this document to page 7. It says:

Then they go through dot point after dot point after dot point, but the inverted commas stop at the second last dot point. So one wonders: is it an objective of the government:

If that is not part of the government’s objectives, what is it doing indented in the paragraph in this way? This shows that this document has been put together in a sloppy and unprofessional manner, or in indecent haste. I suspect the latter. If you recall, Labor was saying it is completely and utterly inappropriate to release any of the business plan, that it was top-secret stuff and that it would take them more than 14 days to analyse the 400 pages to determine what should be deleted. All it took was one Independent senator to say, ‘I’m not sure that’s good enough.’ All of a sudden they can produce 36 pages of documentation which allegedly does tell us all about that business plan, which only two hours earlier had been ruled out as being completely unacceptable. This is from a government that got into government doing deals with the Australian Greens and the country Independents on one very important proviso: we would have ‘Operation Sunlight’—there would be complete transparency, there would be openness and there would be no secrecy. And what do we have? The Independents and the Australian Greens, cap in hand, voting with the Australian Labor Party to ensure that there is no transparency, no accountability and no openness. Undoubtedly, a side deal has been done and we will see later on, in the course of this parliament—some time next year, no doubt—as to what that side deal is and how the Labor dog is going to be wagged, especially by its newly found Green tail.

The minister clearly has to tell us whether that is an error on page 7 of the document. He also needs to tell us the time line. We move to page 8, where it says:

So we are being asked to vote for this legislation to help assist NBN Co. get established and underway when the NBN’s corporate plan has still not been approved by the government. How can any senator who takes his or her responsibility seriously vote for this legislation, let alone vote to gag discussion of this legislation, when those fundamental and foundational documents, which should be available to us, have not been provided and which, as a result, are denying us the opportunity to make a rational, sound and considered decision?

I have reminded the Greens and I have reminded the crossbenchers, and I do so again: you know what happened when you went along with the Labor agenda in relation to pink batts, Building the Education Revolution and the Green Loans scheme. It seems those lessons have been lost on you. Those lessons have meant absolutely nothing. You mucked up with a $1 billion plan for pink batts, an eight-hundred-and-something-million-dollar plan for Green Loans, and the multi-multi-billion-dollar plan on Building the Education Revolution. That was only small fry. Let’s see if we can really muck it up with something big and make it worthwhile, like a $43,000 million plan.

Of course, there is no business plan before us. There is no corporate plan. There is no government response to the implementation study. There is no Greenhill Caliburn consideration of the business plan before us. None of those documents are before us. How could any person seeking to parade any scintilla of independence come into this chamber and give a blank cheque to the Australian Labor Party—given its past history of mismanagement—to deal with this issue in this manner? Any suggestion of independence, any suggestion of really considering this matter in detail, is completely and utterly thrown out the window—especially when you support the gag, especially when you seek to do everything to truncate debate on this fundamental infrastructure project for our nation.