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Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Page: 5870

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (13:06): The minister did this when we were last debating this legislation as well. He is pursuing the most misleading of arguments in this regard. He stands here and he says that Telstra provided and rolled out copper for free and that is why it is okay for the NBN Co. to do it with fibre. But there is of course a vastly different value offering at stake here, Minister. You are the one who has proclaimed that fibre is a far better value offering, and of course it is a far better value offering than copper.

Senator Conroy: Last time I checked, you support fibre in greenfields. That's what Mr Turnbull said.

Senator BIRMINGHAM: And, Minister, we have made it perfectly clear that in the amendments we are proposing to this legislation we are not stopping the provisions for fibre to be provided in greenfields; we simply want the opportunity for it to be provided competitively, and that is the vast difference. You are somehow trying to say that NBN Co. being the provider of free fibre in greenfields premises is perfectly analogous to Telstra having provided free copper in greenfields developments. Trans­parently it is not, because they are vastly different value offerings. Transparently it is not. We have made clear that we think that, if you are going to have fibre provided in all of the greenfields developments, it should be provided by businesses on a competitive basis.

Do you know what, of course, has happened while Telstra has been providing copper for free in greenfields developments? Private businesses have established, offering a better value offering to developers, offering something that distinguishes them. What is that better value offering? Fibre. That is why we have competitive greenfields fibre operators, Minister. That is why they have sprung up around the country. They have sprung up to fill the void of Telstra simply rolling out copper for free. The developers who want to offer the purchasers of their homes a better value offering have decided to do a deal with competitive greenfields fibre operators and allow them to roll out fibre instead of Telstra simply providing a free copper service.

But your legislation destroys that business model for those people because you substitute the option that currently exists or has previously existed of developers either getting copper for free in a development or paying something to have fibre rolled out with the option of their now getting fibre for free or paying something to have fibre rolled out. Transparently you have destroyed the business model of those people, you have destroyed the offering that is there for them and you are setting them all up now to go out of business. It is little wonder that they have made such impassioned pleas to the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network, that they have called for changes to this legislation and that the opposition has heeded those calls by proposing the amendments before the parliament at present.

As if it is not bad enough that you have failed to listen to those concerns of the stakeholders, failed to act on them and brought legislation into this place that will destroy their business model, you now reject opposition attempts to try to rectify your mistakes. You reject our initiative to try to restore something under which those people could keep their businesses going. In rejecting it, you then brush aside any serious questions that the opposition may have and you run misleading arguments by trying to compare it to a system that has now been abandoned of rolling out copper for free—versus rolling out fibre for free.

Your arguments are misleading. You need to acknowledge that. But you also need to answer the questions. Senator Macdonald has validly raised some questions, and I challenged you before, Minister, to say honestly whether you expect any competitive greenfields fibre operators to still be in the marketplace under the conditions your legislation establishes. Do you think there will be one? Do you think there will be any left, given the fact that you are putting in place a business model where developers can either get the fibre rolled out for free or they can pay for it? Like anybody with an ounce of common sense, they will go with the person who is providing it for free. Yes, if there is some technology beyond fibre that comes along, maybe we will then see something that is analogous to your copper story. If there is some technology that greenfields operators can offer that is bigger and better than NBN Co.'s fibre, maybe we will see people go for that—if there actually is a market demand for such things, which is a very big question at present.

But right now there is not. These business models have developed under the framework of offering a higher quality service of fibre compared to the free offering of copper. You are now making the minimum requirement fibre; that is the premise of this legislation. That is fine, but if you are making that the minimum offering you should do so in a manner that ensures you do not cut off the legs of the people who have been out there as the early adopters, the businesspeople who have invested their savings and their money to establish businesses that roll out fibre already in greenfields estates and have been doing so for some period of time. But you are just happy to lop off their legs, pull the rug out from underneath them and establish a new framework in which their business model is destroyed. So the simple question, Minister, is: do you think any of these businesses will survive?