21-June-2010
Portfolio Media Releases, Infrastructure, The Economy
Topics: Labor’s reckless NBN proposal
E&OE
JON FAINE:
Andrew Robb, good morning to you.
ANDREW ROBB:
Good morning Jon.
JON FAINE:
Your party has been critical of the prospect of a deal. Now there is the reality of a deal, do you support what’s been done?
ANDREW ROBB:
No we don’t. Our view is the project itself in toto, whether with Telstra a deal was involved, or whether it wasn’t, is going to be ultimately a massive and hugely expensive white elephant and will lead to higher prices because of less innovation and ultimately, probably tens-of-billions-of-dollars of taxpayer debt that will have to be paid off.
JON FAINE:
What’s a white elephant about wiring up the nation for the fastest broadband we can get?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well the thing is Jon, it won’t be available for probably six or seven years to start with. It is overwhelmingly the most dynamic area of innovation and new technology across any sector in the economy. So it’s the most dynamic area and here we are putting at risk $43 billion of taxpayers’ money and in many respects this is going back to the future.
We had Telstra with a fixed line monopoly of copper all over the country and now it is just going to go back to a Government-owned monopoly of fixed lines at a time when there’s a staggering trend towards wireless technology.
JON FAINE:
But wireless technology, as I understand it, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on this, does not do the same thing as a fibre optic cable network.
ANDREW ROBB:
Well no it doesn’t at the moment, but people want mobility, so who knows in six or seven years, and what’s being risked is an investment of, a $43 billion investment of taxpayers’ money, not private sector money, taxpayers’ money.
JON FAINE:
Well no, Telstra is a private sector company and they’ve got into bed on this, if Telstra shared your views on this they wouldn’t have done this deal, would they?
ANDREW ROBB:
No, no, Jon, it was a Clayton’s agreement. The Government for a year now has had a gun to the head of Telstra. If they didn’t cooperate and come to some deal, then they would be forced into structural separation, which they saw would commercially disadvantage them and see Telstra share prices, which already collapsed, go down even further.
So Telstra in many respects have sought to make the best of a bad situation and take the money and that’s what’s happened. And that won’t even be settled for 12 months; this has been going for four years now and they promised the system would be rolling out.
JON FAINE:
Well Andrew Robb, the alternative scenario is that these have been protracted negotiations, where billions-of-dollars are involved; the Government has timed this exquisitely. Last week they stitch up a deal on parental leave, this week national broadband network, next week parliament will rise and they’ll do a deal on the mining tax and then bang into July and August you’ll have a federal election.
ANDREW ROBB:
And on all fronts a disaster Jon, that’s my view. This is a very bad investment. We are the only country I know in the world that is looking to re-nationalise or to go back to a situation where you’ve got a government-owned monopoly in telecommunications.
It is such a dynamic area of technological advancement and innovation, that to risk taxpayers’ money in an area that is just galloping in terms of new technology; the i-phones the i-pads. You know, an electrician who’s got bills to pay and new quotes to put through, wants to do it in his truck between jobs.
JON FAINE:
That’s right. So you have an optical fibre cable system with wireless nodes, this is the future, but you don’t have everything wireless, you have wireless hot spots and zones that feed off the optical cable.
ANDREW ROBB:
They’ll feed off, but if you put the backbone around the country, that’s about a $4 billion investment. You put a backbone to every sort of corner of the country, that’s not expensive; the private sector could then feed off that back bone very effectively, but what we’ve got is the Government putting a backbone, but then putting fibre into every household the seven million households. This is going to cost an absolute fortune. It’s got nothing to do, that has got nothing to do with mobile technology coming off the fibre or the backbone.
JON FAINE:
Also, Andrew Robb, we’ve only got a moment until the news. Your opposition to each of these issues that I’ve mentioned to you, interesting to reflect, although the prime minister wouldn’t be happy with the latest Newspoll, I suspect your side of politics would be no happier either, with primary vote for the Coalition declining since the last poll.
ANDREW ROBB:
Well, it fell one point so, but look the bottom line is Jon, the reason that the government’s in trouble is because we have started to keep this government accountable on things like broadband, on things like the mining tax and on many other projects, the emissions trading scheme and the prime minister’s been unable to explain to the Australian people why these things are a good thing. That’s what’s hurting him. If we keep them accountable, the polls will look after themselves.
JON FAINE:
Thank you for your time. Andrew Robb, the Shadow Minister for Finance.