Transcript – ABC24 Capital Hill – 18 October 2011

ABC24 – Capital Hill

Lyndal Curtis and Anna Burke MP

 

18 October 2011

 

5:30pm

E & OE

 

 

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Welcome to Capital Hill. The Government’s National Broadband Network chalked up another step today as Telstra shareholders voted to approve Telstra’s participation in the NBN. Under the $11 billion deal, Telstra will hand over its fixed line monopoly to the NBN and also decommission its copper network. On the other side, the Coalition was continuing to warn business against taking part in the Government’s carbon price, saying it will dismantle the $10 billion clean energy finance corporation.

To speak about the day’s events, I’ve been joined from Melbourne by Labor MP Anna Burke, and in Canberra, Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield. Welcome to you both. Mitch, if I could start with you. The Coalition’s promised to at least significantly scale back the NBN. Can you unwind the deal with Telstra?

FIFIELD:

I can understand at one level why Telstra agreed to this particular deal. It mightn’t have been what they would do had they started with a clean slate, but the Government essentially held a gun to the head of Telstra, and said that if you don’t sign up to this deal, we’ll punish you in a regulatory fashion. So I’m not sure that Telstra had much option there. But what we’ll do with the NBN is; what is in place at the time that we’re elected will be left there, we’ll commission the Productivity Commission to see what the lowest cost way is to provide broadband to the Australian public, and we’ll look at their recommendations.

CURTIS:

So would a Coalition government effectively have to accept the deal with Telstra, accept Telstra decommissioning its copper network, accept handing over the fixed line monopoly to the NBN?

FIFIELD:

We’ll have to take a look at what exactly Telstra have signed up to. It is a pretty bizarre proposition that the Government have put forward – where they’re paying Telstra to decommission their copper network, where they’re forbidding Telstra, and Optus for that matter, from competing on their HFC cable network. We think that there are alternatives; that you can avail yourselves of that HFC network, which passes 28% of households. We think that you can provide a range of options for regional areas with some government subsidy. So there is a better alternative at lower cost to the taxpayer, which will be cheaper for consumers and which will also make sure that government doesn’t get back in the business of being a monopoly provider.

CURTIS:

Anna, the National Broadband Network was one of the successes that the Government had at the last election, it also helped win over the independents to support you on the floor of the Parliament. Has the Opposition effectively chiselled away at the success of the NBN because of the costs involved?

BURKE:

No. The NBN is a great success story and what Mitch has just said is quite ludicrous. Telstra is a very successful and quite impressive business, and to think that they would cave into any Government pressure is just ridiculous. To say to all those shareholders who voted overwhelmingly for this deal that they don’t know what they’re doing is just ludicrous. This is a great deal for Telstra. It’s a great deal for Australia, and it is one of the reasons that the independents signed up with Labor to form Government, because in their regional areas, they are crying out for greater speed for greater broadband. It is the way of the future, it is for businesses, it is for farming, it is for health. They know that, and eventually the Opposition’s going to get on board and see what a great nation-building exercise the NBN is.

CURTIS:

NBN Co is rolling out its network, it’s announced new sites today. Will the success of the NBN depend on consumers being able to get access to it at an affordable cost?

BURKE:

Of course it will be. And that’s why we are doing this deal with Telstra to ensure that the cost of signing up to the NBN will be reduced. And over time it will come down. We’ve seen the roll-out in Tasmania and the take-up rates. We need to see more people taking it up. But we also need to see more sites online. One of the sites announced today is Brunswick in Victoria. I mean, this is an inner-city suburb in downtown Melbourne, and the fact that we don’t have reliable broadband in the suburbs of Melbourne is a disgrace, and that’s why we are filling this void, to ensure that businesses, that individuals, that education, that health can get online and we can actually interact in the world. At the moment we’ve got some of the slowest speeds and we need to be increasing these speeds so everybody has a better quality of life in Australia.

CURTIS:

Mitch, do you accept that there has been some failure by business to offer decent broadband to people who, as Anna pointed out, live in inner-city areas, live in cities that would maybe expect decent broadband?

FIFIELD:

The Government haven’t really given the private sector the option of doing this. The Government have said that they want to be a monopoly provider. Yes, they will allow people to retail those services, but the guts of what the Government is proposing is that they will be a monopoly provider. Governments shouldn’t be providing those sorts of services. You should be allowing the market to provide them where that’s feasible, and where the market isn’t able to do so, to provide a government subsidy. And that’s the Coalition’s proposal – not having government dictate the sort of technology that will deliver these services. We don’t know the way that technology will unfold in the future. And you don’t want to have government investing literally tens and tens of billions of dollars – committing Australia to technology which could become redundant.

BURKE:

Lyndal, that’s my point. Because there’s already market failure. Why isn’t there broadband there now? 

CURTIS:

Another area where the Coalition wants to wind back government spending is on the question of the carbon price. The Shadow Finance Minister Andrew Robb was warning businesses about the Coalition’s proposals to dismantle the ten billion dollar clean energy finance corporation if it wins government – a pledge that didn’t impress the Prime Minister.

JULIA GILLARD (file footage):

The statement of the Coalition today would destroy jobs, and the whole purpose of making the statement is for Mr Hockey and the Opposition to send a message that they want to destroy clean energy jobs. And at the same time they’re sending a message that they want to see electricity prices go up. 

CURTIS:

Anna, the Coalition has not only promised to repeal the carbon price, it’s also now picking out the specifics – particularly on the clean energy finance corporation. Is the Coalition basically going to continue the investor uncertainty, and cripple your carbon price in the early years because business will be wary of it?

BURKE:

I think this is an absolute outrage. Business has been looking for certainty in this space. We’ve passed the legislation through the House. It will go through the Senate. Business is looking for certainty. Speak to any investor in this area, speak to any energy company, be they in current coal-fired power stations, they are looking to know the future, and the opposition has taken that away from them today. It will not destroy what we are doing. We have passed the legislation. It will begin next year. Having chaired the inquiry into the clean energy futures I can say that there are businesses out there who are keen and ready to invest if they had the certainty. This is just economic-destroying stupidity on behalf of the Opposition and they need to come clean and say that we do need a clean energy future. We’ve all signed up to the notion that the climate is warming, that we need to do something. We’ve all gone for the same target. This is just ridiculous wrecking on their part and we need to say to businesses, to individuals, to individual households – the work you are already doing now – many have already started themselves. I’ve actually come from a tour of the Siemens plant where they’re doing some amazing stuff in this space, and they’d like to do more to ensure that we have an environment that our children can enjoy.

CURTIS:

Mitch, Andrew Robb this morning called the clean energy finance corporation a slush fund that will finance projects that the private sector won’t touch with a barge pole. But isn’t that what your emissions reduction fund is aiming to do as well?

FIFIELD:

No, not at all. We will put to the market the option of bidding for what are the most cost-effective ways to reduce emissions. So we’re not going to be picking winners in that sense, we’ll let the market determine the best approach. What the Government is proposing is what I would call a green bank – it’s got echoes of the Victorian Economic Development Corporation from the Kirner years, where the government is seeking to pick winners.

CURTIS:

But in your policy document it says, among other things, that the fund will call for tenders for projects that would not otherwise proceed without the fund’s assistance. Isn’t that stepping in where business doesn’t want to go?

FIFIELD:

We’d call for tenders, as our policy says, for people to put forward bids for what they think would be the best way to reduce emissions, and we would pick the most cost-effective ways of reducing emissions. The other interesting thing with this $10 billion green bank is that we discovered today in Senate estimates that this $10 billion is actually going to be on-budget. The Government said that it would be off-budget, but the Department of Finance confirmed that it will be on-budget, which means a $10 billion hit to the budget bottom line.

CURTIS:

If we could move on now, Anna, we haven’t had a chance to talk to you since the Government effectively conceded that onshore processing of asylum seekers was the only option left. Are you happy with the decision the Government has come to?

BURKE:

I’m happy with the outcome that’s been arrived at, but I would say it’s a situation that nobody is happy with. This is a difficult space to be in. I can understand as I said before that the Government is trying to arrive at a solution that is best for everybody. I wasn’t enamoured at the Malaysian Solution, so in some ways I am relieved, but we need to get on, we need to actually have some bipartisan support about dealing with this very fraught issue and remembering that we’re talking about people’s lives.

CURTIS:

It’s been reported that you were considering abstaining on a vote to allow offshore processing if they came to a vote. Is that correct? Were you considering that?

BURKE:

Look, you consider lots of things. But I’d have had to crossed a bridge when I got to it and I was going to see what happened on the day. But I wasn’t sharing my thoughts with anybody. It’s a situation that I’ve spoken publicly about, I feel strongly about, I know my community does as well and they’ve been behind and supportive of the comments I’ve made. I think we need to now get on and build some consensus around dealing with this issue, stop demonising individuals, stop talking about crises, and actually build towards a future where we can welcome people from all across the nations who are in desperate situations seeking refuge in Australia.

CURTIS:

The Prime Minister says the Government is still committed to offshore processing, particularly in Malaysia, even though it says it can’t legally do that. Would it be better if the Government more fully embraced onshore processing?

BURKE:

No, I think the Government’s position is clear and that they are sticking to their guns and I fully respect the Prime Minister for holding firm to her position. I think one of the things that has come out is that we’ve been accused in the Labor Party of being zombies and not having a debate – we’ve had some vigorous debates around this and I think that’s a good thing to explore those options. I wasn’t supportive of it but I can understand that the Prime Minister sees that this is, from her perspective, the best way to go, and you’ve got to commend her for sticking to her guns, even though I don’t agree with the outcome.

CURTIS:

Mitch, if asylum seekers are moved out into the community, as the Government is suggesting, after they have health, identity and security checks in detention, how do you think the community should treat them?

FIFIELD:

With respect. I think anyone who is in Australia, regardless of circumstances, deserves to be treated with respect. And I do want to acknowledge that Anna, in this debate, certainly isn’t a zombie. She’s someone who has the strength of her convictions, unlike the rest of her colleagues who vowed before the 2007 election and the 2010 election that offshore processing was immoral and ineffective. All of a sudden, apparently, it became effective and moral. It would seem that it’s only immoral and ineffective when the Coalition is doing it.

CURTIS:

But will all the heat surrounding this debate – all the political heat – damage that respect that you say asylum seekers should be treated with if they moved out into the community?

FIFIELD:

Australians give people a fair go. Australians take people as they find them. So I would expect that that would be the case. The issue here is that this is a Government which dismantled an effective border protection policy, which saw boats come – in excess of 12,000 people in more than 240 boats. This is a problem of their creation. We offered to help them with a solution. Make a simple amendment to their legislation which would ensure that countries had to be signatories to the refugee convention. The Government rejected that opportunity. They don’t have a policy as of this point in time.

CURTIS:

That’s where we’ll have to leave it. Mitch Fifield and Anna Burke, thank you very much for your time.

BURKE:

Thank you very much Lyndal.

FIFIELD:

Thank you.

 

ENDS