Shadow Communications Minister Nick Minchin has demanded the government prove that Treasury Secretary Dr Ken Henry advised it to go ahead with the $43 billion National Broadband Network project.
Shadow Communications Minister Nick Minchin has demanded the government prove that Treasury Secretary Dr Ken Henry advised it to go ahead with the $43 billion National Broadband Network project.
It seems very hard to believe that the likes of Dr Henry would
advise the government to proceed with a high-risk $43 billion
project.
Nick Minchin
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Communications Minister Stephen
Conroy have said that they were acting on advice from the expert
panel, of which Henry was a member, when it made its decision to
roll out fibre-to-the-home.
"It seems very hard to believe that the likes of Dr Henry would
advise the government to proceed with a high-risk $43 billion
project, funded by billions of dollars of debt, without any
evidence that the venture will be commercially viable," Minchin
said in a statement.
"Despite the claims of Senator Conroy and Mr Rudd, there is
nothing in the public domain that confirms this is in fact the
advice the expert panel provided. If such advice exists, taxpayers
have every right to see it, considering they will carry the bulk of
the risk," he said.
Minchin reminded Conroy of his obligation to release the expert
panel's advice and that of the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC) as the Senate had
ordered in February.
Although an extract of the expert panel's advice has been
released, the full document has
been withheld. None of the ACCC's report has been aired. Conroy
has said that the documents contained commercial-in-confidence information.
Yet Minchin
believed Conroy would only withhold the documents if he had something to hide.
With a Senate Estimates session coming up after the
budget is released in May, Minchin will have the opportunity to probe
Conroy and Henry on the advice. Neither Conroy nor Henry were able
to comment at the time of publication.
Henry is no stranger to intense questioning at Senate Estimates,
having faced Liberal senators grilling him over the bank deposit
guarantee, even questioning him about his integrity. The Liberals
had been trying to ascertain the truth behind reports which had
said that Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens had not been
comfortable with the unlimited bank guarantee. Henry strongly denied the reports.