NBN will have to get used to the scrutiny - the public has every right to know
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday March 23, 2011
The boss of NBN Co, Mike Quigley, produced some statistics yesterday that certainly underline that the broadband network he is building for the government is a political football.The company charged with deploying debt and $27 billion of taxpayer money on the design, construction and operation of the broadband network appears at the Senate estimates committee three times a year, along with other government business enterprises (GBEs). And it is getting much more parliamentary scrutiny than other enterprises under the wing of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy.At the most recent estimates hearings in late February, the Australian Communications and Media Authority was left with five follow-on questions to answer before the next hearing. The SBS television network fielded two, Australia Post received 27 follow-on questions, and the ABC, a bit of a football itself, received 43. Quigley was given 202 separate pieces of homework.Quigley cited the figures in Melbourne yesterday to buttress his argument that the NBN is the most scrutinised government business enterprise in history, and arguably in danger of being overburdened.But he is going to have to get used to it. He is running the biggest and one of the riskiest capital works programs ever undertaken in this country: disclosure has to be maximised, however inconvenient it is for NBN and its partners, including Telstra.The GBEs are audited by the Auditor-General, and provide business plans to the government. And unlike the other GBEs, NBN's business plan is broadly in the public domain, after the government's release in December of 160 pages of the original 400-page plan submitted by NBN. The opposition communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, has called for the entire report to be released. But, with the December release, the NBN has set a new benchmark on that front.The broadband company is also reporting at present to four parliamentary forums: the Senate environment and communications legislation committee, which is overseeing the legislation that enables the NBN; the House standing committee on infrastructure and communications, which has a brief from the Infrastructure Minister, Anthony Albanese, to examine the broad economic and social impact of the project; the estimates committee; and a joint standing committee on the national broadband network, a special purpose committee that the government agreed to establish to win Senator Nick Xenophon's support for the project. Those final two committees will have a continuing oversight role once the NBN is clear of the legislative process, and as Quigley observes, the politics of the project ensures that the level of scrutiny will be intense.Freedom of information inquiries will be another burden, but some critical disclosure points are looming as the NBN and Telstra close in on their $11 billion deal for Telstra to co-operate with the construction of the network by selling and renting copper network infrastructure and to progressively transfer its copper wire customers across to the NBN.Quigley is adamant that the network is not going to be a cost-plus builder. The government will get detailed information about budgets and outcomes, and in the event of cost overruns will be making the call about whether the project proceeds, he told the estimates hearing last month.There is no specific requirement for the government to release the budget information it gets from NBN. Its decision to release an edited version of NBN's first business plan was an exception to the rule that GBE business plans are confidential.But in NBN's case, the government needs to continually demonstrate that it is not overlooking cost overruns in its desire to get the national network built.The recent Australian Competition and Consumer Commission decision to lower the prices that telcos pay for access to Telstra's copper wire network will, for example, probably result in Telstra booking less revenue from the copper network until its copper wire traffic has totally migrated across to NBN.Telstra believes that it extracted an agreement from the government during its negotiations over the broadband network that it would have stable copper network pricing until NBN took over, and in the wake of the ACCC decision is odds-on to seek compensation.The federal government can provide it by tweaking the terms of the NBN deal. But if it does, the change should be detailed, along with the other aspects of the Telstra co-operation pact. Any claims on either side that aspects of the co-operation pact are "commercial in confidence" are overwhelmed by the public's need to know that this project will not blow its gargantuan budget.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald