SENATOR SCOTT RYAN Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition Liberal Senator for Victoria
Transcript Panel with Chris Uhlmann and Ed Husic MP ABC News 24
7 October 2010, 4.30pm
Subjects: Murray Darling Basin report, NBN, Government intimidating business leaders
E & OE
CHRIS UHLMANN
Now the Murray Darling Basin report is out tomorrow, in fact it's a guide to the draft report that's out tomorrow, clearly a lot of information out and about today. Scott Ryan, 27% to 37% cuts in water allocations, is that something that your party could live with?
SCOTT RYAN
Chris, those figures that were in today's papers represent pretty drastic change to some major regional communities in Australia. The real challenge here is how we balance environmental but also social and economic considerations. The Coalition has called for the figures tomorrow to be referred to the Productivity Commission and ABARE for a full and complete environmental, social and economic analysis, but the government seems unwilling to do that.
ED HUSIC
Well, a number of things need to be said. Firstly, tomorrow is the release of the draft plan, and critically, there needs to be a lot of consultation. I understand it will be up to sixteen weeks of consultation with a range of people, with farmers and irrigators, to work through these issues. Referring it off in the way that's been described is one suggestion, but the most important thing, the best thing we could do right now is to talk with the people directly involved on what's a pretty sensitive issue given the over allocations that have gone on in the past and the competing and overriding desire to ensure that we have a healthy river.
SCOTT RYAN
I was going to say, Ed, tomorrow's not the release of the draft report, it's the release of the figures that come out before the draft report which will be released later this year. What we have is regional communities with the 18 month delay under this government of setting up the commission. We have regional communities with major uncertainty about their economic livelihoods which is going to impact on the future of those towns. Those communities need certainty. Continuing a process of consultation is very important, but we also need a rigorous assessment, not only of the environmental effects, but also the social and economic effects of the proposed figures that we're going to see tomorrow.
ED HUSIC
Look, Scott, you're absolutely right, just to correct the misstep that I made, absolutely, it's a guide to the plan itself, but nothing alters the fact that it's still requiring a lot of consultation with a range of people, and that needs to start.
CHRIS UHLMANN
That's the question isn't it, Ed, how do you balance all of these competing interests?
ED HUSIC
Yeah, absolutely, and for a range of points that Scott made, in terms of the impacts on a range of different people, it is something that requires us to listen very carefully, to take into account a range of views, some of which are competing, to try and get the best outcome, but it's going to be tough and the only way to get through it is to be able to listen effectively and consult.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Surely too, Scott Ryan, you have to make some sort of savings to allocations along this river, it can't continue the way that it is at the moment.
SCOTT RYAN
No, in fact this whole process we're going through, delayed though it is, is the result of the water plan instituted by the previous Coalition Government in 2007. What the government could have done is not delay the set up of the commission. It could have actually spent more than $300 million of the just over $5.5 billion it has promised to spend on efficiency and infrastructure improvements – all of which would help give a lot more certainty to a lot of these communities that have been living with this doubt now for quite a few years.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Alright, Tasmania says that it wants to legislate for an opt‐out clause for the National Broadband Network, Ed Husic, is this not getting towards an element of compulsion that we're seeing with the NBN, to try and make some sort of business case out of it?
ED HUSIC
Not at all. We welcome, certainly, the idea that this will be done. People can definitely opt out if they wish. It's being done to try and maximise the reach of a fundamental network, a fundamental piece of infrastructure for the country, and I'm surprised that in some quarters, particularly with our opponents, who have set themselves up to fight the NBN and the rollout of this crucial bit of infrastructure for the country, I'm not surprised that they're opposed to it. Frankly, they are going through what we went through in 2001. We put up this idea of GST rollback, but by the time the GST had rolled in, it was accepted as part of the background and this is now becoming the Liberal Party, the Coalition's version of that. They want to fight it. They want to basically fight the tide, when multitudes of people that I talk with say that this is vital for the country, that they see it as a massive benefit, but these guys want to basically stop it dead in its tracks.
SCOTT RYAN
Well Ed, that's a fairly lame analogy, but I'm glad to hear that you accept the hypocrisy of Labor's approach back in 2001 on the GST. The point about this, and what we've seen in Tasmania, is that this is yet another crutch upon which a fundamentally uneconomic program put up by this government is being rolled out. So we had opt‐in, now we've got opt‐out, and very soon you won't get to opt at all because this network as well as being based on $43 billion of government spending that could have either not been borrowed, or spent on other things for the community, we've got a government that is refusing to subject this massive spend to a full cost‐benefit analysis. The last time the government sent people into Australian roofs and around Australian houses, it didn't end so well either.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Scott Ryan, just on that point, the Coalition is saying that what the government's proposing is not right, but it's also saying that what we've got is not good enough, but you really don't have a coherent policy of your own at the moment, do you?
SCOTT RYAN
The point that we've made is that it's horses for courses, Chris. You don't need to have fibre optic rolling out to every home. You can have wireless working for some places – we've got hybrid fibre‐coax and copper doing a lot, and exactly what people want, in the suburbs of our cities and towns now. Not everyone is going to demand fibre optic to the home. What Labor doesn't want to talk about with its National Broadband Network is how much it's going to cost the budget, how much it's going to cost future Australians in terms of government borrowings, and how much it's going to cost each individual householder. The cost of internet and phone access has to increase as a result of the National Broadband Network. It could double for most users.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Ed?
ED HUSIC
Well you might as well slap on the 'the end is nigh' sandwich board and have the Liberal Party walking up and down all those streets where people are screaming to actually get access to it, and they can't at the moment because the copper network fundamentally cannot do it. I've got suburbs in the electorate that I represent that are screaming out for access to broadband, and instead of having a positive alternative, the Opposition's unable to actually articulate that. We have a plan. Their plan relies on wireless, which a lot of people recognise has major limitations, and it is not the plan that will be able to deliver the high speed broadband that people are requiring. Frankly we shouldn't be surprised. The Opposition when in government came up with 18 different plans that were all flops and they've still demonstrated today that they're out of touch with what the community wants. SCOTT RYAN
But Ed, this $43 billion plan was drafted on the back on an envelope after your initial $5 billion plan fell over because it didn't add up. Stephen Conroy jumped on a plane with the Prime Minister at the time, Kevin Rudd, and they came up with this $43 billion, record national borrowing and spending binge, with no cost‐benefit analysis. We've heard from business leaders just in the last 24 hours, they wouldn't undertake projects of a fraction of this value without a full cost‐benefit analysis. The government continually says it will not subject this program to that.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Ed Husic, back of an envelope calculations?
ED HUSIC
Well, I mean, how you can get away with a straight face saying that is beyond me. Frankly, we've had the implementation study released. It was a rigorous implementation study. The cute lines that the Opposition have to run to try and cover the fact that they don't have an answer of their own – so be it. We've had the implementation study. We have community demand for it. I actually made this point the other day with people who came back and said, "Who had the cost benefit analysis for rolling out the telegraph, telephone, roads and rail across this country?" Infrastructure that is undertaken of this nature is done for community benefit. People realise the long term gain that is through this infrastructure that will bring us to the forefront of infrastructure in the Western world, and also within the region. But the Opposition believes that rolling any infrastructure out, they talk about the need to roll out infrastructure, but every time you do something of benefit to the community in terms of infrastructure, they oppose it. This is another example.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Just a quick reply, Scott Ryan.
SCOTT RYAN
That's just another series of excuses, to compare it to the rollout of the telegraph or the railway lines. We spent a lot of the second half of the last century ripping up uneconomic railway lines through a lot of our states that should never have been built. That is just yet another excuse to avoid having a cost‐benefit analysis. I remember when $43 billion was a lot of money, Chris. I don't know why the government is doing everything it can to avoid subjecting this to the same study that every road extension and every new freeway and train line in our major cities get subjected to.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Alright, we'll move on. Scott Ryan, do you think that there's a culture of retribution in Australia against business? Because there are some complaints, we were talking about business leaders before, that when they do speak out about things that they are slapped down by thin‐skinned governments.
SCOTT RYAN Well I've only been in the Parliament for two and a half years, Chris, but I do remember at a function in Parliament House last year, the then Prime Minister made a joke about the mining industry saying something along the lines of 'we have long memories'. He said it was a joke, but I don't remember any of the hundreds of people in the room laughing. If we go back to 2007, I also remember the current Prime Minister, when she was Deputy Labor Leader, warning business leaders that they might get injured if they got involved in political debate about industrial relations. There's a culture in politics, Chris, but if there's a culture of intimidation, it rests with the Labor Party, because you never heard John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull, Brendan Nelson or Tony Abbott make such comments.
CHRIS UHLMANN
So Ed Husic, is there a culture of retribution in Australian politics against businesses that speak out?
ED HUSIC
Yes, well when Scott mentions the fact that his side of politics walks firmly away from any sense of retribution in the way that it operates, I'm sure that the champagne corks are popping in the Member for Denison's office right now, on hearing that great bit of news. Putting that aside, I certainly think that having this type of debate where businesspeople are accusing politicians of being thin‐skinned, yet aren't willing to embrace debate, is quite astounding. Certainly we need to have debate that's conducted and we do need to have open, transparent debate, about the way in which certain issues might impact on the community at large, or business. Some of the businesses that have complained about this, I would say I was quite surprised with. Telstra, for instance, I noticed that the chairperson of Telstra has indicated that they were concerned about a culture of retribution. I've had, from my days gone past, Telstra employees who have blown the whistle on things that that company wanted to do, where they were making claims publicly in relation to what they wanted to do with the workforce when in actual fact there were documents detailing what they really wanted to do in terms of wage agreements in that company. They dismissed people as a result of whistleblowers basically shining a light on some of the things that they've done. I remember trying to defend employees who'd been involved in whistleblowers within Telstra to the highest levels of Telstra. Those pleas fell on deaf ears. If Telstra wants to engage now in a climate of being open and transparent, I am all for it, and I would like to see them live it too.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Scott Ryan, the last word.
SCOTT RYAN
A pretty poor attempt at diversion there, Ed. I notice you didn't defend the comments of either Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard that I eluded to earlier.
ED HUSIC
Why would I? Frankly I don't agree with the points that you're making, so why would I necessarily take them any further? SCOTT RYAN
Well the current Prime Minister said business could be injured if they entered the political debate.
ED HUSIC
But if you match it against records, Scott, the government has been consultative across a range of issues. Look for example at AIG's role in the Henry Review. They were given carte blanche a seat at the table, you haven't reflected on that.
CHRIS UHLMANN
OK, well Ed Husic and Scott Ryan, alas, we'll have to leave it there. I'm sure that we could pick up this conversation at some point in the future. So thank you very much.