Conroy wins Greens with Senate inquiry pledge

James Riley
Friday, 30 October 2009 13:33

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy will support a Senate inquiry into the use of commercial-in-confidence provisions by governments in a pledge to win support from the Greens for a motion ensuring the telecommunications reform will get debated this year.

Senator Conroy won a small, first Senate battle on Wednesday on thelong road to the passage of the reforms. With the support of allcross-bench Senators, Government was able to lift a Senate order thatprecluded debate on National Broadband Network-related bills.

The reform bill, which includes changes to the access regime andcontains 'incentives' for Telstra to structurally separate, is expectedto be one of the first orders of business when the Parliament returnsin a fortnight.

Senator Conroy committed the second reading debate on the reform billfor the first of the final two weeks of Parliament for the year – theweek starting November 16. But as the Minister will be in Egypt thatweek at a UN communications conference, Government will not be seekinga vote on the issue until the following week.

"We will be seeking a vote the following week when I return. I want tooutline for all that there are some natural constraints as well as someSenate procedure constraints about the process," Senator Conroy said.

The timing sets up a possible photo-finish to the passage of thetelecommunications bill, which has been the result of a near two-yearbuild-up.

The Government's motion to allow consideration of bill passed by thenarrowest of margins (30-29) and in addition to relying on the Greensrequired the support of Family First senator Steve Fielding and SouthAustralian independent Nick Xenophon.

While Fielding and Xenophon spoke in support of the motion to allowdebate, there is no guaranteeing that either or both of the Senatorswill pass the reforms at this stage.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Nick Minchin still has onecard to play – a contingency motion that would aim to delayconsideration of this specific motion until the implementation study iscomplete. But with Fielding and Xenophon having just voted to allow thedebate to go ahead, Senator Minchin may just count the numbers andshelve the motion.

Government offered the Greens the concession on the commercial inconfidence issue in order to pass a motion seeking to have the SenateOrder on NBN bills set aside.

It also comes, ironically for Senator Conroy, during a week in whichGovernment accidently tables an ACCC report on the NBN that containedlarge amounts of commercially sensitive material, while at the sametime was pilloried for releasing a tiny fraction of an NBN ExpertPanel’s report – with the great majority of it excised due tocommercial in confidence reasons.

It was like Stephen Conroy set out to provide a working example of whycommercially sensitive material should not be disclosed, as well as anexample of how Government’s can use the issue of commercial sensitivityto withhold information from the Senate.

Greens leader Bob Brown said "commercial-in-confidence excuses' werethe bane of parliamentary life, and had been abused by Government’s ofboth persuasions. Specifically on the information deleted from theExpert Panel report, Senator Brown said Government had put Greenssenators in an impossible situation.

"We do not want to hold up legislation that is essential to thedelivery of good telecommunications to this nation," Senator Brownsaid. "On the other hand, we do not want to have to debate issues wherewe do not have basic information that is fundamental to that decisionmaking."

Senator Conroy conceded his blunder in tabling sensitive networkvaluations from the ACCC in the Senate this week had caused problems.

"I accept and acknowledge that commercial-in-confidence has been abusedin the past and senators are right to ask questions about this,"Senator Conroy said.

"I understand the concerns of (WA Greens) Senator Ludlam and thecrossbenchers because the previous government abused the process ofcommercial-in-confidence to hide what they were up to. It wasunacceptable."