James Riley
Wednesday, 08 September 2010 00:06
IT Policy -
Government Tech Policy
Page 1 of 2
New South Wales rural independent MP Rob Oakeshott rained on his own parade in delivering Government to Labor this afternoon, emphatically telling the Prime Minister that "no-one has a mandate" in the next Parliament.
He wants to a "swear jar" installed at Parliament House to collect a dollar every time a politician even says the word mandate.
It's not a bad idea, and would be a monster revenue earner for charities. Certainly Julia Gillard's purse would have been about 20 bucks lighter by the time she finished her press conference today.
The photo-finish election of Gillard Labor was simply too close for government to expect to get anything of significance done without closer cooperation with all parties and all independents, Mr Oakeshott says.
Importantly, this "no mandate" outcome of this hard-fought marathon may yet have unseen consequences for the National Broadband Network.
Given the disparity between the cost and ambitions of the Government and the Coalition's broadband policies – and there was a vast gulf between the two sides – and given the tightness of the contest, it is probably not unreasonable that Tony Abbott feels he has the right to seek a down-scaling of both cost and ambition.
And Mr Abbott didn't mince words in his assessment of the future of the project. He says "the National Broadband Network is going to turn out to be school halls on steroids" and you can bet the NBN will be given the kind of "ferocious" scrutiny
This is from a leader whose Opposition in the Senate in the last Parliament used every trick in the procedural book to stymie progress on the broadband-related telecommunications reform bill (which has still not passed.)
It is hard to imagine how the Coalition could be more aggressive in opposing the NBN. But he has a knack for finding a way, as he did at his concession press conference today.
"It is going to be a mine field, an absolute mine field of waste and incompetence and you can be absolutely certain that the Opposition will be hyper-vigilant in this area," Mr Abbott said.
"No competent Government would commit $43 billion in public funding to a project without a full cost-benefit analysis. The fact that this Government has done so I think is a very bad sign for competent government in the coming term," he said.
Julia Gillard readily concedes that her Government will be working in an environment that leaves no room error. That it will be under more intense scrutiny from the Australian people than during the last Parliament, and that voters would punish them at the ballot box if it fails to deliver.
But she flatly rejects the "no-mandate" theory of Mr Oakeshott. Her Government had been elected based on a set of policies, and she is determined that they be delivered.
The fact that broadband was a top three mainstream issue during the campaign, and that the NBN was fundamentally critical to gaining the support of the final two rural independents further complicates the issue.
Labor made concrete commitments to these men about broadband in regional Australia. The NBN will have to be delivered as advertised, so to speak, otherwise Labor will have breached its promise to the independents.
That's a sackable offence, according to the king-makers, and the Prime Minister could find herself one No Confidence motion away from losing her job. So compromise on the NBN would be difficult to implement, even if Julia Gillard had any desire to do so.
The second kingmaker, New England's Tony Windsor would also likely to have problems with any "watering-down" of the NBN.
