Conroy: Factional deal-maker to policy hard-head

James Riley
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 17:14

Opinion and Analysis

Against the over-reach that might have been attempted by a zealot - given the nature of what he’s been asked to implement - I am definitely counting that as a win.

The structural reform agenda announced at Parliament House were quite stunning, if not entirely unexpected. Successive communications ministers have attempted to unscramble the egg – with varying degrees of enthusiasm – and none have got close.

There will undoubtedly be controversies and challenges with the NBN roll-out. That’s often the nature of projects of this scale and ambition.

But for the time being, the tech sector should savour a day in parliament in which Question Time was dominated in both the Senate and the House by discussion of fundamental ICT. And where a Prime Minister talked at length about things like broadband access speeds, wholesale pricing and structural reform of the telecommunications sector.

On a final note, Stephen Conroy seemed happy enough to spread the blame around "previous government’s of both persuasions" for the current regulatory problems in the industry. Bad decisions going back to 1991, when Telstra was set up in its current form under Hawke/Keating, to the 1997 T1 sale, as well as poor competition decisions before and since under Howard – all contributed to the current mess, he implied.

He repeated it generously during an interview with Sky News’ David Speers. Maybe he is trying to avoid the current history wars spilling over into the telecom sector and muddying the waters.

Although I doubt it.

Anyway, Rudd was having none of it: "The reason the government took the extraordinary step of saying that we would build a national broadband network is that we saw 12 years of conspicuous failure on broadband on the part of those opposite," he told Malcolm Turnbull during question time, before repeating the theme. Again. And again.