This comes following a raid by the Australian Federal Police last Thursday on the office of Labor Senator Stephen Conroy and the home of one of his staff members, Andrew Byrne.
NBN Co called in the police last December to investigate the alleged theft of commercially-sensitive information.
The AFP’s investigation was thwarted by Conroy asserting Parliamentary privilege over the documents from his office and the staffers home. These were immediately seized under the privilege provisions, and secured inside the office of the Clerk of the Senate in Canberra – safe from the AFP’s eyes.
Senator Conroy wrote to AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin telling him that he intended to seek a ruling from the Senate on whether the documents should remain privileged. “I expect the seized items to remain in the Clerk’s possession until the Senate rules on my privileges claim. Note that the scope of my claim of parliamentary privilege extends to all words spoken, and act done, in the course of, or incidental to, parliamentary proceedings,” it stated.
The letter also makes plain that Labor will pursue the privilege claim in the Senate as opposed to pursuing a court action. That will delay the matter until after the election.
The content of the documents is unknown, but Labor refers to issues including a cost blowout to $56 billion for the project which it claims the government tried to keep secret. The Coalition denies that stating that NBN access is now available to 2.4 million homes and businesses, and there are around one million active users.
In essence, the posturing by both sides is not so much of the provision of faster broadband but the delivery mechanism – fibre to the premise (FttP) or the supposedly lower-cost fibre to the node (FttN) and “multi-technology mix” that relies on re-use of copper and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) networks owned by Telstra and Optus to make the final connection to the home.
What is for sure is that NBN has had two masters and lots of politics. It is the biggest public infrastructure project ever undertaken.
Due to the controversial nature of the topic and the diverse views held, iTWire welcomes comments from readers.
