Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill

Earlier in the debate I tried to summarise the various arguments that I had been hearing and some of the concerns and questions that had been raised about the bill. Some of them are pertinent to schedule 3B, which discusses the amounts that are being raised, saying in 2016-17 it will be $50 million, the same in 2017-18, and again in 2018-19.

I would just like to acknowledge the Minister Amy Adams for taking the call and responding to a number of the questions that I had itemised. I think that she gave responses to four of the nine questions, but there are still five to be answered and, in fact, there have been a couple of other questions that have been raised since. The questions in relation to the amounts are really to do with the value for money of the previous programme and whether we should be seeking to raise this $50 million a year, as specified in clause 4 here, when we are unsure about the $300 million that has been spent on the programme so far.

The questions that I put earlier—and I would appreciate hearing from the Minister or someone on the Government benches—were about whether there has been good use of the money. Firstly, there have been a number of complaints about the quality of the connections that people have received as part of the existing programme, and the sense that, actually, for all of that money, the quality of the connections is not all that good. Secondly, there is the issue of the evaluating and reporting on the effectiveness of the Rural Broadband Initiative. There is sort of a sense that, actually, some really good programme evaluation has not yet occurred and that that money may be kind of good money after bad. We have not yet heard, I believe, from the Minister or from the Government about those concerns. I would like to get a response from the Government on that in relation to these amounts here in this clause. Thank you.