Labor files formal complaint alleging NBN breach of Caretaker Conventions

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news The Opposition has reported filed a formal complaint with the Secretary of Malcolm Turnbull’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet over what it said was a “clear breach” by the NBN company of the Caretaker Conventions which require it to remain impartial during the election period.

A week and a half ago, AFP officers raided the Melbourne office of former Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, and the house of at least one Labor staffer working for Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare, in an apparent attempt to ascertain the identity of whistleblowers who have leaked a series of key documents from within the NBN company.

Yesterday NBN chair Ziggy Switkowski published an extraordinary article in the Sydney Morning Herald accusing the NBN leakers of being thieves and not whistleblowers, and strongly defending the NBN company’s record under the Coalition.

Switkowski was appointed chair of the NBN company in October 2013, shortly after Malcolm Turnbull became Communications Minister.

In response to Switkowski’s article, Shadow Finance Minister Tony Burke has written to Martin Parkinson, the Secretary of Malcolm Turnbull’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Parkinson is the formal head of the Australian Public Service and responsible for arbitrating disputes over the Caretaker Conventions during the election campaign period.

The Caretaker Conventions are a set of rules which aim to ensure that the Government of the day does not gain an unfair advantage during an election campaign by using the resources of the APS in the campaign. They are available online here.

You can download a copy of the letter here in PDF format.

“In writing this opinion piece, Dr Switkowski has used his role as Chairman of NBN Co to run a contestable script to the specific advantage of the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party.”

“Dr Switkowski’s intervention is a clear breach of the Caretaker Conventions and the Commonwealth Government Business Enterprise Governance and Oversight Guidelines,” Burke states in his letter to Parkinson. “I ask that you immediately undertake inquiries in relation to this matter.”

The news represents only the most recent time that the NBN company has been in hot water with the Opposition over appearing to take a partisan position regarding NBN policy.

In Senate hearings early this month, the NBN company revealed plans to hold a product launch just days before the upcoming Federal Election on 2 July. At the time, former Communications Minister Stephen Conroy directly cautioned the NBN company to keep the Caretaker Conventions in mind during the election campaign.

In April, NBN chief executive Bill Morrow made an extraordinary intervention into the pre-election national political debate over the National Broadband Network, warning Labor that it would need “a good explanation” to change the NBN model imposed by the Coalition.

In March, NBN Co assisted Environment Minister Greg Hunt with an election campaign event in his electorate of Flinders, as well as supporting other Coalition MPs in a media release and an event in Woy Woy.

Under Labor, too, the NBN company has taken positions during an election campaign which could appear to be partisan.

In August 2010, during that year’s election campaign, then-NBN chief executive Mike Quigley delivered a stinging attack on the Coalition’s broadband policy, publicly backing Labor’s rival National Broadband Network project just days before the Federal Election.

Image credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting

47 COMMENTS

  1. Nothing wrong with the article in my opinion.

    The NBN chair should be able to defend the business’ record, they have done this under Labor and the Coalition.

    Despite journalists dissent, under Australian law the leaking of those documents was a criminal offence. I saw nothing politically motivated then, and nothing now.

  2. They have a duty to defend the money laundering racket for faulty copper.

    They created a criminal offence using the raid as a charade to steal documents from Labor to hand to Murdoch so they can trash fibre internet and the economy. You don’t see anything wrong with that ?

    • > They created a criminal offence using the raid as a charade to steal documents from Labor to hand to Murdoch so they can trash fibre internet and the economy.

      Are you suggesting that Labor had documents taken by the AFP in the raid which were not sourced NBNCo and were critical of FTTP? If so what purpose did

      If the documents you allege were leaked by the AFP to Murdoch press were internal NBCo documents that raises different questions.
      1. If leakers motivation was to raise concerns with FTTN & HFC then I doubt the leaked information would have been critical of FTTP.
      2. Wouldn’t it have been easier for the Liberals to quietly leak the documents to the AFP? Much less controversial as leaks occur all the time.

      Lets think about this rationally. What potential political motivations were there:
      1. Intimidation of NBN staff to prevent further leaks?
      2. Obtain confidential Labor information? Plausible, but devastating to the Liberals if this leaked.
      3. Embarrass Labor during a political campaign?
      4. See Labor fanbois up in arms with irrational conspiracy theories.

      • You probably didn’t read it because of selective blindness and your OCD. but there were claims made that the NBN employee, looked through and took photos of and disseminated the Labor NBN policy documents for the coming election.

        • That is the first time I’ve read that the NBN employee too photos of Labor NBN policy documents that referred to the coming election campaign. My assumption was that the NBN employee was gathering evidence that the seized documents were NBN property.

          If your claim is true and the documents were clearly labelled then at a minimum the employee should face training and possibly disciplinary action if they should have been aware of their responsibilities. If the employee distributed the photographs outside of NBNCo or was aware that the documents would be forwarded then I’d suggest that at best the employee should expect to be sacked and possibly face criminal charges.

          Do you have any evidence this occurred and that by inference the Liberal party received the photographs or is this just another example of a Labor fanboi with irrational conspiracy theories?

          • Mathew it is the main reason why for parliamentary privilege. It’s been in the Australian and SMH

          • Election campaign material may not be covered by parliamentary privilege since proceedings are defined as ‘all words spoken and acts done in the course of, or for purposes of or incidental to, the transacting of the business of a House or of a committee’. I’m not sure that this extends to Labor election campaign material, but I am not a lawyer.

          • Ffs, it’s not my theory and I support policies, not any paticular party. Just read the reports and statements about something before spouting a pile of uninformed bs. I don’t understand how you have the nerve to have such a long winded opinion on something you seem to have not read so little about.

          • They can claim parlimentory privilage on anything they like, it’s then up to parliment to decide what the AFP can look at. A lawyer? You’re barely sentient.

          • Its been on all the major new sites, though often left out of their paper/TV broadcasts.
            The staffer claims he was asked to and did delete the photos, but with ANY reasonable smartphone, images are immediately uploaded to iCloud/google drive/Onedrive as soon as they are taken and deleting from the phone does not delete them from the cloud.

          • Well, maybe he doesn’t exist at all. I am sure he could be replaced by one of those scripts that generate spam email and it’d be impossible to tell the difference.

          • If the employee distributed the photographs outside of NBNCo or was aware that the documents would be forwarded then I’d suggest that at best the employee should expect to be sacked and possibly face criminal charges.

            Do you have any evidence this occurred and that by inference the Liberal party received the photographs or is this just another example of a Labor fanboi with irrational conspiracy theories?

            Of course they looked at the parliamentary sealed copies, how else would they know who to stand down?

          • @tinman_au
            I was making reference to stealing of Labor Party election policy documents being the purpose of the raid in response to danielr, not photographs of NBNCo internal documents in the possession of the Labor Party. Two separate issues.

            A raid which resulted in compromise of the Labor party election planning materials and dissemination could rightly be regarded as an attack on democracy.

            A raid in which an NBNCo took photographs of NBNCo documentation to verify the version is not the same.

          • @Mathew

            That just makes the whole thing even worse. It’s not up to the nbn™ employee to decide if a document is “Parliamentary Privilege” or not, it’s not even up to the AFP, it’s up to Parliament.

            And if the AFP is now raiding an opposition party for campaign documents, what does that say about where this government is taking Australia.

  3. They were public interest documents, which would have been publicly available under a Labor government, revealing the waste and incompetence of the current government, which is relevant information that voters need to know in order to make properly informed decisions during the election.

    Those “thieves” selflessly sacrificed their own careers for the good of the nation. They are far more in tune with the aims and ideals of our democratic society then the secretive, authoritarian Coalition and supporters that are persecuting them.

    • > They were public interest documents, which would have been publicly available under a Labor government

      Do you remember Labor refusing to release the NBNCo Corporate Plan 2013-2015 as required by the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 (Cth) (CAC Act), the
      Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Regulations 1997 (Cth), the Commonwealth Government
      Business Enterprise Governance and Oversight Guidelines (October 2011) (GBE Guidelines)

      > Those “thieves” selflessly sacrificed their own careers for the good of the nation.

      If support for the position that these two persons have taken exists in the IT community, then one would expect that they would find little trouble in finding a new job.

      > They are far more in tune with the aims and ideals of our democratic society then the secretive, authoritarian Coalition and supporters that are persecuting them.f

      Are you comparing this with the Labor Government who wouldn’t release progress reports (available weekly from here: http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/about-nbn-co/corporate-plan/weekly-progress-report.html) or the Greenhill study aimed at testing the robustness of the assumptions in the NBN business plan (http://www.itnews.com.au/news/conroy-refuses-to-release-greenhill-study-of-nbn-plan-239507). It would be interesting to review what concerns if any that Greenhill had about the assumptions.

      • Mathew

        Labor didn’t refused to release the corprate plan Turnbull did. He didn’t even use it for his SR

          • Lol Mathew
            Yes a “draft”
            Plus they where in caretaker mode

            Yet Turnbull plan to have 1% on 1Gbps by 2020. According to you when labor expecting that target 6 years later is a failure so would Turnbull’s one be lunacy? What you call Turnbull’s target that’s in just 4 years time not a decade from now. But then only 7% on 100Mbps for FTTN.

          • Let’s look at a few dates:
            – The 14-Sep-2013 election date been announced by Julia Gillard on 3-Jan-2013
            – Rudd chose to bring the election forward by one week to 7-Sep-2013
            – Caretaker mode started on 5-Aug-2013
            – Report was clearly in a close to final state based on the date of 28-Jun-2013 and inference it had been through 12 reviews.

            I’d suggest that if Conroy & Wong had wanted to the release the document prior to the 5-Aug-2013 this would have been easily achievable.

          • Well Mathew with the corprate plan why wasn’t it used in the Stragic review. Why according to you they where using out dated figures.

          • Where do I claim that the report was using out-dated figures?

            The point of my original post was to point out that both sides of politics have refused to release documents and it could be argued based on the evidence that the Coalition has been more forthcoming.

          • Yes Mathew release it with in a month to go.

            Well the corporate plan 2012-2015 was released on the 8 Aug but the. That time frame is within the caretaker period.

          • Still avoiding the point.
            – Labor refused to deliver rollout progress reports.
            – Labor could have scheduled the 2013-2016 NBNCo Corporate Plan for release prior to the caretaker period, especially as this date was known 8 months in advance.

            I don’t think anyone would suggest either of these documents contain commercial in confidence data, especially since public release of the Corporate Plan was always planned.

          • Lol Mathew
            Labor not the NBN. The NBN could have released the CP. but you claim it was ready going off the draft. With less than a month to go.

            So you don’t know how the rollout was under labor. Jxeeno setup a nice website with all that info. Which is now not available. Or the quartly report so far the NBN what’s missed the last 3 quarters.

          • Wow, Mathew’s panicing, he must be following the polls. Poor boy, if the Conservatives don’t get in this time, there isnt much future for then, the bitter old racists are a dying breed, literally.

          • Still avoiding the point.
            – Labor refused to deliver rollout progress reports.
            – Labor could have scheduled the 2013-2016 NBNCo Corporate Plan for release prior to the caretaker period, especially as this date was known 8 months in advance.

            You mean the progress reports referred to in this Whirlpool post, but since deleted from the NBNCo site?

            https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2020959

            And as to the release date of the CP, they can be anywhere from June to November:

            http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/about-nbn-co/corporate-plan/corporate-plan.html

            As the caretaker period started in August, I’m not surprised it was held over. Labor, at least, usually try to stick to the rules…

          • “I’d suggest that if Conroy & Wong had wanted to the release the document prior to the 5-Aug-2013 this would have been easily achievable.”
            And yet the facts (history) are against you.

      • “Do you remember Labor refusing to release the NBNCo Corporate Plan 2013”
        With good reason, considering an election was happening. On the other hand, they released yearly CPs up until that point. The Coalition nbn has released… one. Just one.

      • That’s right Mathew. You stick to your “But Labor did it first” guns.

        Don’t let any sort of question regarding the current government’s behaviour distract you from pointing out the supposed flaws of the previous government. I mean it’s not like almost 3 years has passed since they were in charge….. Waitaminute…..

        Have you received your SHILLing lately?

  4. The “thieves” are the execs currently running the nbn into the ground, we need a royal commission!

    • 1) Leaking of information outside of a body or organisation that demonstrates profound mismanagement and illegal activity is unequivocally in the public interest, and the very definition if whistle blowing, which is not only legal but desirable and encouraged in a democratic society.
      2) Exposing facts demonstrating illegal behaviour cannot be criminal.
      3) The documents leaked demonstrated that the rhetoric officially published and acknowledged by the NBN Co and the LNP does not follow the facts as being reported internally by its own staff. That shows a demonstrated pattern of misinformation, which is unacceptable by either our Government or a GBE. The dissemination of those facts which the NBN Co have refused to release on their own is, again, the very definition of whistle blowing and is protected under law.

  5. All desperate smoke screen diversions, and the Labor NBN political smoke machine will be working overtime as we near the election.

    Why? It is quite simple , with only five weeks to go Labor still have no NBN election policy, so what they will do is leave it to the last minute possibly even the last week of June to give the media and the Coalition as least time as possible to read it, digest the figures and publish any criticism, so in the meantime they need to divert media attention away from the absence of ALP NBN policy.

  6. Renai, you open with:

    “The Opposition has reported filed a formal complaint …”

    Do you mean “reportedly”?

    Cheers!

  7. Thanks for the link for the old MQ article Renai, some of that is pretty funny in hindsight. I especially like this quote from him:

    it was “better to invest $27 billion” — the amount that the Government expects to invest itself in the NBN —rather than “spend $6 billion” as the Coalition is planning to do under its own policy.

    It started at $6b in 2010, is now “up to” $56b in 2016….wonder where it’ll end up?? $106b in 2022???

  8. its the same clowns commenting and arguing the same argument with the same people. doesn’t matter what the article is.

    If it was reported long before caretaker mode, then what, ooh, election is called. halt the investigation? I don’t think so. I don’t see any breach here.

    • “doesn’t matter what the article is”
      Evidently not, given that the rest of your comment has literally nothing to do with the article whatsoever.

  9. Not sure how this can be labelled a breach of caretaker mode. As much as I despise NBN Co they did the correct thing. A crime was committed under Australian law and they reported it to the AFP. I would be far more concerned if they delayed reporting a crime because of political reasons, now that would indeed be a breach.

    • The breach was the nbn™ employee photographing parliamentary privileged documents, and most likely, still to be released policy development documents of the opposition, and distributing them to god knows who.

      That might be OK in a banana republic, but most western democracies frown on it.

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