Update 6am: The ABC is reporting the non-disclosure agreement has been shrunk to just two weeks, making it impossible to see how the demand for seven years, or even three, was ever justified.
Details of the National Broadband Network business plan are apparently so secret that in order to see them you have to sign a seven year confidentiality agreement. But objections by cross-benchers have now forced the Government to more than halve the terms of that agreement to just three years.
If you’re confused it’s because the Government has embarked on a confusing strategy in a bid to solve its growing NBN business plan problem that will dominate the politics of the last sitting week. The Government is blurring the line between information that is commercially sensitive and that which is politically sensitive.
In a bid to pass the NBN legislation Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told cross-benchers they could see the see the mysterious NBN business plan, but they would need to sign a seven year confidentiality agreement. Greens communications spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam and other cross-benchers have politely told the Government to go jump.
Senator Ludlam articulated his well founded objection to the confidentiality agreement yesterday:
“It imposes a seven-year non-disclosure option, which would be voided for the material that the Government eventually does put into the public domain . . . The confidentiality will lapse but I have no idea how much they intend to hand over.
“I just don’t think parliamentarians should be signing non-disclosure agreements in order to do their job,” he told the ABC today.
Tonight The Punch contacted Senator Conroy’s office and was told that the seven year confidentiality agreement was necessary to protect the commercially sensitive material in the plan.
But a spokeswoman for Senator Conroy office has also told The Punch that the confidentiality agreement that cross-benchers would now be asked to sign would be just three years.
So what happened in the interim? According to the Minister’s office, after objections were raised by the Greens and independents to the seven year deal Conroy consulted NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley who then suggested a three year confidentiality agreement. Apparently the first seven year figure was recommended by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
A spokesman for Senator Ludlam told The Punch that he wouldn’t be signing off a three year confidentiality agreement, or any agreement for that matter:
“The idea that as a communication spokesman and not being able to share with the public details of the plan that he knows is not in keeping with the way the Australian Greens believe Government should operate.”
Other cross-benchers are yet to confirm whether they will consider the new agreement.
At what point the NBN became the Manhattan Project is unclear, but making the cross-benchers sign a confidentiality agreement of seven years is obviously inadvisable in an already suspicious political climate around the business plan. Recent events in Parliament – including a successful motion by the Senate to release the NBN plan that Conroy is currently defying – demonstrate that not releasing the business plan is not a good political one.
Then changing the terms of the confidentiality agreement just conflates suspicion of the Government’s motivations in not releasing the plan before the end of the Parliamentary year. How can the Government say that it is necessary to sign a seven year confidentiality agreement for commercial sensitivity reasons, and then, having that rejected, quickly come back with a figure less than half of that? Is this Deal or no Deal? Either the information is commercially sensitive or it’s not - the politics shouldn’t alter how commercially sensitive it is.
The Government claims it can’t release the NBN business plan while Parliament is sitting because the information is commercially sensitive, but its management of the issue is making it look more motivated by sensitivity of the political kind.
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