Last Friday the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Broadband Committee met in Sydney, I’ll have a story on this in tomorrow’s Business Spectator.
An interesting exchange during the meeting was between the committee’s chair Rob Oakeshott and Mike Quigley, the CEO of NBNCo.
Rob Oakeshott: “You have advice that either as a department or a statutory body that says there are certain companies that should not be involved with the National Broadband Network build? If so, is that advice still in place?”
Mike Quigley: “Well chair, we work very closely with the appropriate government agencies in this area, obviously there are things we can and things we can’t say, but we have a very close working relationship with those entities and we obviously take their advice on things we should and shouldn’t do.”
“Their advice is still in place and we’re following it.”
I’m going to be in Melbourne tomorrow attending the Australian Davos Committee’s China Forum where, among other luminaries, the Prime Minister and various key people in the Australian-Chinese relationship will be talking.
The company in question is Chinese communications vendor Huawei and their banning from Australian contracts adds an interesting dimension to the discussion on trade relations between the two countries.
Australia has followed the US lead in blocking the Chinese communication hardware company from key contracts like the NBN on security grounds and it’s hard to see how this doesn’t test the patience of the PRC.
We’ll see how this issue plays out as it’s one that seems to be largely overlooked when we discuss trade ties and relationships with Chinese companies.