Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to see the member for Kennedy back in the parliament in full health and firing on all chambers. I am delighted to speak to the Future Fund Bill 2005. I am pleased to see the member for Goldstein at the table. The member for Kennedy made a number of comments in relation to agriculture, alternative energies, the use of land and water resources et cetera. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the member for Goldstein, should be able to make some positive contribution on those topics drawing on some of his former lives. I congratulate him on his appointment as a parliamentary secretary and wish him well.

There are a number of comments I would like to make on this legislation, particularly on the word ‘future’. The member for Kennedy talked about some alternative uses for the money from the Future Fund to guarantee the future of this nation. A lot of the debate has been predicated on some of the issues that have been raised, not the least of which being the ageing population, raised by the Treasurer, Peter Costello. They are very real issues that policy areas should look at. I congratulate the two previous ministers for ageing, Julie Bishop and Kevin Andrews, for the work that they have done, particularly in recognising some of the regional problems with ageing and health care through the multipurpose service models and other models. I hope the new minister embraces some of the logic they were adopting in relation to our current ageing people. Obviously the debate of the future is how we are going to fund a lot of those things.

It strikes me that the Future Fund may be one of those things that was dreamt up in a bit of a rush when there was a policy vacuum. It is a bit like the alternative TAFE arrangements that have been put in place. It sounded like a good idea at the time and now we are developing the infrastructure and the reasons for having it. I hope that is not the case. If you look at the logic of the Future Fund, the object of the legislation, as I understand it, is to strengthen the Commonwealth’s position in the provision of Public Service superannuation in the future. That sounds well meaning and, in most cases, seems quite prudent; but, if you look behind that, what is it going to cost us? There are estimates of it costing $90 billion over a long period of time. On an annualised basis it is going to cost us something like $4 billion, which is a relatively minor proportion of the overall budget—about two per cent.

The explanatory memorandum contains a lot on the potential to lift this fund above $18 billion. If the sale of Telstra goes through, there is talk about transferring a portion or all of the funds from that sale into the Future Fund. When you look at those two things together, the information that I have been able to glean—and it is no secret to anybody else—is that the annual earnings from Telstra are in the vicinity of $4 billion. The reason behind creating the Future Fund is that our annual pay-out is in the vicinity of $4 billion. I guess the member for Goldstein or someone else will inform me later on that there is an escalating platform there and that it could get out to about $7 billion on an annualised basis. We can all argue about the figures. But it seems to me that we are really debating a reason to park the funds of Telstra. That is what this debate is about. It is dressed up as the Future Fund. I do not condemn the government for wanting to put away money for the future. A lot of what they are talking about is how we develop infrastructure into the future. I would like to spend some time talking about how some of this money should be spent, as the member for Kennedy did.

When you predicate it on the sale of an asset, telecommunications, that is the most important piece of infrastructure in this century, particularly in a country of this geographic size, with the need for regional and rural people to be able to access that telecommunications and with the positive implications that that can have in the education of these people, the delivery of health services to them and the delivery of parity in their being able to compete with our city cousins and internationally, it becomes very important that we do not sell Telstra.

I believe that a political path could be adopted, even at this stage, to reverse the legislation for Telstra’s sale. Many people in the National Party, particularly Senator Nash, have been saying in recent weeks—since the defection of dear Julian—that they are going to reconsider how they vote on coalition issues. It is obvious to me that here is a classic example. If these people are saying that they are representative of regional and rural Australia, that they are their voice, that they represent seven million people and that they are required because one party will not do it—you need the National Party—here is a classic opportunity for that party to stand up for these people. All the surveys done on this issue indicated that over 90 per cent of country people and over 70 per cent of city people were against the sale of Telstra.

If this party has any reason for being, it should introduce and/or support legislation in the Senate to reverse the sale of this piece of infrastructure. If the argument is that we need the money for unfunded liability et cetera, just look at the earnings of this business. Even if you want to forget about the future contribution of this infrastructure to the nation by way of the parity factors that I talked about earlier, you cannot deny that it gives people the one thing that negates distance as a disadvantage when they are living in country Australia.

If this government or any other government believes that a fully privatised operation such as Telstra is going to care about people who are not in the profit band of their business, they are kidding themselves. The government says, ‘We’ve put in place certain guarantees.’ The President of the National Farmers Federation and the next National Party candidate for the seat of Gwydir, Peter Corish, said very strongly that the National Farmers Federation had been given—and the member for Goldstein, who is seated at the table, should have access to some of this material because he would have some very close links with the NFF, given his past with it—an assurance in legislation that on the sale of Telstra there would be parity of access and price with telephone and broadband services for country people.

No-one in this parliament—from the Prime Minister down, including the minister responsible for this legislation in the Senate—can give that assurance. Maybe the minister who is replying to this legislation can. Show us where it is in the legislation. Where is the legislative guarantee that future services such as telephone broadband and other services to country people will be guaranteed in a fully privatised telecommunications operation? It is not there. Twice in this parliament I have asked the Prime Minister and other ministers about this. They are ducking and weaving on giving that assurance. I will be pleased to hear that assurance today, because whoever is replying to the bill will have time to do so.

The other issue that comes up about the Future Fund is that it seems that the market will not accept the product of the full sale of Telstra in one hit; it may not even accept it at all. The government’s view has been to create this future fund and have somewhere to park it so that it would look as though they had not rejected their own policy drive for the last decade. The government would argue—I would argue it anyway—that under the current arrangements they and the taxpayer have some leverage through the political process and because of the way in which the board of Telstra is put together. Theoretically that exists as long as the government retain over 15 per cent of the company, but in practice having it parked in a future fund and valued as such will remove part of the political leverage that Australian people would have with various issues that might arise in telecommunications. There is no need to sell Telstra for its proceeds to become part of this fund. There is no need to create a future fund as a parking bay for a piece of infrastructure that the government are just head over heels in wanting to sell.

There are a number of other issues. I want to follow on a comment that the member for Kennedy made about our future and how we fund our future energy needs. The other day the ‘President of Australia’, George Bush, made some very pertinent comments about the energy needs of the United States, those other states. The comments he made—

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