Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party have two fundamental problems when they criticise and attack the government for its privatisation proposal for Telstra. The first is that the government has gone to the last four elections committed to selling Telstra. We have faced the voters of Australia openly, transparently and totally accountably in regard to our policy of privatisation. Each time we have been returned. This is not electorally popular. There is nobody on my side of politics who believes that privatisation policies at large, and Telstra in particular, are a net vote winner amongst all Australian voters. Of course there is a strong constituency for economic reform of this kind that believes it is in the nation’s best interest. I do not believe it is a vote loser for the government, but it does mean we have to stand our ground—to argue it. I have stood in some drafty halls in outback Australia justifying and explaining the government’s decisions.

You do win people over when you go through it sequentially and weigh up the benefits against what might be philosophical or ideological concerns and objections; people will agree to the selling of Telstra. The point is that you have to get to a lot of people more directly than is physically possible. So the government believe that we have a right to put these matters before the Australian people, as we have done at election times. There is no ducking and weaving to avoid the issue, which is a trait of the character of the modern Labor Party. It fails to take a stand. It lacks intestinal fortitude. It is lazy. It will not do the hard work. What we have heard from the shadow minister for communications, who is amongst the brightest thinkers in the opposition, is just a jumbled, garbled attack on the government.

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