Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I was referring to sheep, not whales! The Howard government has stated repeatedly that it would not sell its remaining shares in Telstra until services in rural and regional Australia were up to scratch. Anybody who lives in or visits rural and regional Australia will tell you that Telstra services are nowhere near adequate and in some areas are getting worse. To add insult to the people of the bush, the Howard-Costello government have not only reneged on their commitment not to proceed with a sale until services are up to scratch but also announced the $3 billion dollar taxpayer funded bribe to get Telstra to do what it is already supposed to do under its charter. The Howard government has thrown in the towel in directing Telstra to lift its game and is using taxpayer funds to attempt to improve the very services that Telstra should already be providing.

The only way that services for rural and regional Australia can be improved is for Telstra to remain in public ownership and for the Howard government to direct the telco to carry out its charter and deliver the services it is supposed to provide. Most Australians do not want Telstra privatised. Telstra returned profits of around $3.2 billion this financial year, so what is the rationale behind the sale? Obviously sheer ideological obsession by the Howard government has driven this ridiculous policy, and rural and regional Australians will suffer the consequences.

The Howard government should direct Telstra to honour its charter and provide the same opportunities for services in rural and regional Australia as in the capital cities. Selling Telstra will only worsen services in remote areas because a fully privatised Telstra will concentrate its resources in the big-volume metropolitan areas. Country people had every right to demand the truth about Telstra in the wake of the telecommunication giant’s posting of $3.2 billion profit. People in rural and regional centres are demanding answers to questions such as: why are the Australian taxpayers being asked to flog off an operation which clearly delivers enormous profits back to the major shareholder—the government of the people of Australia? Why, if Telstra is so obscenely good at sucking money from the accounts of ordinary men and women, is it better to have this organisation under full private ownership? Why is it that parts of Bendigo—even some very urban parts—cannot be connected to modern basic communications, such as broadband, yet Telstra itself can cream off such eye-popping profits? And why does Telstra forecast that it will not be able to continue to service regional Australia, yet its profits bloat boardrooms around the world?

Telstra’s profit statement is a sad indictment of 10 years of Howard government complacency. Under the Howard-Costello government, Telstra has been allowed to continue to cold-shoulder regional Australia while gorging itself on a captive market. The coalition has seen this obscenity as a reasonable way to set up an Australian communications service to be sacrificed on the altar of the Prime Minister’s free market ideology. Why anyone—let alone the government—should be happy at this rip-off of the Australian people and country people in particular is beyond me. Whose $3.2 billion do they think it was in the first place?

We tend to get bamboozled by the big numbers. However, the latest Telstra profit represents taking around $230 from every man, woman and child in Australia. It represents sucking more than $28 million per year out of the Bendigo electorate alone. The whole Telstra scenario is coming apart at the seams for the current government. Telstra’s new American boss, Sol Trujillo, is demanding more freedom from the government to make even more money, while admitting he has a multibillion dollar problem meeting his country commitments.

I am proud to say that Labor will continue to oppose the full sale of Telstra and is committed to retaining Telstra in public ownership. We believe that the rationale for the privatisation of Telstra is fundamentally flawed because of the government’s own incompetence. We are concerned about the impact of privatisation on services and employment, especially in regional centres like Bendigo.

Labor believes that the government must take the lead in implementing a national strategy for the adoption of new information and communications technologies and services, especially access to broadband. The ability to take such a lead will be far greater if Telstra remains in public ownership. The government, the major shareholder, is able to direct Telstra to make investment decisions which may be justified on broader terms rather than on purely commercial criteria. Labor is concerned that the interests of private shareholders will dictate investment decisions based on short-term financial gains, rather than on the national interests of Australia. Labor firmly believes we should keep Telstra connected to regional Australia’s future.

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