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

and incompetently are going to support the major telcos. There was no need to fund them. Instead, you have to fund the areas that miss out—regional, rural and remote Australia, outer suburban areas and so on. Labor are trashing the Future Fund and abolishing the telecommunications fund, which is targeted at regional and remote Australia, to support the big end of town. There can be nothing more stupid than that. There is nothing in the policy about pricing or affordability. No proposal can have credibility unless you address that. They do not address the issues of regulation. What is the regulatory regime? That is crucial to fostering private sector investment and the like.

Above all else, this proposal is anticompetitive. This will lock in Telstra as the sole network provider. Already the telcos know that Telstra is the only realistic bidder because the opposition has ruled out preventing or blocking Telstra from overbuilding any competitor’s network. We all remember the dual pay-TV rollout of the early 1990s—incompetently managed and devised by the then Labor government—where Telstra readily admits it overbuilt the Optus infrastructure network to stifle competition. They will do it again. Telstra is the only winner from this and so, of course, one or more of their ranks might be enthusiastic supporters. Labor is deserting regional and rural Australians. It is subsidising the big end of town unnecessarily. It is putting future generations of Australians at a disadvantage. I say again: you cannot trust Labor with money.

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