Barry Wakelin (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

History is always the best judge of these matters but, in speaking to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007, I have enough knowledge of this place now to remember some of the previous elections and some of the previous promises. It is vital that this bill be brought to the House and that it be put in place.

I can recall the efforts of this government in bringing the most modern telecommunications to the regions some decade or so ago under Minister Richard Alston. In those days, we had a fund called the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. There was a board, as I recall, chaired by a distinguished Australian, Mr Doug Anthony. Australians from all over regional Australia served on that board. We were able to get a fairer distribution of telecommunications services across Australia in a way which would never have happened unless we had done it. It included mobile services. It included internet. It included a whole suite of services which we could only imagine a decade before we came to government.

The reason this legislation is so important is that, immediately we came to the election after our policies were announced, it was the opposition policy to abolish that fund. There is no doubt about it. Whether the then opposition spokesman, Senator Chris Schacht, can recall those days, I guess only time will tell. But we know that efforts to improve telecommunications services in regional Australia were clearly under threat at that election. And of course we all recall, from this side of the chamber, the scare campaign about selling Telstra. It was a political program as regular as clockwork: ‘The coalition will sell Telstra; the sun won’t rise tomorrow’ type of politics. Three elections we went to on that policy; three elections, the people returned us. So this legislation is vital.

The nonsense of the argument about corporatisation of Telstra—that somehow, because it is privatised, it cannot deliver a better service—is so easily demonstrated. When Kim Beazley was minister in the Labor government in 1991 when Telstra was corporatised—some may recall that it went from Telecom to Telstra—it did much more than make a name change. It was required to act like all other corporations in Australia. It was required to have a board responsible to its shareholder, the Commonwealth government. So all of this nonsense was a political facade anyway. Yes, we had a universal service obligation and, yes, this government introduced the service guarantee, which was important and set some standards. Now, in this current parliament, we have the final sale process. That gave us the Communications Fund, which we are here protecting today.

We will hear a lot in this campaign about the issues of the competing teams for government—that is, Labor and the coalition. I am sure it will be said many times in this debate, but I must repeat it: Labor promises to deliver a fibre-to-the-node program, which is not practical for rural Australia. It will have an access radius of four kilometres from the exchange. It will spend $4.7 billion, it will have a start date of mid-2008 and a completion date of 2013, and the Communications Fund will be abolished.

The government, by comparison, has a program proven to reach 100 per cent of the population, with a high speed of 99 per cent. It consists of fibre, WiMAX, which is fixed wireless, ADSL2+ and satellite. It is already out there and being put in place. It will be a minimum of 20 kilometres from base station. It will cost the taxpayers $958 million and will guarantee affordable and metro comparable prices for all Australians. National retail prices range from $35 to $60 per month depending on the service speed chosen by the consumer.

As I was saying, with the Labor party, it will not happen until mid-2008 to 2013; with the coalition policy, the government policy, it will be immediate. The start date is immediate and the completion date is expected by mid-2009. The Communications Fund will be retained and $400 million will be available every three years for emerging needs, because one thing we know for certain in this debate is that telecommunications technology will advance. It will be changing all the time. One of the great challenges is to stay abreast of it, and Australia is seizing that opportunity now.

But it would be remiss of me not to mention why we are able to offer a Communications Fund, why we are able to have the sort of economy we have these days. Remember that we started with a $96 billion debt. If you think back to the efforts by this government in 1996 to improve telecommunications at a time when we were still dealing with Labor’s debt, you will see that as one of the hallmarks of this government—that and its commitment to regional Australia. Labor was accumulating debt. It was selling private assets. It was raising taxes and it was raising fuel prices to pay Australia’s way. I just ask people to compare that with the current government’s approach.

I now turn to some of the issues around Telstra. With a policy that has been out there for 20 years to make a more competitive telecommunications system in Australia, Telstra has found itself caught up in its old culture of monopoly rent and has no doubt found itself frustrated by government ownership and then by the transition to private ownership. Nevertheless, that is our history, our culture, and that is the basis of our current system. To make that happen, a competitor is required to have a declared service declared, or if a declared service is supplied or proposed to be supplied by a carrier or carriage service provider they must declare that. Then we go to the great difficulties with the ACCC—the great challenges. I think there is something like 40 or more groups or companies now trying to negotiate access with the ACCC as the arbiter. I will just let that sit there. Telstra is, as I say, caught up in this rather anachronistic system, and its tactics are quite interesting to observe. As I understand it, it can withdraw its price and conditions—put them in front of the ACCC—and then submit new ones. So we have what looks to me like a significant delaying process. I do not envy the job of the ACCC or in fact all players in trying to negotiate when they are locked into this old culture. But it is a matter of both sides of this parliament respecting the policy—that this is about competition and offering alternative services. That is what our society and our economy is based on.

Telstra will recall the issues around the COTs case. Once again, it brings out these monopoly practices. I think it is still struggling with that attitude in many ways. We regularly have issues in our electorate office where Telstra could resolve some consumer issues much more readily and we find ourselves a little too often going to people like the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. I would like to try to describe, as I see it, the current culture in telecommunications in Australia. Somebody much more expert than I am on this issue, Mr Paul Budde, makes some quite astute observations. This comes to this issue of where Telstra thinks it might be at in the current world. He said:

The best option would have been for Telstra to work with the government and the industry, but the incumbent has clearly indicated that it has no interest in collaborating with the government, the regulator or the industry to achieve a national broadband plan.

He went on to say:

Telstra may have succeeded in delaying the development of broadband in Australia, but it has certainly lost the case it was arguing for—that it needed a monopoly in order to advance broadband in Australia. It is now facing severe competition in both regional and metropolitan Australia. This is a far worse outcome for its shareholders than if the company had opted for a cooperative process in which it could have had a serious input. It has now been pretty much sidelined.

He further said—and I think this is accurate:

Fortunately for Telstra it is so dominant that it will be able to maintain a strong position, but this will no longer be on its own terms.

That is as far as I need to go. Telstra is out there as one of our largest, if not the largest, corporations—although, with the capitalisation of some companies these days, it is a bit risky to say whether or not it is the largest.

The other thing I would like to mention about Telstra being a key player in the Australian telecommunications industry, in regional Australia in particular, is the issue of their attack on the government and on the Optus company, particularly, because they are an overseas entity. I remind Telstra and the people of Australia that Telstra is 20 per cent owned by overseas interests and is led by—much of its senior management are—overseas people, so we need to be a bit careful about attacking the bone fides of others just because they happen to be from overseas.

I support the minister in reminding all of us that it is the consumers of Australia whom we are here to serve, particularly regional consumers on this occasion. I do want to put on the record, though, that we should not presume that metro-Australia has perfect telecommunications services, because it does not have perfect services. So we need to keep every Australian in mind. I welcome the OPEL bid and I wish it well.

In my final few minutes, I want to cover two or three things and then sum up. There is a grievance that I need to bring to the chamber, and I cannot think of a better time to do it. I appeal to Telstra to be a positive community and corporate leader. I think it is vital that it does that. A small contracting firm in my electorate have been arguing with Telstra about a contract that they had with Telstra some years ago and they have not been able to resolve the issue. I am sure that we are all aware that commercial contracts can go astray, and these things can happen, but I know these people rather well. I will quote from their senior executive, who says:

We feel that Telstra have treated us harshly and unjustly, using their position of strength to overwhelm a small regional business which lacks the financial capacity to take on such a large corporation (with seemingly limitless legal and financial resources) in the court system. From perusing Telstra’s annual reports, I note that one of their corporate objectives is to be a good corporate citizen. Telstra has not acted as a good corporate citizen in their treatment of us.

That was from the senior executive of Cowell Electric—a firm in my electorate. I wanted to put that to the chamber to demonstrate the tough environment and the tough way that Telstra sometimes operates.

The government is to be congratulated for what it is doing here today to protect the $2 billion Communications Fund. This coalition’s term in government has been a time of progress for this nation with regard to telecommunications. We are protecting the Communications Fund from the Labor Party. We are not on some political witch-hunt or looking for some political opportunity; we are defending the Communications Fund against what the Labor Party has previously said that it would do. That is a fact. That is on the record. I welcome the legislation and remind the House, to quote from the minister’s media release:

The Australian Government will ensure that 99 per cent of the population has access to fast affordable broadband by June 2009.

Australia has now entered into a whole new broadband era with speeds 20 to 40 times faster than those used by most consumers today ...

Let me say here that I do not see that the task force that is charged with the responsibility of the $400 million interest on the Communications Fund being restricted exclusively to broadband. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I think you and I would agree that some mobile services would go well in some places within our electorates.

This is the future, and the government is responding to it. Everyone pretty much knows this, but it is important that I remind the House that there is a safety net that ensures that Australians living in the most remote or difficult to reach areas—the remaining one per cent—are entitled to a broadband subsidy of $2,750 per household. I support the WiMAX technology, but it is only one of a number of technologies that have been used—and no doubt there will be new technologies coming on all the time. That is what the Communications Fund is all about. In addition to WiMAX, a further 426 exchanges, representing more than three million premises, will be enabled with very fast ADSL2+ broadband for the first time. So the march goes on and the services continue to improve. It is very important to understand that the OPEL network will enable, as I understand it, a reduction in regional backhaul prices of around 30 per cent. That is very important. I have touched on the expert task force and the distinguished people who will serve on it, so I will not repeat myself other than to say that, in order to expedite the plan, the competitive bids process will start immediately and the expert task force will be formed straightaway.

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to speak on this bill today. It is important that it be locked in for posterity. This government has been able to facilitate telecommunications in a way that is far removed from previous telecommunications, including during Labor’s era, of eight-gauge fencing wire and pine posts and where the best we could hope for were party lines that did not go down when a tree branch fell down on them.

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