David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to shareholder value, I simply make the observation that Senator Minchin, who is the opposition spokesperson on these matters, has become the white knight for Telstra, defending shareholder value. I put a fair bit of effort into searching the Hansard record—and perhaps the member for Mayo will have some record to the contrary—for any previous comments from Senator Minchin in defence of shareholder value. I thought a good place to start might be to go back to when he was a minister of the Crown, the finance minister, and the T2 share offer came into effect. At that point shares were at $7.80. I noticed that, when T3, which was also undertaken by those opposite, came into effect, shares had dropped to $3.30—less than half the value of the shares just a few years earlier. You would have thought that, with this massive erosion of shareholder value, someone so principled in his defence of the value of Telstra shares would have had something to say. Yet I cannot find a single comment. No doubt the member for Mayo, when he makes his contribution—and I look forward to that—will bring forward some evidence to the contrary on that point.

When it comes to shareholder value, just a few years ago, in the course of my research when trying to find some of those comments that I thought Senator Minchin may well have made, I saw some comments that were made by an executive of Telstra at the time, Phil Burgess, when what are largely the current set of regulatory arrangements were in place. He had a few things to say in relation to shareholder value. In fact, when he was commenting on shareholder value he brought his mother into the picture. I am sure she is a lovely woman—I do not know her personally—but he made an observation that might have been of some import to those people who were considering at the time whether or not to invest in Telstra. He observed that he would not recommend Telstra shares to his mum. That is an extraordinary thing for an executive of a company to say about his own company, so you would have to think that there was something pretty serious threatening or jeopardising the value of Telstra shares as they were then.

I thought, ‘I’ve got to find out what it is that was such a threat to Telstra shares that an executive of Telstra would come forward and say that he would not even recommend to his own mum to buy a share in that company. Then I found the quote from Mr Burgess:

‘Our struggle—

that is, the struggle of Telstra—

is against a repressive, intrusive, draconian, punitive system of regulation.’

He is not known for his colourful language, but he went on to say:

‘if you put a baby in a cage with a tiger and the tiger eats the baby, you shouldn’t be surprised’

I am not even going to try and interpret the metaphor, but the point remains: so bad is the current set of regulatory arrangements that even those who benefit from them—

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