Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In downtown Melbourne. He is not spending any time in regional and rural Australia. He is quite comfortably ensconced down there at 4 Treasury Place, and he does not go out. He has no idea what the requirements of regional and rural Australia are. I look in this chamber today and I see myself, Senator Adams and Senator Eggleston—who spends a lot of time in regional and rural Western Australia—who have some understanding of it. The Australian Labor Party could not even get someone who has got any background in regional and rural Australia to come into this chamber and talk on this matter today.

I want to go back to some of the points that Senator Conroy made. This was a privatisation debate, not a payphone debate. The payphones were just the excuse. I want to read to the Senate—as I have done on numerous occasions—comments made by Senator Conroy about privatisation. He came into the chamber today pleading on behalf of Australians that privatisation is a bad policy for Australia and that Australians do not support it. On 16 August last year, on the Jon Faine show, Senator Conroy said:

It makes no difference to the majority of Australians one way or the other about the ownership structure.

Those are the words of the man who came in today, and Senator Wortley joined in as well, and started to beat up on the outcome of privatisation. Then he had the gall and the temerity to talk about the Commonwealth Bank and to compare this with the banks leaving town. Who sold the Commonwealth Bank? Who sat back and watched the banks leave country towns all over Australia—and did absolutely nothing about it? The Australian Labor Party was responsible for that. Which party unilaterally did away with analog and did not have an appropriate regime in place to replace it? The Australian Labor Party. I have not heard one person from the Australian Labor Party apologise for what they made regional and rural Australians go through in that analog debacle. It was a debacle, and not one word of apology was given.

The big difference between the Australian Labor Party and the coalition is that we put in place mechanisms to support regional and rural Australians. Senator Eggleston talked very articulately about the amount of money that we have put into regional and rural Australia, and I will go through that again in a moment.

What I want to talk about now is the ‘secret plans’ by Telstra that the Labor Party have been talking about. It is as if the Labor Party had stumbled across something that fell off the back of a truck. I have here the briefing that they are carrying on about: a Telstra press release. Congratulations! How secret is that? The Telstra press release has fallen off the back of a truck and the Labor Party are quoting from that. Get serious! They are going out and spreading the story amongst the media that this is some secret plan. It is not secret; there is a media release from Telstra. I say to the Labor Party: let us debate the payphone issue, but let us not clothe it in some semblance of secrecy and act as if you have gone out and cleverly got something. Telstra have said what their plans are; if you want to talk about that, I am happy to do so.

I would have thought that the very least that Senator Conroy could do today would be to make up his mind about how many payphones there are in Australia. In the space of about two hours, between lodging this urgency motion and asking a question at question time today, there seems to be a difference of about 2,000 payphones. Senator Conroy could at least get his facts right in relation to that. Senator Stephens alleged quite falsely in question time that the majority of the reductions in payphones were in regional and rural Australia. With the greatest respect, Senator Stephens, that is not right. If you want to debate this, that is okay. We on this side are happy to debate it. But please do not come in here and make statements which are quite clearly incorrect and have no veracity at all.

As Senator Eggleston said, there are plans for some 950 payphones to go. There are some 400-odd which are being looked at. The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has said quite rightly—because she is a great supporter of the payphone requirement under the universal service obligation—that those phones are untouchable. The USO payphones are untouchable. Telstra will not be touching those payphones. The minister has quite rightly insisted on Telstra going through a community consultation process in relation to the removal of payphones. I do not think there is one person in Australia who would not agree that, if a phone is not being used, it is costing a lot of money and there are other alternatives, that payphone need not remain.

I think it was back in 2004 when there was an inquiry by the Australian Communications Authority into payphone policy. The ACA found that, in the main, this policy was working well. They made some suggestions, for example, in relation to Indigenous Australians. The government responded to that. (Time expired)