Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I support the urgency motion moved by Senator Conroy. It is important that this chamber debate the direction that Telstra is going, which is highlighted by the plan to reduce the number of payphones in Australia. The direction is the same as that being taken by the government—as we reflect this year on 10 years of the current government being in office. I have been here for all of those 10 years, and it has been a period in which the rich have got richer much faster than the poor. And the gap between the rich and the poor, despite the arguments coming from elsewhere, has grown. The wherewithal of the poor has not expanded anywhere near as fast as the galloping ability of the very rich for consumption.

This has been highlighted over the weekend with the announcement by the Treasurer that two people representing the wealthy will look at what changes could be made to the government’s taxation regimen. One has no doubt that that will be concocted to reduce the need for the wealthy to contribute, as they have in the past under the rules of the past, towards the benefits that all Australians gain from not just having a democratic country but the semblance of an egalitarian country where basic needs are met. This debate today is about removing a basic right. The removal of access to payphones for the poorest Australians or those in greatest need deprives them of a right which wealthy Australians take for granted at all times no matter where they are.

I wonder just how many people in executive authority in Telstra, let alone those in this chamber these days, have used a payphone this year. Very few, I will guarantee. I know we get Telstra cards, which enable us to use payphones. But I wonder how many members even get Telstra cards these days. We get them free of charge; the public does not. But they are very important as far as I am concerned because I do travel quite a lot in rural Tasmania. I know the value of that service, particularly if you are out of range of a mobile phone. I could bank on the need for that service being so much greater if you happen to be an isolated person who may or may not be rearing a family, who occasionally reflects on whether they are going to need emergency assistance at some time and where the nearest payphone is, if they are not able to afford a conventional phone.

We are seeing a great move to mobile phones, but they are still an expensive component of the poor people’s budget in Australia. I wonder who is assessing that. In this country we need to assure the basic right to communications, because it is a basic right for all Australians. When we start removing payphones from rural and suburban Australia, we are starting to erode those rights. Certainly there will come a time when for some reason a local population moves on and there is not the need for the same infrastructure. But that is rare in Australia these days. In fact, the opposite is occurring: there is somewhat of a drift to the bush. So I support the motion. I think that, at the very least—and other speakers have said this—the government must direct Telstra, as far as it can, to conduct seminars in the local areas where these phones are to be removed. Not just a sticker in a phone box but the announcement of a meeting, with Telstra personnel present, to discuss the removal of that payphone is when we will get a little democracy back into this process of high-handed decisions being made in the velvet lined boardrooms of Telstra.