Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation) Share this | Hansard source

How interesting it is that the government tries to point to minuscule issues such as the changes that Senator Eggleston pointed out that have somehow been of benefit to consumers when the whole character of the treatment of Telstra under the Howard government for the last 10 years has been completely and utterly dictated by the privatisation agenda. In fact, the proposal back in 1996 to sell Telstra in tranches eventually, when they could not get the full sale through the Senate, has resulted in the privatisation agenda ensuring that Australian customers and telecommunications users have been put at a perpetual disadvantage. This is because the primary political and policy interest of the Howard government has always been to maximise the return on the Telstra asset when they sell it.

With that in mind, the Howard government had no interest in doing anything other than making sure Telstra made a lot of money. What is the obvious and direct impact of that? The obvious and direct impact of that is that customers of Telstra would be delivered a short straw. They would be ripped off. They would be delivered substandard services. There would be cost savings made on Telstra’s services, in the effort to maintain the fattest bottom line in profits as was possible for the company. If that profit margin were not maintained and grown, the share price would not prove to be satisfactory to entice people to buy the shares upon the next tranche sale.

Let us have a look at how this has manifested itself over the last 10 years. I and many other Labor senators have participated in endless inquiries, which have shown up a number of very salient facts, like the existing Telstra copper network being, as described by their own people, ‘five minutes to midnight’ in terms of it being obsolete. So over the last 10 years—and one of these inquiries was only a few years ago—the government and Telstra have admitted that they have underinvested in the network to the point of its obsolescence almost. That is an absolute disgrace, particularly in the context that we all know, that every local government in this country knows and that every state government knows that it is through broadband that we will maximise economic growth particularly in our regions. Yet all these policies have worked in the opposite direction.

Let me make a point about broadband. Up until a few short years ago, the Howard government was talking down the need for broadband in this country. I saw the minister in this place, at world forums around this country and in other places saying, ‘We don’t need broadband.’ This is absolutely true. It was only a few years ago under immense pressure not just from the Labor opposition but from businesses, local councils and community organisations demanding that this government wrap its small mind around the fact that this country needs broadband did we start to see some policy attention, as opposed to permission by the Howard government to allow Telstra to continually underinvest in the network. It is quite rich for this arrogant government to come in here and say, ‘Look what we’ve delivered to Australian consumers.’ It has not delivered anything in terms of improvements.

There is a raft of statistics showing what has worsened in a period of a telecommunications boom in the world, a dot com era which saw a massive increase in the use of the internet. What has happened here? The character of this privatisation driven agenda in telecommunications policy has resulted in minimal investment in the network. Telstra are doing everything they can to prevent other companies investing in broadband networks. The ACCC has experienced incredible frustration regarding the regulations surrounding accessing Telstra’s network, as though that would somehow help, given the blockages to broadband within that network anyway. I will not even go into the pricing of access. You need only to look at the retention of the monopoly of the fixed line and how that has been singularly exploited by Telstra with price increases all the way through. Every time that goes up, everyone has to pay— (Time expired)