Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I am sorry. The Democrats in the Senate, with the exception of Senator Sowada—to her great credit—voted with the then Labor government to ban political advertising. The then Liberal opposition suggested that that would be regarded as a very strong curtailment of political communication and free speech, and we were successful in stopping that. Senator Stott Despoja says that we should write to constituents and communicate with them in other ways. But I am quite sure that, in the last week of a federal election campaign when the letterboxes of Australia threaten to burst, if you did a survey of voters and asked, ‘Would you rather ban political direct mail or ban political phone calls?’ everyone would say, ‘Ban the direct mail and we will put up with the phone calls.’

I think it is incredibly important that we draw attention to the objects of the legislation that Senator Coonan has brought here—a legislative act to control calls that can become a nuisance. It is a proposal that has been around for a while. I think that it is to her credit that she has finetuned it to the extent that it has bipartisan support—