Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Through the chair, Mr Acting Deputy President. Thank you, Senator Abetz. I accept your admonishment. Senator Ronaldson, you have experienced this, so do not sit there and interject: ‘Leave me something to say.’ What you need to be saying is: ‘You’re right, Senator Conroy. I’m coming to vote with you, because this isn’t good enough.’ Do not sit over there, waving a piece of paper, knowing that every word that I am saying here is right—and you really do know that it is right.

The fact that wholesale customers acquire products from a different unit of Telstra from Telstra retail is an open invitation, as I have said, to game the regime. You know that that is absolutely right. The effect of this mistake has been made clear. This has happened since the decision that it would be forced to have operational separation, Senator Ronaldson. I hope you are listening and not just scribbling away over there. Telstra has systematically gutted its wholesale division in the lead-up to the introduction of operational separation. The company has moved its pricing and marketing, business strategy and business and product development decision-making power from the wholesale division to a central body. It has gutted it; it is just an empty shell now. Telstra had already got around operational separation before you introduced your regulation. There have been suggestions that provisioning, customer care and fault rectification may also be centralised in this way. That is right, Senator Ronaldson. I know you actually care about this. I know you care about how long it takes to get things fixed out there in the bush. Telstra has already taken fault rectification out of the wholesale arm and has moved it into another area. This is a sham.