Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If the strength of Senator Conroy’s argument were measured by the volume of his contribution, he would have a very powerful argument indeed! Unfortunately for him, that is not the basis upon which this debate will be decided. This debate on the future of Telstra, and the way in which the value of that asset should be returned to the Australian community, is a matter which is properly decided by public policy—public policy, I might say, which has been consistent for not just the life of this government but at least the last 20 years. We have had 20 years in which major Australian public assets, which have been assets of the marketplace and assets which were at risk in a changing marketplace, have been subject to policies of privatisation. Nobody in this debate who has listened to the sound and fury of people like Senator Conroy should for one minute forget that it was the Australian Labor Party in government which systematically and consistently sold off public assets of the kind that Telstra represents. And, as surely as night follows day, if the Labor Party returned to the government benches in the future, they would continue to sell those assets where continued public ownership represented a bad investment for the Australian community.

We heard from Senator Hutchins, who talked about a tricked-up dividend, saying that that was a good reason to be very suspicious of this process. Senator Conroy talked about a smash-and-grab policy. It seems to me that both of those contributions recognise implicitly that there are very powerful reasons why Australian governments should not be in a position to make decisions, if indeed they ever were to be made, with respect to Telstra shares or Telstra’s assets in the marketplace. Of course we reject the premise of those remarks—that in some way the government is manipulating the dividend that Telstra pays to its shareholders. But, even if it were true, it is a compelling argument against governments being in the position where they can influence dividends and share prices on the open market. They should not be in that position; there is a fundamental conflict of interest. That is why we are proposing that the government’s share be sold down.

Back in 1994, an important figure in the then Labor government said:

The fundamental role of both corporatisation and privatisation is of course in the microeconomic reform context—in pressing our economy further ahead down the path of international competitiveness.