Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government has bungled this misguided fire sale from the very beginning and the mum and dad shareholders and the Australian taxpayers will suffer the consequences. Now the government is trying to shine the torch on Telstra executives, making them the issue in this debate. It is completely unacceptable for the Howard government to now gag the management of this public company. The market should be kept informed of Telstra’s situation. The public will not wear it and the mum and dad shareholders will not wear it. They will simply see it as an attempt to deflect attention from the government’s bungling of the Telstra sale process.

This is a company in which 1.6 million Australians own shares. These are 1.6 million Australians who should be kept properly informed about the company’s prospects. They pick up the newspapers each day, watch the nightly news bulletins searching for information, listen to the radio, only to be disappointed. These are Australians who have invested their nest eggs, their hard earned savings. What do they find out? They read about a document circulated by Senator Minchin’s office to government backbenchers. It is a document referred to in the media as a T3 cheat sheet, one that gives government members answers to tricky questions from voters about the sale. An article in the Australian said:

Some of the suggested answers even have a whiff of the spruik, although the law, of course, forbids this.

I am sure the mum and dad Australian shareholders would like to cast their eyes across this document—but, of course, the document is not for members of the public and, to date, not for publication by the media, and the minister refuses to table it. Today in the minister’s answers, we had the government trying to shift the blame, trying to deflect from their own bungling of the sale. Labor’s view is that Telstra and its operations should be about nation building and we are opposed to the sale. But the Howard government have their own ideology and they disregarded the views of more than 70 per cent of Australians when they voted to go ahead with the privatisation of Telstra. John Howard has said in the past that a fire sale of Telstra would be unfair. I quote from what he said:

... we have never said that we are going to sell the shares just for the sake of getting rid of them. That would be unfair to the body of Australian taxpayers and it would certainly be unfair to existing Telstra shareholders.

Now the government are so exposed on Telstra, they have decided to sell at the bottom of the market. In 1999 John Howard said Telstra was a great deal at $7.40 and in 2002 he said that he was not satisfied that $4.50 a share was a good return to the Australian public. But now he is rushing into a fire sale of shares at $3.60. In November 2002, following the Prime Minister’s comments that he was not satisfied that the $4.50 a share was a good return to the Australian public, the minister’s spokesperson said that no further Telstra shares would be sold until the share price improved. Since then the share price has fallen from $4.50 to $3.60 and it appears now that this government is again walking a familiar path, the path of broken promises. It is the Australian public who will be left by the wayside. Why has the government broken another promise? Why is the decision to sell at $3.60 acceptable now? (Time expired)