Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There we see it again: carping from the other side about anything to do with telecommunications that this government puts forward. What is extraordinary is that we hear nothing but carping and negativity from the other side when they have absolutely no plan for the future of telecommunications services in this nation. Now, it might have escaped the notice of those on the other side that this government has gone to the last four elections with a policy to sell shares in Telstra. At those elections the people of Australia voted for this government. I know that might be hard to grasp, but we have taken that policy to the people and they have agreed with it. It was a very clear policy that we would be selling further Telstra shares and the Australian people have voted for us on that basis.

This government should not be in the job of running businesses. This government is here to run the country; businesses should be running businesses. We recognise that. Unfortunately, those on the other side are a little slow on the uptake, but we recognise that that is the best thing in the interest of Australia. I would like to quote something for senators here:

... there are broader benefits to be gained from moving the ownership of assets into the private sector, most notably in achieving greater efficiency, stronger performance and improved competitiveness in some of our key national enterprises.

I think that sounds pretty good and probably everybody on this side of the chamber would think that sounds pretty good as well. It is very interesting to see that the quote actually comes from the Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley. So the opposition are flip-flopping all over the place. On the one hand, they are standing over there carping about our intention to privatise and to sell further shares but, on the other hand, they have a leader who is putting forward comments like that. They are flip-flopping all over the place. They have no idea where they are and no plan to take telecommunications forward.