Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We now see in the dying days of government control of the telecommunications company Telstra the government seeking to impose its man on the Telstra board. Perhaps we should not consider this to be too surprising when we look at the interaction between the government and a number of public institutions. We have seen the government argue on the one hand for the privatisation, the liberalisation or the commercialisation of public institutions and the cutting of any ties between them and government. Yet, on the other hand, we have seen the government seek through legislation or any other means at its disposal to twist the arms of organisations and bully them into implementing the government’s view of the world.

Whether it be the schools and a national curriculum, whether it be the ties to universities, which the government wants to defund and yet regulate more than we have ever seen before in this country, whether it be the health funds or whether it be the airlines, this government wants to take no responsibility in terms of funding and supporting such important public institutions and their infrastructure, but it wants to have a tremendous amount of control over what happens in those institutions and how they operate. It is a pattern that we have seen regularly from this government in its interaction with a number of services, including an essential service like telecommunications.

The Greens think it is entirely appropriate for the government to take a keen interest in the provision of public services, including telecommunications, and that is why we oppose the sale of Telstra. We have done that all the way down the line, from T1 to T2 and now T3. We have done so because we see the benefit, the public interest, provided to the whole of the community by ensuring that governments are involved in the ownership and regulation of such institutions.

We have opposed the privatisation of Telstra because we can see the impact that the sale of Telstra is already having on people who have difficulty accessing telecommunications services, and there will be even further impacts. People who are living in regional parts of the country or people who have special needs require those needs to be met by public institutions such as telecommunications providers or by the institutions that I have mentioned.

Investors have not done well out of the privatisation of Telstra. The public have also not done well out of the privatisation of Telstra so far because of the forgone government revenue. This is why it is not surprising that so many people in Australia are opposed to these ongoing privatisations, whether done by the Howard government, by the Labor government before them or by Labor governments at the state level.

That is why in this debate on Telstra we have seen so many people who live in regional Australia speaking out about the importance of ensuring that Telstra not be privatised. But people in the National Party who purport to speak in this chamber on behalf of regional Australia chose to line up with the government, with the Liberal Party, and to privatise Telstra. We have seen them do that on a number of issues. Members of the National Party have said that the concerns of their constituents, the issues that they have raised and spoken about, are not of such concern that they should oppose the new cross-media ownership laws that the government is introducing into the Senate today.

We have seen a very disappointing representation in the parliament by the party that purports to speak for people in regional Australia. It is not surprising that more and more people in regional Australia are finding that they do not have a voice through the National Party. When I and my Greens colleagues work in regional parts of Australia, we find that people want to talk about what is being done about their voice being heard on climate change, the need to have important services like telecommunications available for them and the need to ensure that there is diversity in media ownership in regional parts of Australia.

When the government has majority control of the Senate with the Liberal Party and the National Party working together, the voices of people in regional parts of Australia are silenced in the parliament. It is very important that at the next federal election people in regional Australia help us in the campaign to rescue this Senate from the control of the government, otherwise their voices will not be heard. Their concerns will not be represented in the parliament and the government will continue to steamroll through with a whole range of proposals that have tremendously detrimental effects on people in regional parts of this country, such as taking away their telecommunications, reducing their access to diversity in the media or not dealing with climate change. (Time expired)