Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

If I can borrow from Senator Minchin’s earlier answer: this is semantic nonsense. The most important thing to understand here is that there are now 150 new telecommunication providers providing extra jobs in telecommunications and there is a very proper program to look after the redundancies of Telstra employees, which I have outlined. Before Labor comes in here and tries to cast stones at this government I remind the Senate that Labor practically drove this country to the brink of bankruptcy, with one million unemployed people, small businesses thrown on the scrap heap and very few people with any opportunity of getting a new job. Wake up to yourselves and realise that this is part of a redundancy program with the proper safeguards in place.