Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

Over the past few weeks we have seen the devastating fallout of the government’s decision to sell off all of Telstra, which Family First opposed. Australians expect governments to provide essential services, including telecommunications. Telstra is a service and not just a business. It should be treated as a service—an essential service—and not as a business only, where the bottom line is all that matters. Family First warned that services would be cut to boost profits. We warned that Australians would pay the price for the government treating Telstra as a business only, and what we warned about has come true.

Recently we have started to discover the real truth behind Telstra’s slash and burn agenda. Firstly, Telstra revealed plans to slash 500 jobs and close 13 call centres over the next 12 months, beginning with Wollongong, Canberra, Launceston and Newcastle. Launceston will be devastated, with 257 jobs losses. It is desperately hoping to lure another major employer to the town. Almost 220 jobs will go in Newcastle, 250 in Brisbane, almost 150 in Adelaide and 88 in Wollongong. Then last week Telstra announced that another 244 jobs would be axed, with Victorians bearing the brunt. Ballarat will lose 82 jobs, 112 will go in Melbourne and 50 will disappear in Brisbane.

But that is not all. Media reports today reveal that a Telstra executive said that the organisation had to be run like a dictatorship if it was going to be more efficient. The executive said:

We run an absolute dictatorship and that’s what’s going to drive this transformation and deliver results … If you can’t get the people to go there and you try once and you try twice … then you just shoot ’em and get them out of the way …

Family First is shocked and saddened by this attitude. Australian families are struggling to make ends meet, particularly families in regional areas. These massive job losses will impose further hardship and suffering on workers and their families in particular, as well as on those in rural and remote Australia. Worst of all, there is more still to come. If Telstra is to reach its target of culling 12,000 jobs by 2010 it is only just over half way there. Another 500 Australian workers will lose their jobs this year; another 500 families will be thrown on the unemployment scrap heap and that will devastate their local communities. Until we know where the axe will fall, Telstra’s employees and their families will be forced to live in fear of losing their jobs and livelihoods. That is a level of stress and anxiety that no worker should have to endure.

It is a joke that Treasurer Peter Costello and communications minister Senator Helen Coonan condemned Telstra for its actions when they voted for the sale. The Howard government cannot distance itself from Telstra’s slash and burn agenda. The government must accept some responsibility for the fact that thousands of Australians are losing their jobs. After all, it was the government that sold part of Telstra and then campaigned so strongly to sell the rest of the telco. Before the sell-off, the government had a majority shareholding in Telstra, which provided some assurance for the quality of services in country areas and for the jobs of Australians and the wellbeing of their families. But Telstra still suffered from underinvestment and from a failure to provide services in regional Australia. More than 14 per cent of all lines were faulty, obsolete equipment had not been replaced, new workers had not been properly trained and IT systems were not capable of handling the volumes of new services offered.

The situation has hardly improved. Last year Telstra’s management made it clear that those hardest hit by the completely privatised company would not be Australians in the metropolitan suburbs, where Telstra’s market share in some cases is less than 20 per cent. Rather, it would be those in regional, rural and remote Australia, where there is little if any competition and Telstra’s market share is more than 90 per cent. Telstra’s management also predicted a growing technological divide between rural and metropolitan Australia. But the government was still happy to sell off its majority stake and put profits before people.

Just over two years ago, I told the minister for communications that Family First needed to be shown how selling the rest of Telstra would benefit Australian families. I added that I did not want to hear only about the economic benefits; I wanted to be convinced it was a good idea. Family First voted against the full sale of Telstra because profits would drive decisions and services that were not profitable, particularly those in regional and rural areas, would disappear, as would jobs in their thousands.

Family First condemns the government for turning its back on Telstra’s workers and their families who now live under a cloud of uncertainty, job insecurity and fear of the future.