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

I welcome the opportunity to take note of answers on the issue of telecommunications. During this parliamentary sitting we have sat here in question time and listened to questions being asked by the opposition on the government’s economic stimulus package. It was a package that supported jobs and provided to schools and local communities. The package involved making Australian homes more environmentally friendly. It was a package that those opposite voted against. Today we hear a question from Senator Minchin on reforms to the telecommunications regulations and the government’s National Broadband Network. We are told that Senator Minchin, the opposition communications spokesman, yesterday racked up his 150th media release without putting forward a single policy. Senator Minchin was part of a coalition government that put forward 18 failed broadband plans or proposals. We should say proposals because they were not plans.

Yesterday the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy announced reforms to telecommunications regulations here in Australia. We know that these changes will reform existing telecommunications regulations in the interests of Australian consumers and businesses. They will drive future growth, productivity and innovation across all sectors of the economy. In the transition to the National Broadband Network, the existing regime needs to be reformed to improve competition, to strengthen consumer safeguards and to remove unnecessary red tape. The historic reforms will fundamentally reform existing telecommunications regulations in the national interest. These reforms have been welcomed by the ACCC, consumer groups, telecommunication carriers, other senators in this chamber—we know that—and even some members of the coalition. I have some information here from Choice because they have come out in support of these reforms as well. With the minister’s announcement yesterday, today and into the future we are correcting the mistakes of the past, when opportunities to address Telstra’s highly integrated market position were missed.

Earlier this year, the government embarked on a program to transform Australia’s telecommunications industry, in the interests of all Australians, with the largest nation-building investment in our history, the National Broadband Network. Yesterday’s announcement builds on this, and it is the next step in revolutionising Australia’s communications landscape. These reforms are critical to ensuring that our communications services operate effectively and efficiently in Australia’s long-term national interest. The reforms will address the legacy left by those who privatised Telstra without implementing the necessary reforms. The announcement made yesterday puts forward a series of reforms that provide choice for Telstra. It can stay with its existing assets, as the minister has said—the old copper network—or it can move into the future with the new mobile spectrum and the new applications and technologies that that will bring. The reforms address structural problems in the marketplace while giving Telstra the flexibility to choose its future path.

The issue of shares was also raised today. I am surprised that the opposition would want to go there. Let us not forget that under the regime supported and promoted by those opposite the value of Telstra shares fell. How much did the value of Telstra shares fall by? Under the former coalition government, when the former minister appointed Mr Trujillo to manage Telstra, the value of a Telstra share was about $5.20. When Mr Trujillo left Australia to return to his home country, a Telstra share was valued at $3.20. That equals around $30 billion of lost Telstra value under the former coalition leadership. It is a $2 per share loss—some $30 billion in value lost at various points. (Time expired)