John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was not in the chamber at the time! The coalition financed and supported the construction of mobile towers over much of Australia.

There are a lot of towns in my area in northern New South Wales that have Telstra only—towns like Manilla, Barraba, Bingara, Ashford and Bundarra. All those little towns and communities have Telstra only. So my question is: as time goes on and we wish to upgrade to 4G spectrum, what is going to happen if Telstra is cut out of the bid for the spectrum network? What is going to happen to that network? What is going to happen in those small towns? If Vodafone and Optus do all the bidding and purchase the spectrum rights, I suppose we could expect those companies to set up mobile networks in these small towns of 400 and 500 people? I do not think so. They are private companies and they are not going to invest money to lose money. It is these small communities that are the ones that will miss out. They will be excluded from the upgrade. Those private companies will not be able to provide the better wireless broadband services to the people living in those communities and the surrounding areas. People in small regional communities will be excluded from it, and once again they will be the losers. But that is typical. That happened when Mr Keating wiped out the analog system and brought in the GSM digital network. Forget the bush; don’t worry about having a signal over any distance! As I said, stand under the tower and you might be able to make a call; move away from the tower and you might as well turn your phone off.

So tradition has not changed with the Labor Party. If Telstra is going to be excluded from the bid, that will be simply unfair to these smaller communities. Those are the communities that will miss out. Now the minister wants to take the big stick to Telstra. He wants to take the big stick and say, ‘You will separate or else I will belt you with the big stick.’ The big stick will be: ‘Telstra, you will not bid for the spectrum rights. You will be excluded.’ And those smaller country towns—and I have just mentioned a few, and there are hundreds of them—will be excluded from upgrading their services, their capabilities and their networks. Those in the small country towns will miss out again. That is what this is about. But it gets worse. As well as saying to Telstra, ‘You’re not going to bid for spectrum,’ the government is going make them sell their shares and make them get out of Foxtel and get out of pay TV. I thought we lived in a democracy, not a dictatorship. Senator Conroy is obviously turning that around. He is going to take the big stick and say, ‘You will do this, you will do that and you will do as I say or you’ll be out of the game.’

I support a one-network system to wholesale around Australia. That is fair and will give even and fair competition. That would be good. What is more: being a monopoly and an essential service, it should be retained by government. That is my opinion. I have thought that since my studies of economics back in 1972. If something is a monopoly and that thing is also an essential service, it should be retained by government. That is the attitude I have. Here we have a situation where the government says it is going to establish the National Broadband Network and set up the wholesale. I do not think it is not going to go into retail; although there are signs it is going to go into retail as well. Then it is going to cash in the monopoly. Why cash it in? I have just done some figures on the NBN, and the minister might be able to give me a reply. With $43 billion, we would be looking at a $5 billion a year gross return, so we would be looking at 12 per cent. We would need five million people to take up the system at $1,000 a year. That is a wholesale of $1,000 and perhaps a retail of $1,400 or $1,500 a year for the household.

What will happen if five million households and businesses in Australia do not take up the NBN? The income will be less, so the price per household will be more. I think the minister would agree with that. It would be interesting to see the planning on this and the expected return. I would be very interested to see what companies will come forward to put in this $21 billion. Or are taxpayers going to put it in? Who is going to fill the hole? If private industry does not come forward with $21 billion, who is going to fill the hole for that money? No doubt the government will have to fill the hole. Is that right, Minister? I ask as you depart the chamber, with a smile on your face. This is a serious problem I have. It would be wonderful to have a fast broadband network right around Australia. It would be great for medical reasons. You can imagine that a nurse in a small country town could set up the facility to have information on a patient go to a doctor in the city to inspect. As far as medical procedures go, it would be great. It would be wonderful. Of course, many in business would enjoy the 100 megabytes download to get on with their job more quickly. There is no doubt about that. But when we look at the cost, I have some reservations about this whole plan.

I will get back to this legislation and the big stick approach of the government—that is, ‘You will separate, Telstra, or else.’ That is what this legislation says. It says, ‘You will separate or else.’ The ‘or else’ means: ‘We will exclude you from the spectrum bid. You will not be able to bid for it.’ So those smaller country towns I mentioned will not be able to have an upgrade to their service. They will not be able to go to faster wireless broadband, for example. It is so common these days for people, instead of having a desktop computer at home, to choose to buy a laptop so they can move it around. In the smaller country towns, they will be excluded. That is simply unfair. Life is about fairness. This proposal for a big stick approach to Telstra is simply unfair. As a National Party senator, I cannot support something that is going to be unfair to those smaller regional communities. It is as simple as that. As for the big stick approach of saying to Telstra, ‘You will separate or you will sell off your interests in pay TV,’ as I said, do we live in a democracy or a dictatorship? That is wrong on all principles. No matter what side of this chamber people may sit on, that is wrong. It is wrong on all principles to say to a company, ‘You will do as we want you to do or else.’ That is what this legislation says.

As I said, telecommunications have come a long way in my lifetime—from the manual exchange of 1979 to the automatic phone to the mobile phone, from the analog system to the GSM digital system, to the CDMA and now to Next G and 3G. It would be good, as time goes on, to progress further. Some small country towns have Telstra only—no Optus, no Vodafone and none of those other carriers—and the customer base in those communities is too small for those other companies I mentioned to invest in mobile phone towers. Those companies will not do that. The cost would be too great and the return would be too little. So those towns that rely wholly and solely on Telstra will be the ones that will suffer the most. We cannot simply sit back and allow that to happen.

As I said, I support a wholesale, across-the-nation system delivering fast broadband and competition even. I know what wholesale and retail are about. When I was importing bolts out of Thailand, I was a wholesaler and a retailer. I know what it is like to compete against the retailers when you have that distinct advantage: you buy cheaper so you can sell cheaper and still cream off a pretty decent profit. That is what it is about when you own the wholesale and a retail network. You have a competitive edge. You can sell cheaper than your competitors. You can drive your competitors out of the market. The negotiations on this legislation to separate Telstra have been going on for months and months. I do not know where they are up to. When Minister Conroy let the cat out of the bag accidentally, I think the government was offering $8 billion and Telstra wanted $30 billion. There is a long way between $8 billion and $30 billion. I do not know where the negotiations have progressed to since then.

We hope that the separation does happen and that we do get a level playing field for all telecommunications carries in Australia. But to have this big stick approach is, I think, simply wrong. I cannot support the bill on those grounds. Many country communities, the smaller regional communities, throughout Australia have Telstra only. You can go out into the sticks, you can go to Cobar, you can go to Wilcannia, you can go where you like and you will find that all the people in those communities rely on Telstra. To have those people excluded because this bill says that Telstra will be forbidden to bid for the spectrum is, I think, simply wrong. It is also simply wrong by those smaller communities. As I said, as far as the other big stick approach goes, to force a company to sell their private interests raises some questions: ‘What are we up to? Where are we going?’ The government has this wrong. They need to negotiate with Telstra. They need to work it out with them and not expect this Senate to just hand a great big baseball bat to Minister Conroy so that he can put the heavies on Telstra and force it to separate. I oppose this legislation for those reasons.

I do hope that one day we have a national broadband network that operates on a level playing field and where there is consistent service, consistent cost and consistent delivery right across Australia. I have my doubts as to whether such a plan would be financially viable or whether it would provide a return. I am in two thoughts about the whole plan. As I said, for the government to want to sell it off later is to return a monopoly back to a private enterprise. My personal opinion is that there are a lot of questions to be asked about the whole program. As far as this legislation goes, it is wrong, it is unfair and I certainly could not support it. I thank the Senate.