Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition acknowledges the need for regulatory reform and to examine all avenues to ensure that we have a competitive and thriving telecommunications sector. That is on the public record. What we are not prepared to tolerate is the Australian Labor Party and the Rudd Labor government blackmailing a good, honest Australian company that has 1.4 million shareholders. We are not prepared to let the Rudd Labor government blackmail this Australian company with a dramatic outcome for mum and dad investors who bought shares in good faith and have held their shares on the back of undertakings given by the Australian Labor Party in the run up to and after the 2007 election. These people have held their shares on the back of undertakings given and on the back of any policy announcements to the contrary which would have put their shareholding at any risk.

Indeed, if you want to see the impact of this policy and the outcome of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 on those mum and dad shareholders you need look no further than the Australian stock market over the last two days in relation to Telstra shares. Those shares are up 7 or 8c today on big turnover on the back of the potential for this legislation to be defeated. The market has made it quite clear that it views this legislation as being bad for Telstra shareholders and it has responded to the possibility of this bill being defeated by raising Telstra’s share price. This is further evidence that those small Telstra shareholders who bought in good faith, who maintained their shares in good faith, are being screwed by a bill that they have not had any input into. They are being screwed by a government that did not tell them either before, during or after the 2007 election that it would insist on this regulatory approach. What we have seen in the last two days is a very clear indication that this ill-thought-out policy, for which the government does not have a mandate, is only going to have the outcome of destroying shareholder value.

I invite honourable senators to read the speech of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Minchin, which details substantially the history of this matter and the commentary on it. I urge senators—Labor, coalition, Independent and Green—to read Senator Minchin’s speech and see what the history is, see what has been said in the past and see what people have been told to rely on when making decisions about whether to invest or retain their shareholding in this company. We are not talking in this case about large institutional investors who have the benefit of history and the benefit of volume.

Debate interrupted.