Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, they do think they are so clever, Senator Lundy. You are right. Tragically, the way networks work is they are connected together. Pieces of copper connect to pieces of copper; pieces of fibre connect to pieces of fibre. When you restructure the sector, when you pull the copper out of the ground and you close exchanges, what that means is that the copper network that extends out into the 10 per cent needs to be connected to something. The restructure that we are engaged in is described by the Australian in its editorial today, where it says:

THE effective restructure of Telstra after two decades—