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

I believe you could not possibly be sleeping with that screaming banshee in your ear right behind you. It would not be possible. I say that in the kindest possible way. As Senator Fisher knows, I said that with a smile on my face.

Back to the more serious part of this debate: as I said, you want to tell a company after it buys a wholesale service what it can do with it. Could you be more Stalinistic in intervention? Could you be more anticompetitive if you tried? You are actually going to amend your own legislation to be anticompetitive. It is quite extraordinary behaviour by a party that claims it is pro-competition, that it is pro-small business, that it is pro-innovation but the same simple pro-Telstra, anticompetition lines are coming from those opposite.