John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that the President has received the following letter, dated 27 February 2006, from Senator Conroy:

Dear Mr President,

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move:

“That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

(1)

Telstra’s secret plans to remove at least 5 000 payphones throughout Australia, including nearly 1 300 phones in rural and regional Australia;

(2)

The revelations that under the current regulatory regime, Telstra would be able to remove around 25 000 of its 32 000 payphones;

(3)

The fact that the Minister was unaware of Telstra’s plans before they were reported in the media;

(4)

Telstra’s failure to reveal these plans under questioning on the issue during Senate Estimates; and

(5)

The fact that the Government’s privatisation agenda is already resulting in telecommunications services throughout Australia being slashed.

Yours sincerely

Stephen Conroy

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today’s debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

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

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following are matters of urgency:

(1)

Telstra’s secret plans to remove at least 5 000 payphones throughout Australia, including nearly 1 300 phones in rural and regional Australia;

(2)

The revelations that under the current regulatory regime Telstra would be able to remove around 25 000 of its 32 000 payphones;

(3)

The fact that the Minister was unaware of Telstra’s plans before they were reported in the media;

(4)

Telstra’s failure to reveal these plans under questioning on the issue during Senate Estimates; and

(5)

The fact that the Government’s privatisation agenda is already resulting in telecommunications services throughout Australia being slashed.

I rise today to discuss the disturbing revelations of Telstra’s plans for its 32,000 payphones throughout Australia. Last week we learned, not through the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts but through a leak to the Australian Financial Review, that Telstra has decided to dump 5,000 payphones across the country. These cuts amount to a 15 per cent reduction in the total number of payphones operated by Telstra in Australia. More disturbingly, the impact of these service cuts will be felt most keenly in rural and regional Australia, where many areas will experience a 50 per cent reduction in the number of payphones in their area.

The loss of these payphones may not seem like a dramatic issue to the chattering classes with their offices on Collins Street. However, these payphones are a lifeline to many people in Australian society. They are an essential service to the young and the elderly in our community. Payphones are a necessity for those Australians who are unable to make use of mobile phones for either financial or coverage reasons. They are often used by those in our community who are most in need. Kids Help Line has stated that 30 per cent of the calls it receives each year are from payphones—a point that makes sense when you consider that children who are in need of this service are often not in a family environment that would allow them to make such a call from home. Anyone with a young family will appreciate the importance of payphones to enable children who are too young to be given a mobile phone to call home and ask for a lift from soccer, the movies or an unsafe situation.

Payphones are also essential for allowing the marginalised and homeless in our community to stay in contact with society. Recent developments in voice mail services have enabled homeless people to be contactable by phone through payphones, allowing them to stay in touch with potential employers, service providers and landlords. Itinerant workers in outback Australia also rely on these payphones for staying in contact with their families and employers while working in isolated areas. Telstra’s plan for its payphones will leave these vulnerable people without any options for communications services.

While it might not be obvious to some, these payphones do provide an essential community service. Unfortunately, they are not profit drivers for Telstra and, as such, post privatisation, they will be on the chopping block. This is, of course, one of the many reasons why the Labor Party opposed the privatisation of Telstra. The current management of Telstra is pursuing exactly the strategy that one would expect of a private company—the maximisation of the bottom line. The provision of essential community services is coming a poor second to propping up the share price.

We all know what has been going on with the Telstra debate. We all know that this government has been engaged in a conspiracy with the previous board and management of Telstra to dividend-strip Telstra and take the profits it had earned over the last 10 long years of the Howard government. Instead of reinvesting its profits in its own network, it has been dividend-stripped by this government. All of the money has gone to the shareholders, including the government, to prop up the share price. Despite all of that, and despite flogging off Telstra 2—T2, as it is known—for $7.40, the price of Telstra shares languishes below $4 today. So all of the efforts of the government and the previous board and management of Telstra have failed miserably to deal with the fundamental lack of investment and lack of foresight by the Telstra management. It has been an ideological binge specifically designed to prop up the share price. That is all it has been.

So it is no surprise that unprofitable but essential community services like these payphones will be the first to go post privatisation. Do not say you were not warned. Do not come into the chamber and cry crocodile tears. Did we all see the photos in the newspapers last week of Senator Coonan slamming her fist on the desk and hear her demanding to know what was going on and saying, ‘I have called in Telstra today’? And what did Sol Trujillo have to say for himself at the interview he did after that? He said, ‘Senator Coonan has given me the green light to get rid of uneconomic phones.’ As usual, the minister talked tough one day and rolled over to Telstra the next, just as has been happening for the last six months since Telstra was taken over by Mr Trujillo.

The protestations of outrage from coalition members over the past weeks have been pathetic. We have seen Senator Barnaby ‘I won’t sell Telstra under any circumstances’ Joyce trying to cover for the fact that he talked tough but that in the end ‘Backdown Barnaby’ gave in and voted for the sale of Telstra. That is why he has to cry now. That is why Senator Fiona Nash has gone missing from today’s debate. I am pleased to see in the chamber some people who I know care about some of these issues: Senator Adams, welcome. But Senator Nash and Senator Joyce have run away. Senator Ronaldson, I am sure your mum will be watching, as usual, for your contribution. You do not need my help to publicise yourself; you have your mum on the job. But, having said that, you do have a genuine interest in trying to hold Telstra to account. It is just disappointing that you have failed so miserably.

What we need is a wake-up call, and last week’s leaked document should be that wake-up call. It should be a wake-up call to Senator Robertson, Senator Adams, Senator Joyce and Senator Nash because, as we saw at the Senate estimates, we were once again completely misled by the evidence given. I have read some of Senator Adams’s comments over the weekend where she was saying, ‘I did ask a question about this.’ Funnily enough, Senator Adams, they did not tell you the truth, did they? No. And what are you going to do about it? Nothing. You are going to sit here. You will talk a lot of pious words and express a lot of outrage but, in the end, just like Senator Ronaldson, you will do nothing. You will keep telling Senator Minchin and Senator Coonan to sell it. So do not cry crocodile tears in the chamber for the people of Western Australia who are going to lose their mobile phones, because you, Senator Ronaldson, Senator Joyce and Senator Nash, are the cause of it. Each and every one of you put up your hand to sell Telstra.

The sale of Telstra was always going to result in Telstra’s management slashing services in this way. That is what private companies do. Telstra’s payphone plans are just the first wave of service cuts that will occur as a result of the Telstra sale. Labor warned that a privatised Telstra would leave town faster than the banks and it is now doing so at a breakneck speed. It was inevitable that a fully privatised Telstra would cut back essential services in favour of fattening up the bottom line. Liberal and National MPs who voted for the privatisation of Telstra now have to accept the consequences of their votes with no crocodile tears. They should be honest with the electorate and accept responsibility for the inevitable results of what they voted for. Crocodile tears from the communications minister, Senator Coonan, will do nothing to lessen the impact of these service cuts on their communities. The only thing that will save services for those communities is for the government to abandon its extreme privatisation agenda. So, if you want to make a difference, Senator Ronaldson, to the communities that you or Senator Adams are going to cry for, stand up today and say, ‘It’s time the government had a rethink.’ That is the only thing that is going to save these phones—nothing else.

Unfortunately, Telstra’s secret plan to dump 5,000 payphones post privatisation is just the tip of the problem. The documents obtained by the Financial Review reveal that Telstra originally planned to dump 25,000 of its 30,000 payphones—that is 25,000 out of 30,000—and believe that the existing regulations do not stop them. That is the truly frightening part of this, and you all signed up to it. That is what Telstra believe, and the minister was given the opportunity in question time today to say, ‘No, that is wrong.’ Telstra believe the existing regulations will allow them to dump up to 25,000 payphones in Australia. When the minister had the chance to deny that, she went missing again. Senator Coonan today gave the green light to Telstra to slash and burn payphones in this country. Sol Trujillo has admitted it again. He is quite an honest man, Sol. He is not interested in the misleading attempts by some senators in this chamber to pretend that they care. Sol says it as he sees it. He repeats what he is told. Senator Coonan in question time today gave a green light to Telstra to slash and burn payphones in Australia. That is a fact. That is what Hansard will show.

The universal service obligation, a law that is supposed to guarantee a minimum level of basic service for Australians, currently allows the number of payphones in Australia to be reduced by more than 80 per cent. The universal service obligation that the government intends to enforce on Telstra is a plan that, as I said, allows payphones to be slashed by 80 per cent. Incredibly, the local presence plan, which the government claims ensures Telstra’s presence in the bush, does nothing to prevent the number of payphones in rural and regional Australia being cut by up to 50 per cent in many areas. That is right, believe it or not: Senator Coonan’s local presence plan does nothing to stop a 50 per cent cut of payphones in many regional and rural centres. In light of these revelations, the Howard government’s claim that the government would be able to ensure that a fully privatised Telstra maintained adequate services in the bush now lies in ruins. If the government has been unable to guarantee the provision of an essential service like payphones post privatisation, what other services can Australians expect to be slashed in the coming years?

Telstra executive Kate McKenzie belled the cat when she stated that the government’s new regulation to protect service levels in rural and regional Australia will ‘achieve very little except more words on paper’. So do not let us have any crocodile tears today, Senator Ronaldson and Senator Adams. Telstra is making it perfectly clear that it is nothing more than words on paper. The government’s local presence plan has been proven by this debacle to be completely useless. The plan does not include one single binding commitment from Telstra to maintain service levels and has not deterred Telstra from planning to slash these payphone services in the slightest. That is just the truth—not one single binding commitment from Telstra.

What has been the response of the Howard government to these cuts? It has not abandoned its extreme privatisation agenda that is driving the cuts. It has not acted to actually give teeth to Telstra’s local presence obligations and include some binding commitments from the company with respect to service levels. No! We do not want to bind Telstra to meet their obligations. Instead, the minister, Senator Helen Coonan, has asked Telstra to provide her with a list of the phone booths that it intends to remove. When we asked for it to be tabled, when we asked for the map, when we asked in question time today for the list of 5,000 phone booths to go, the minister joined the cover-up. The minister would not table the list or the map because she is engaged in rolling over to Telstra, and it would be too embarrassing. So, instead of acting to stop these service cuts, the minister is asking Telstra to tell her in advance the services that it is going to slash. Maybe this is just so that it can make sure that it is in as few marginal government seats as possible. I am a cynic. Come clean, Senator Coonan. Do not cover this up. Come clean with the Australian community. Let us have the map, let us have the list and bring on the debate. (Time expired)

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy says he is a cynic, and I suspect he is also someone with a very short memory because, when it was last in office, the Labor Party’s regional telecommunications record was one of neglect and utter disinterest in the need to provide modern telecommunications to the people of regional Australia.

Under Labor, consumer safeguards of today, like the universal service obligation and the customer service guarantee, simply did not exist. These and other consumer and regulatory safeguards will remain in place under this government regardless of the ownership of Telstra. Under the Labor governments of Hawke and Keating, before the Howard government’s introduction of the consumer service guarantee, some consumers could wait more than two years just to have a telephone service connected. Now, under the Howard government, consumers are guaranteed a connection within 20 working days. What a major transformation that is! Given its previous abysmal record, the Labor Party’s new-found interest in regional telecommunications is certainly welcome, but I must say it is something of a surprising development.

Turning to the specific issue of payphones, the government acknowledges that access to payphones is an important community service, particularly for those of a low socioeconomic status who may not be able to afford a fixed-line or mobile connection and for people in remote areas that do not have access to mobile telephone services.

That is why the government has made the supply, installation and maintenance of payphones part of the universal service obligation. That means that these payphone services have to be supplied as part of the USO. Having said that, it should be acknowledged that payphones are no longer as crucial as they once were. Today, mobile telephones and mobile telephone coverage are far more readily available throughout this country. This is highlighted by the increasing trend of people to dump their fixed line connection and rely solely on their mobile phone.

Thanks to Howard government policies, mobile phone penetration now exceeds 90 per cent of the Australian population, with close to 19 million mobile phone subscriptions. The government’s subsidies to extend coverage to small and remote communities and along national highways mean that 98 per cent of the population of Australia now has mobile phone coverage. This means that demand for payphone services has declined. Indeed, Senator Conroy might care to inform the Senate of the last time he used a payphone.

Telstra operates some 32,000 payphone terminals in Australia. It has decided to remove 950 payphones, with a further 4,050 under review. I would ask that the Senate not rush to criticism but examine the detail of Telstra’s proposal. According to advice from Telstra, nearly all of the 950 payphones will be removed from sites where there are multiple payphones, and planned removals are in areas that are under-utilised and where other commercial services are available. Importantly, none of the approximately 7,500 payphones covered by the universal service obligation will be removed.

David Moffatt, Group Managing Director of Telstra Consumer and Marketing, said:

Telstra is not considering removing pay phones required for public health and safety reasons, stand-alone pay phones in remote areas, or those subsidised by the universal service obligation.

A large number of the pay phones we are considering removing are in metropolitan areas on sites with more than one phone. Of the remainder, the majority are located on private property and could be replaced by privately owned pay phones.

Senator Conroy might be interested to know that there has actually been a slight increase in the number of Telstra payphones provided in rural and regional Australia in recent years. More importantly, most of the payphones removed in recent years have been in urban locations, where there are alternatives readily available.

The government will insist that no-one is disadvantaged by having a payphone removed from their community, and Telstra has assured the government that, when it intends to remove any single-site payphone, it will conduct a three-month consultation process, with stickers placed on the phone. People concerned about the loss of a payphone service will be able to contact Telstra in order to provide the company with feedback on that proposed loss.

Senator Conroy has asserted that the government’s privatisation agenda has resulted in the slashing of telecommunications services throughout Australia. Personally, I would have thought a Labor senator would not want to go there, given Labor’s record on deficient services in regional areas of Australia. It is undeniable that today’s telecommunications services are far superior to how they were when the Howard government first came to office. There have been a number of telecommunications reviews, and the government has responded with a range of relevant initiatives to improve telecommunications services and infrastructure around Australia. Prior to the recent announcement of the $1.1 billion Connect Australia package and the $2 billion Communications Fund, the government had already spent more than $1 billion on telecommunications services since 1997 in rural and regional Australia alone. From 1997 to mid-2005, the government directed $1.016 billion in funding to regional telecommunications.

Following the successful passage of the T3 legislation, the government has, as I said, invested $2 billion into a communications future fund in order to future-proof telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote Australia. Spending from that Communications Fund will be tied to independent and regular reviews of telecommunications services in regional, rural and remote Australia. The first review will be conducted in 2008, with further reviews to follow every three years. This is hardly a story of neglect of the need of people in regional Australia to have good telecommunications services.

The $1.1 billion Connect Australia package, also announced not so long ago, will roll out affordable broadband connections to people living in regional, rural and remote Australia, as well as further extending mobile telephone coverage, building new regional communications networks and establishing vital telecommunications services for remote Indigenous communities.

Let us not forget, and let us make the point very strongly, that Telstra is going to remain in rural and regional Australia because, in August 2005, the government imposed a licence condition on the company requiring it to maintain a local presence in regional, rural and remote Australia. That means—among other things—that, under the universal service obligation, payphones in regional, rural and remote Australia will be maintained.

In conclusion, far from the government’s privatisation agenda resulting in reductions in services to regional Australia, it has to be said that the people of regional Australia are reaping the benefits of improved services, thanks to Howard government policies. (Time expired)

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to join in this debate on this important urgency motion relating to Telstra’s announcement about removing payphones around Australia—or, at least, what we have heard about Telstra’s plans to do so. When the Democrats opposed the privatisation of Telstra—the very many tranches of the Telstra sell-off, including the most recent one which made that complete—we warned that Telstra would put shareholder interests ahead of the national interest and that the government’s framework to protect the universal service obligation and ensure the bush had state-of-the-art services was very flawed. Just six months later, Telstra, without informing the government, are pursuing plans to slash payphones in key areas around Australia. I think this is a clear indication that Telstra are putting shareholder interests above national interests. I also imagine this is only the beginning.

Telstra’s obligation to provide payphones is one element of its universal service obligation. The USO, as it is called, is provided for in the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act. One object of the act is that the fulfilment of this universal service obligation should generally be open to competition among carriers and carriage service providers. To this end, the TCPSS Act gives the minister the power to designate a universal service provider with primary responsibility for delivery of the USO, and secondary USO providers for particular services in particular service areas.

Telstra is the current universal service provider for the payphone service obligation for Australia. Loss-making payphones are subsidised through the USO levy. But, according to the Australian Communications Authority in its Payphone Policy Review, published in February last year, payphones provided by Telstra in response to this obligation comprise about 50 per cent of all payphones in Australia, the other 50 per cent being provided on a commercial basis. Given the government’s privatisation agenda, clearly the government must reconsider how it deals with aspects of telecommunications that are in the national interest.

Access to payphones and other telecommunications services such as broadband is critical for the vast majority of Australians, especially for people in rural and remote areas, Indigenous communities, children, overseas tourists and the many Australians who cannot afford mobiles or who simply choose not to use them. I do not think we can stress enough that, with the development of the market for mobile phones, it is the case that payphones are no doubt used far less often than they once were. But I would argue that that does not diminish the responsibility for providing them and that payphones will be used by people in emergency situations, people who do not have a mobile phone and people who may not have a phone at home. The necessity to keep them in those areas so people have access to them has not diminished. These payphones may not be commercially viable; they may not be commercially profitable; nonetheless, that does not mean that Telstra should be entitled to remove them from where they are currently located. At the very least, the communities around which these payphones exist should be consulted, and the removal of any payphone should be with the consensus of the local community. Quite frankly, I doubt very much that that consensus would be reached.

I was interested this week in the comments made by communications expert Paul Budde. He argued that the government should be considering mobile alternatives: turning phone booths into information terminals with access to government services connected with social problems, employment and a whole range of other services that are rapidly becoming difficult to access by telephone. If you need a job and you do not have access to the internet, you are out of luck. If you are homeless and you do not have a mobile phone, the same applies. I think Mr Budde’s idea is an excellent example of a potential whole-of-government approach to community services. I strongly encourage the government to both talk with Telstra about their proposals—in fact, require Telstra to talk to the government about their proposals—and focus on some of the interesting ideas that have come up. (Time expired)

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

The Howard government disregarded the views of more than 70 per cent of Australians when it voted to go ahead with the privatisation of Telstra—more than 70 per cent of Australians who know that a privatised Telstra is all about profits, not people. Both Liberal and National Party MPs voted for the privatisation of Telstra. We raised the issues of concern on this side of the chamber. We said that a privatised Telstra would inevitably increase prices and desert communities if it could not make a profit, and those on the opposite side of the chamber did not agree. And now we learn that Telstra is secretly moving along the road of its cost-cutting program with its plans to axe 5,000 payphones throughout Australia, a devastating blow to thousands of Australians living in cities and in regional and rural Australia for whom these phones are in many ways a lifeline.

Telstra’s secret plans to do away with 5,000 payphones—so secret are their plans that apparently even the minister was not informed of them—demonstrate how inadequate the government will really be in ensuring a fully privatised Telstra maintains adequate services for all Australians. Payphones are an essential service to many in our community, particularly the elderly, the young, the homeless, the socially disadvantaged and many in regional and rural Australia, including those travelling through these areas. For many who use payphones, it would not be unreasonable to assume that this is their only form of timely communication. The availability of payphones in emergency situations must be considered with regard to both safety and lifesaving applications.

We have previously heard arguments about the country’s high mobile penetration rate, but there exist genuine reasons for concern about the proposed reduction of pay telephones across Australia. Senator Conroy has already raised the issue of the Kids Help Line. A submission to the review of payphone policy in 2003 from Kids Help Line—a 24-hour national telephone counselling service for children and young people aged five to 18 years—highlighted the vital role of pay telephones in providing access to the service. Kids Help Line counsellors play a role in intervention and crisis intervention, responding to concerns about suicide, mental health issues, child abuse, homelessness, pregnancy, grief, bullying, domestic violence and drug and alcohol use. To quote from the submission:

Payphones play a significant role in facilitating children and young people’s access to the KHL telephone service. Each year, Kids Help Line answers over 400,000 calls from children and young people from all parts of Australia. In the 2003 financial year, KHL counsellors answered 461,000 calls. Approximately 30% of these calls are made from payphones.

The report further highlights that 56 per cent of calls regarding homelessness, 44 per cent relating to violent assault, 39 per cent relating to sexual harassment, 36 per cent relating to physical abuse and domestic violence and 28 per cent relating to sexual abuse were from payphones. Again I draw your attention to the fact these calls on payphones are made by children and young people. When Telstra surveys the use of payphones, it must be remembered that children under the age of 15 are not included in the surveys. The removal of payphones will have a considerable impact on access to these and other services for many in our communities.

Another submission, this one from Women with Disabilities Australia, also claimed significant importance of the availability of payphones, stating that women with disabilities are more likely to be dependent on payphones for communication with friends and family and in emergencies than any other group. The submission highlights reliability, availability and accessibility of payphones as being of vital importance to women with disabilities. With regard to the future, particularly relating to the issue of mobile phones, cost is raised as a barrier for many people with disabilities who are living on the disability pension and also for people with low dexterity, who would have difficulty operating a mobile phone.

The removal of the 5,000 pay telephones is just the beginning of what we can expect from a privatised Telstra. And what of our guarantee of service? Telstra’s universal service obligation in relation to payphones is:

... to ensure that payphones are reasonably accessible on an equitable basis to all people in Australia, no matter where they live or conduct business. Telstra’s obligation extends to the supply, installation and maintenance of Telstra operated payphones in Australia, including the process for ... resolution of any complaints about the location of payphones.

Note that it says ‘reasonably accessible’ and ‘on an equitable basis’. What this government fails to comprehend is that what Australians want is affordable and accessible telecommunications across all of Australia, and this includes access to pay telephones. What we have is a plan to remove 5,000 payphones, including 1,289 in rural areas, with some areas in rural and regional Australia losing up to 50 per cent of their payphones. And how does Telstra tell the Australian people that the payphones are to be lost to their community? By marking the targeted phones with a sticker claiming the phone is to be relocated, when the reality is, in some cases, that it will be removed and not replaced.

According to a report in Monday’s Financial Review, which appears to have more information than the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts had at that stage, a Telstra Country Wide briefing note:

... reveals a strategy to minimise consultation with local governments over the move, divert complaints and avoid media scrutiny.

According to the article, the briefing note reveals that Telstra had investigated a proposal to remove more than 25,000 payphones but were concerned about the potential political backlash. If we go to the Telstra website, we will find a heading citing criteria for public payphones, and in that section it says:

In making a decision as to whether a request for a Telstra operated payphone is justified, Telstra will have regard to the following factors:

whether the request meets the criteria ... for Telstra to fulfil its universal service obligation, or can be commercially justified …

This government has failed to listen to the Australian public and has pursued its extreme ideological agenda to privatise Telstra at the expense of those people who rely on it the most: rural and regional Australians and the socially disadvantaged in our cities and suburbs.

Let us consider some of the targeted areas, according to the table printed in the paper. In my home state of South Australia, in the south-east, Mount Gambier will lose 122 payphones, Port Lincoln 112 payphones and Adelaide 334 payphones. In New South Wales, Albury will lose 192 payphones, Newcastle 55 payphones, Sydney—north, south, east and west—985 payphones and Goulburn 273 payphones. In Queensland, Brisbane will lose 274 payphones, Rockhampton 125 payphones and Toowoomba 76 payphones. In Victoria, the Melbourne area will lose a total of 749 payphones. In Western Australia, Perth will lose 203 and Kalgoorlie 43 payphones. In the Northern Territory, Darwin will lose 147 payphones. In Tasmania, Hobart will lose 49 payphones and Launceston 107.

Telstra has targeted thousands of jobs in rural and regional Australia, and now our payphone services are being targeted. It appears the minister supports this rationalisation of services. The government previously accused Labor of scaremongering about the impact of the privatisation of Telstra. Well, we are not even there yet and we have information being made available to journalists—a Telstra briefing note—revealing cuts to payphone services that the minister was not even aware of. This was a document detailing 5,000 payphones being slashed, removed from the communities. (Time expired)

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have heard some quite remarkable speeches from Senator Conroy, but today’s was an absolute doozy: dripping in insincerity. There are some on this side who do not like Senator Conroy; I think he is sometimes so silly and so insincere that he is almost lovable. That was a speech which, I am sure, he will have no pride in re-reading. In fact, I rather suspect that he will not re-read it, because he does not believe one single word of it.

I think what is quite clear today is that this is not a matter about payphones. Senator Wortley admitted it and let the cat out of the bag: this debate is about the privatisation of Telstra. It comes from an opposition that is desperately trying to claw back some public goodwill. The most remarkable part of today was that it was led by someone who is spending not one single minute in regional and rural Australia. He has spent every waking hour rolling candidates from the Left in Victoria.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In downtown Melbourne.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In downtown Melbourne. He is not spending any time in regional and rural Australia. He is quite comfortably ensconced down there at 4 Treasury Place, and he does not go out. He has no idea what the requirements of regional and rural Australia are. I look in this chamber today and I see myself, Senator Adams and Senator Eggleston—who spends a lot of time in regional and rural Western Australia—who have some understanding of it. The Australian Labor Party could not even get someone who has got any background in regional and rural Australia to come into this chamber and talk on this matter today.

I want to go back to some of the points that Senator Conroy made. This was a privatisation debate, not a payphone debate. The payphones were just the excuse. I want to read to the Senate—as I have done on numerous occasions—comments made by Senator Conroy about privatisation. He came into the chamber today pleading on behalf of Australians that privatisation is a bad policy for Australia and that Australians do not support it. On 16 August last year, on the Jon Faine show, Senator Conroy said:

It makes no difference to the majority of Australians one way or the other about the ownership structure.

Those are the words of the man who came in today, and Senator Wortley joined in as well, and started to beat up on the outcome of privatisation. Then he had the gall and the temerity to talk about the Commonwealth Bank and to compare this with the banks leaving town. Who sold the Commonwealth Bank? Who sat back and watched the banks leave country towns all over Australia—and did absolutely nothing about it? The Australian Labor Party was responsible for that. Which party unilaterally did away with analog and did not have an appropriate regime in place to replace it? The Australian Labor Party. I have not heard one person from the Australian Labor Party apologise for what they made regional and rural Australians go through in that analog debacle. It was a debacle, and not one word of apology was given.

The big difference between the Australian Labor Party and the coalition is that we put in place mechanisms to support regional and rural Australians. Senator Eggleston talked very articulately about the amount of money that we have put into regional and rural Australia, and I will go through that again in a moment.

What I want to talk about now is the ‘secret plans’ by Telstra that the Labor Party have been talking about. It is as if the Labor Party had stumbled across something that fell off the back of a truck. I have here the briefing that they are carrying on about: a Telstra press release. Congratulations! How secret is that? The Telstra press release has fallen off the back of a truck and the Labor Party are quoting from that. Get serious! They are going out and spreading the story amongst the media that this is some secret plan. It is not secret; there is a media release from Telstra. I say to the Labor Party: let us debate the payphone issue, but let us not clothe it in some semblance of secrecy and act as if you have gone out and cleverly got something. Telstra have said what their plans are; if you want to talk about that, I am happy to do so.

I would have thought that the very least that Senator Conroy could do today would be to make up his mind about how many payphones there are in Australia. In the space of about two hours, between lodging this urgency motion and asking a question at question time today, there seems to be a difference of about 2,000 payphones. Senator Conroy could at least get his facts right in relation to that. Senator Stephens alleged quite falsely in question time that the majority of the reductions in payphones were in regional and rural Australia. With the greatest respect, Senator Stephens, that is not right. If you want to debate this, that is okay. We on this side are happy to debate it. But please do not come in here and make statements which are quite clearly incorrect and have no veracity at all.

As Senator Eggleston said, there are plans for some 950 payphones to go. There are some 400-odd which are being looked at. The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has said quite rightly—because she is a great supporter of the payphone requirement under the universal service obligation—that those phones are untouchable. The USO payphones are untouchable. Telstra will not be touching those payphones. The minister has quite rightly insisted on Telstra going through a community consultation process in relation to the removal of payphones. I do not think there is one person in Australia who would not agree that, if a phone is not being used, it is costing a lot of money and there are other alternatives, that payphone need not remain.

I think it was back in 2004 when there was an inquiry by the Australian Communications Authority into payphone policy. The ACA found that, in the main, this policy was working well. They made some suggestions, for example, in relation to Indigenous Australians. The government responded to that. (Time expired)

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the urgency motion moved by Senator Conroy. It is important that this chamber debate the direction that Telstra is going, which is highlighted by the plan to reduce the number of payphones in Australia. The direction is the same as that being taken by the government—as we reflect this year on 10 years of the current government being in office. I have been here for all of those 10 years, and it has been a period in which the rich have got richer much faster than the poor. And the gap between the rich and the poor, despite the arguments coming from elsewhere, has grown. The wherewithal of the poor has not expanded anywhere near as fast as the galloping ability of the very rich for consumption.

This has been highlighted over the weekend with the announcement by the Treasurer that two people representing the wealthy will look at what changes could be made to the government’s taxation regimen. One has no doubt that that will be concocted to reduce the need for the wealthy to contribute, as they have in the past under the rules of the past, towards the benefits that all Australians gain from not just having a democratic country but the semblance of an egalitarian country where basic needs are met. This debate today is about removing a basic right. The removal of access to payphones for the poorest Australians or those in greatest need deprives them of a right which wealthy Australians take for granted at all times no matter where they are.

I wonder just how many people in executive authority in Telstra, let alone those in this chamber these days, have used a payphone this year. Very few, I will guarantee. I know we get Telstra cards, which enable us to use payphones. But I wonder how many members even get Telstra cards these days. We get them free of charge; the public does not. But they are very important as far as I am concerned because I do travel quite a lot in rural Tasmania. I know the value of that service, particularly if you are out of range of a mobile phone. I could bank on the need for that service being so much greater if you happen to be an isolated person who may or may not be rearing a family, who occasionally reflects on whether they are going to need emergency assistance at some time and where the nearest payphone is, if they are not able to afford a conventional phone.

We are seeing a great move to mobile phones, but they are still an expensive component of the poor people’s budget in Australia. I wonder who is assessing that. In this country we need to assure the basic right to communications, because it is a basic right for all Australians. When we start removing payphones from rural and suburban Australia, we are starting to erode those rights. Certainly there will come a time when for some reason a local population moves on and there is not the need for the same infrastructure. But that is rare in Australia these days. In fact, the opposite is occurring: there is somewhat of a drift to the bush. So I support the motion. I think that, at the very least—and other speakers have said this—the government must direct Telstra, as far as it can, to conduct seminars in the local areas where these phones are to be removed. Not just a sticker in a phone box but the announcement of a meeting, with Telstra personnel present, to discuss the removal of that payphone is when we will get a little democracy back into this process of high-handed decisions being made in the velvet lined boardrooms of Telstra.

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to address Senator Conroy’s matter of urgency in relation to the provision of payphones by Telstra throughout Australia. The government has made the supply, installation and maintenance of payphones part of the universal service obligation. We have done this because we recognise that access to payphones is an important community service, and those opposite have described this very well. Under the USO, Telstra is required to make payphones ‘reasonably accessible to all Australians on an equitable basis’. This is backed up by detailed rules on how Telstra will remove and relocate payphones, as well as its service quality and fault rectification standards. I spoke at length on this at Senate estimates. I said:

I would consider that surely it is a social obligation, and Telstra is the only provider in the area that I am talking about. There is no way those phones are going to be profitable, but they should be there.

And Mr Pinel from Telstra said:

If they are captured by the universal service obligation, then we have an obligation to provide them. As I say, I am happy to take the specifics from you and explore the issues. If there are community issues that we need to take into consideration that we have not already, I am happy to give you that undertaking.

So I was very happy with that reply. For Senator Conroy’s information, the local presence plan has not been finalised. This plan will protect payphones.

Failure to comply with the USO or the rules is a breach of the Telecommunications Act and carries significant penalties. Telstra is paid a subsidy to allow it to provide non-commercial standard fixed line and payphone services. There are at least 7,500 payphones covered by the USO—most of them in rural Australia. Telstra has advised that nearly all of the 950 payphones earmarked for possible removal will be from sites where there are multiple payphones and that planned removals are in areas that are underutilised and where there are other commercial services available. I have a list of those payphones that are being looked at in Western Australia, and I must agree with their statement because a lot of them are with mining companies, there is a lot of duplication and people are no longer living in some of those areas.

The number of payphones is at odds with Senator Conroy’s claims of 5,000 payphones throughout Australia being earmarked for removal, including nearly 1,300 in rural and regional Australia. I can inform the Senate that under no circumstances will payphones be removed from areas where the USO requires them to be. The minister for communications, Senator the Hon. Helen Coonan, has affirmed that the government considers payphones an essential community service. As a fellow rural senator, I know she understands the importance of payphone services to country areas. She was quoted in the Age of 21 February 2006 as saying she:

... wants to make sure that no-one is disadvantaged by having a payphone removed from their community.

She underlined this position when she stated:

The message is loud and clear that the Government will not see people in rural and regional areas stranded without a payphone.

Not everyone has access to mobile phone services. This particularly applies to senior citizens living in rural areas and regional towns who are not always comfortable with mobile phone technology, may not appreciate the higher costs involved with using mobile phones or do not have mobile coverage in their area. On this last point, the need for payphones is particularly important in small towns where the mobile phone coverage is not dependable or is nonexistent.

Whilst I know that this situation will be alleviated to a very large extent in time because of this government’s huge financial commitment to improving communication services in the bush, the fact remains that at the present time many people in country areas depend on the local payphone. It is a lifeline for people who for whatever reason do not have access to either a mobile phone or a residential landline phone. In that situation, many people, both young and elderly, depend on that payphone down on the main street of the town to link them to the wider world to conduct business on a multitude of different matters. By her comments, the honourable minister not only has demonstrated her understanding of these people’s needs but is committed to protecting their access to a payphone.

Last week I travelled to the Northern Territory with other members of the Community Affairs References Committee as part of our inquiry into petrol sniffing in remote areas of Australia. As part of this trip, we flew by charter plane to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 460 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, and then travelled by troop carrier for a further two hours to Mt Theo, an out-station off the Tanami Road. I have been to some remote places in my time, but it does not get much more remote than Mt Theo in Central Australia. There, to my amazement, in the middle of a small cluster of buildings was their lifeline and link to the outside world—a solar-powered Telstra payphone. I could not help being struck by the fact that this was an essential link being provided by Telstra to this small community in this remote corner of Australia using the most up-to-date technology available—so much so that I took several photos of the phone box.

There is another side to this: unfortunately, this payphone and the one in Yuendumu were jammed with coins and could only be operated by a phone card. It was reported two months ago, and they have still not been fixed. I intend to follow this issue up personally with Telstra and remind them of their obligation to these communities.

In the past ten years, the coalition government has invested more than $1 billion in rural and regional telecommunications, meaning regional and rural Australians now have more access than ever before to high-quality, modern telecommunications. To future-proof telecommunications services, a $2 billion dedicated Communications Fund has been established and is administered by an independent board. The $2 billion of capital in the fund will be invested to deliver an income stream to fund the government’s responses to the recommendations made by legislated regular reviews of regional, rural and remote telecommunications services. (Time expired)

Question negatived.