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

I would like to quickly rebut—and I am very disappointed that Senator McGauran did not participate in the debate except by interjection—a series of claims made by Senator Ronaldson in this debate. He did make a considered contribution, unlike Senator McGauran, who just made his usual unconsidered contributions from his chair.

Labor do, of course, support competition in the Australian telecommunications sector. Labor set the wheels in motion for the introduction of competition into the Australian telecommunications regime and we remain proud of this legacy. We also, of course, support regulations that will protect and strengthen competition in the Australian telco sector. To this end, we believe that there is a genuine need for effective operational separation of Telstra. However, the determinations being debated here do not achieve an effective separation.

These determinations are the worst of all worlds. They impose significant cost burdens on Telstra without achieving any measurable benefit for the Australian telco sector. As I noted earlier, if the government is not going to do operational separation properly, it would be better off not doing it at all. Labor believe that operational separation addresses a genuine policy problem. That is why we believe it is worth doing right.

It is not fair on the industry or on Telstra to implement a regulatory regime that no reasonable observer has any faith will actually achieve its goals. The Howard government should have learnt this from the accounting separation debacle. This accounting separation regime was introduced to address the very same issues that the operational separation regime that we are discussing today has been introduced to address. However, like these determinations, the accounting separation regime was nothing more than a public relations scam that skirted the issue.

Of course, as a result, the accounting separation regime was an unmitigated failure. The reason we are having this debate today is that the government’s other, previous scam was such a dismal failure. The then Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, was forced to revisit the structure of the accounting separation on two subsequent occasions, implementing significant changes to the regime each time, because he continued to allow Telstra to dictate terms, just as has happened in this case.

I urge Senator Sandy Macdonald, a genuine grassroots National Party representative, to listen to his constituents, because they know the second-class service they have been getting. They know how they are being scammed and they know that this will not achieve any outcome that will deliver for their membership or their supporters. If you vote for this one, Senator Sandy Macdonald, Senator Joyce or Senator Boswell—if you are in the building, listening—you will have been done over once again by the Liberal Party and its big end of town mates, feathering the nests of merchant bankers, and you will not be looking after your own constituencies.

However, even Senator Alston’s two wholesale restructures of the program were not enough to remedy the fundamental flaws in the program. So not once, not twice but three times Senator Alston made a pathetic attempt to do something about Telstra’s market power. Labor have no doubt that these operational separation determinations will meet the same fate. You will be back, Senator Sandy Macdonald. After having let Telstra off the leash you will be trying to catch the horse after it has bolted, and it will be a debacle out there among your own constituents. That is why we are opposing these determinations. It is not that the Labor Party have backed away from our strongly held belief in competition in the Australian telco sector but that we believe ineffective regulation can be worse than no regulation at all. In this case the intrusive but ineffective operational separation regime developed by the government will be a retrograde step for the regulation of telcos in this country.

It was only a few days ago that the minister requested that the ACCC and ACMA undertake a review of their regulatory responsibilities with a view to streamlining the regulatory reporting requirements they impose on the industry. Now the government are attempting to introduce the most complex maze of reporting requirements the Australian telco sector has ever seen. It as though they do not know what the other hand is doing. They run the rhetoric, ‘Oh, we’ll reduce red tape’—and where is the National Party when it comes to this issue?—and at the same time introduce a complex maze that they know will not work. It is costly, it is a joke and people are laughing about it, Senator Sandy Macdonald, just as you are laughing right now. The reporting requirements in these bills will do nothing to improve transparency in the Australian telco sector. At least, Senator Sandy Macdonald, you are not a ‘Nat rat’ like Senator McGauran, who has just slunk out of the chamber.

These determinations are an expensive sham. They are a product of an arrogant and lazy government that could not be bothered to get it right. The determinations need to be disallowed and the minister sent back to the drawing board to start again. As she has demonstrated time after time in question time, she has no grasp of her own portfolio. The minister needs to heed the calls from the ACCC and the industry to develop an operational separation regime that addresses Telstra’s ability as well as incentive to discriminate anticompetitively against access seekers. That is what it is about. That is what we are trying to do, Senator Sandy Macdonald and the National Party senators who have an opportunity to step up to the plate today. The minister needs to heed Telstra’s own call to develop an operational separation regime that is not simply a tangled web of bureaucratic plans and strategies that we have to wade through. The minister should then come back into this chamber and present an operational separation regime that will actually work. Until then, Labor will remain opposed to the government’s operational separation regime and the determinations that comprise it.

But, once again, we have a minister demonstrating that she can have the wool pulled over her eyes—and not just by Telstra and her own department. Again, for the second time in a week, the minister came into this chamber and misled the Australian parliament. Last week she tried to claim that Telstra was a registered provider of infrastructure under the metro black spot plan for broadband. It took less than two hours to check, with the minister being found to have made a fundamentally misleading statement. It is not true; Telstra is not a registered provider. A week has gone by and the minister has not had the courage to admit her mistake, her bumbling, and to come in here and correct the record. She has not done it. Seven days later, she has misled the public about the administration of one of her own programs and has not come in to correct the record. Today she tried to slide by. I asked her to confirm that Telstra was not registered. The minister then went on to say, ‘We’ve exchanged information, papers, about it.’ That is not the same as being registered. But I understand that even this is not true, and the minister has misled the parliament yet again.

It is time for Minister Coonan to come into the chamber, as is required under all parliamentary form and under the ministerial code of conduct, stand up and say: ‘I was wrong. Telstra are not a registered infrastructure provider, as I tried to claim; they are not even a registered service provider, as I tried to claim; and they certainly have not engaged in an exchange of paperwork.’ I do not know who is advising the minister. I do not know what the department are telling the minister. The minister should come in here now and come clean or be in breach of the ministerial code of conduct.

They are not breaches that are going to change the world, but at least have the courage to come in and admit you were wrong, Minister, because you are. Your own departmental website, your own departmental advice, is that they are not registered, they have not done an exchange of letters and there have been no expressions of interest. Telstra are not participating, although that is the minister’s claim. That is exactly what has happened. Have some courage, Minister Coonan. Come in and admit you got carried away in the heat of a question time answer, you were not properly briefed and you just wanted to carry on and pretend the government were providing broadband in the metropolitan areas. Have some courage, come in and comply with the Prime Minister’s own guidelines or stand condemned.

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion (Senator Conroy’s) be agreed to.) be agreed to.