Mr KERR(10.11 a.m.) —I find curious at the outset how the coalition is seeking to reinvent itself with respect to the environment. I have the misfortune of having once occupied the government benches but now having to see life from a different side. In the course of those years in government, I was confronted by opposition from the now government on a whole range of issues which we put forward as being appropriate for a response to ensure that we did have a credible environmental record. Persistently and consistently over all those years our initiatives were rejected. They were not just rejected lightly or frivolously; they were rejected antagonistically.

I go back to the days when there were debates regarding issues as simple as Fraser Island, the south-west of Tasmania, Kakadu, the wet tropics and Wesley Vale—all of the major national achievements which were protected by dint of the effort of the former Hawke and Keating governments. Those achievements were made the subject of derision and ridicule by the now government parties. I find it indeed strange that the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) rises at question time to seek to make some political advantage out of his commitment to link the funding of his environmental package to the sale of Telstra.

The Prime Minister says that there are only two parties in Australia, the Liberal and National parties, who have any credibility on the environment. I think that is a complete distortion of reality. The word `hypocrisy' flies around quite lightly in these debates—I have heard it frequently uttered as I have watched the screen as speakers have risen—but I cannot imagine it being more aptly applied than to those members of the coalition who came forward on each of those occasions to castigate the then government on the basis that we had ignored the interests of Australia's export industries, that we had failed to recognise the interests of those who were involved in residential development, mining, or some other development in some of these fragile areas, and that we had put the interests of a small minority, as they often put it, to the fore of the national interest. They now confront us with a proposition that they hold the torch of true belief on environmental issues. The truth is that that is platitudinous nonsense.

It was only in the run-up to the last federal campaign, when the coalition realised that it had to have some mechanism of addressing the many millions of Australians who do give priority to the environment, that a stratagem had to be devised to give some comfort to those people and to seriously address the imbalance that we had achieved electorally. People who did have a concern for the environment consistently voted for the Labor Party either as a first preference party or after voting for other parties as a second preference because of the issue of the environment.

So what was devised? A crude political stratagem that would be placed before the Australian public so that those who believed that the environment was truly a national priority would be comforted—but that comfort would be given at a price; that is, a commitment to sell one of Australia's national assets. That was correctly described by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley) as blackmail. In other words, you could have something approaching an environmental policy from the coalition but only at the price of being willing to accept the sale of Telstra.

The reality is that there is nothing in the $1 billion environmental package that is anything other than a continuation of programs previously delivered by successive Labor administrations entirely funded through general revenue. Let us make that point crystal clear: there is nothing in the $1 billion package that does anything different, raises any new issues or confronts and addresses any new policy agendas other than those which were being addressed consistently and over time by major initiatives funded entirely out of general revenue.

We are now confronted with this rhetorical flourish that says the only way in which the environment will receive any attention from the coalition is if it is made conditional upon the sale of Telstra. Why such a proposition? Because the coalition knows that there is little popular support for the sale of Telstra and massive public support for programs designed to redress the environmental imbalance that has occurred not because of failures in the 13 years of Labor administrations but because of the way in which this country developed historically, because of our population growth along the coasts and the fact that we do need to build programs now, firstly, to preserve those sorts of areas which have wilderness and international importance and, secondly, to make sure that we do have adequate programs to address what you might call the agricultural and rural issues of salination and river silting and the brown issues of inner city sewerage and the like.

These issues should be addressed not as an add-on to social policy but as a first-line initiative to be funded by government, whatever the economic circumstances are. If it is not integrated into the mainstream of government policy making, the environment becomes that optional extra you get if you can do certain other unpalatable things. That is all.

Frankly, that kind of approach distresses me. It distresses me because for years and years as the then only Labor member for the state of Tasmania I was subjected to vilification by those on the other side because of the strong stands I took on the environment, because I spoke up and insisted upon adequate protection for the south-west wilderness of Tasmania, because I stood up and recognised the inadequacy of the environmental guidelines for the Wesley Vale pulp mill and because I was willing to give voice to those constituents of mine who believed that there had to be a reconciliation of the interests of both employment and the environment and that the Labor movement was the appropriate vehicle to do that.

I received continual attacks from colleagues now in government who derided this, claimed that attention to the environment was a marginal and peripheral issue pandering to minority groups, claimed that the Wesley Vale pulp mill should have proceeded irrespective of the inadequacy of the EIS and the failure of the company to address the issues of its effluence and derided us because we were seeking to find some accommodation which meant that there would be a significant and important forestry industry in Tasmania but not at the cost of the wilderness areas of that state.

Those battles persisted into the last term of the Keating government. During that term, when this parliament was surrounded by log trucks, we saw the almost embarrassing performance of the coalition parties seeking to make issue of the discomfort of a government which was seeking to make sure that the environment was taken into account as a central issue of government policy. These are hard decisions. These are not easy decisions. These decisions require balances. These decisions are often resisted by sections of the community.

They are not decisions to be bought by a bribe of $1 billion, which really represents only about 2½ years of the program costs that we were committing in any case to major environmental improvements. They are not to be bought for that price conditional upon doing something which is odious to the whole of the Australian community. Why is it odious to the Australian community? Telstra is not only one of Australia's key national infrastructure assets but also a company which delivers services across Australia on an egalitarian basis.

I have had the benefit of listening to a number of speeches in this House and in the Senate. I do not want to go through all of the matters that have been canvassed regarding the way in which Telstra is significant in terms of economic training opportunities for those entering the technological industries for the future. I do not want to go through the arguments about how Telstra in this new environment will be forced into significant labour shedding. I do not want to go through the arguments that the selling of Telstra will in fact provide a windfall capital gain at the cost of taxpayers to those who are rich enough in the Australian community to secure share-owning assets and, more particularly, to overseas investors who will get the opportunity to own a share of Australia's national interest—not, as the then opposition promised, on a share basis that would be differentiated from Australian share owners, class B shares, but rather on the same shareholder basis as Australian residents will be entitled to. All those points have been adequately canvassed.

I want to focus on the effect on regional economies. At the moment Telstra operates in much the same way as Australia Post; that is, it absorbs some of the cost differentials between country and regional Australia and urban Australia and then charges out many of its services on a flat basis. The most important of those are connection fees. Now why is this important? It is important in the same way that it is important that people are able to put a 45c stamp on a letter from anywhere in Australia and not pay a premium. If you live in Mount Isa, Bendigo or King Island, then it is true that on any cost measurement it must be more expensive to post from those destinations to other parts of Australia than it is for mail that can be directed quickly between Sydney and Melbourne. But there would be an outcry if we were to charge differentially for Australia Post services.

That is why, at the bottom line, there is an inevitable resistance from regional Australia to the privatisation of Telstra. It is easy to have glib rhetoric. I am assisted in this point by my colleague the honourable member for Bass (Mr Warwick Smith), sitting at the table. I like my colleague the honourable member for Bass. I regard him as a very personable man with whom I have had effective and good-spirited dealings over a long period of time. But Mr Smith as the member for Bass campaigned during the last election on the basis that electorates such as his would be benefited by the general economic policies that were being put forward by coalition parties. Unfortunately, the test of these kinds of assertions ought to be judged by outcomes rather than rhetoric. I think the Americans have the language: they say, `It is easy to talk the talk; harder to walk the walk'.

In Launceston already, as a result of the cost reduction impacts that are occurring, there has been the closure of the Launceston tax office. There has been a decision within the Family Court, prompted by the cost- cutting measures contained in the coalition's promises prior to the election, which at the very least will savagely reduce the services to residents of the north and north-west of Tasmania and most probably result in the closure of the northern registry of the Family Court.

Taking this further, once a company such as Telstra is privatised then inevitably the pressures to recover costs in terms of actual expenditure on services will increase, and the impact on regional economies such as Launceston will be enormous. Take the honourable member's own seat of Bass. He has a number of isolated areas—for instance, Flinders Island. The actual connect cost for a phone line is $4,930. For Scottsdale it is $1,270, and for Launceston itself, because it is a regional centre and not a major urban centre, the connect cost is $730.

There is nothing in the legislation that is proposed by the coalition that obliges the maintenance of a system of averaging—nothing. A number of community service obligations are spelled out, but nothing prevents the flow on of a decision to actually cost recover at real rates the cost of the introduction of those services to regional Australia. You can go through electorate after electorate and see that people in Sydney and Melbourne will not be particularly disadvantaged by this aspect of the legislation, but regional Australia will be savagely disadvantaged.

We only hear the talking of the talk. What happens once this policy is in place will turn on what the directors of the new privatised company will do and, whilst they will have an obligation to report to the minister, they will have no obligation to accept any directions. So Mr Smith will do as he did with the Family Court; he will say, `That is an independent, self-managed organisation. We have set up a policy framework; we have insisted they absorb cuts. The fact it is happening in my own home city I can do nothing about.'

But it is a direct consequence of the policy settings that the government has made. There is a direct link between a policy and an election commitment to take $2 million off the Family Court and trim its running costs by two per cent further and the necessity to make savings. And those savings to be made by an independent board will fall most directly on regional Australia.

We will hear the same bleating from regional members who are now speaking of the benefits of the Telstra privatisation when an independent board of a private telephone company starts racking up the connect costs in electorate after electorate, region after region, across rural and semi-rural Australia. We will hear the same excuse: `There may be a national interest, but I can't do anything about it because it is an independent board and the minister does not even have power of direction.'

In concluding my contribution to this debate—and many other contributions have set these points out—I say that there are many great reasons we need to maintain a strong and independent Australian owned and community owned telephone service. To link its sale to the environment is, in my view, a complete distortion of the historical processes that have occurred over the last 10 years and a sleight on the intelligence of the electorate. (Time expired)