Mr PYNE(10.54 p.m.) —Tomorrow's technology is here today, offering us unprecedented choices and exposing us to a whole new world of ideas and possibilities. Today we have a choice between analog and digital mobile telephone services and a choice between three providers. We can buy long distance calls from any number of companies, and some can even choose a preferred telephone company for local calls. Those with computers have quick and easy access to literally a world of information via the Internet. The number of television channels increases every day. Interactive services are either here or on the way.

Ironically, with all these choices available, the Australian people have no choice when it comes to the siting of cables. The Telecommunications Act, sponsored by the previous Labor government in 1991, allows Telstra and Optus to do as they please with scant regard for the wishes of residents and the environment.

Let me make it clear that, when the rollout is complete, the services available to Australians will be completely valuable. No doubt we will embrace them with the same fervour as we have innovations such as mobile telephones and video recorders. Already we have seen some tangible benefits of cable, with Optus offering cheaper local telephone calls to those homes already hooked onto their system.

The current arrangement for cable rollout has set in place a timetable that makes it commercially imperative for Telstra and Optus to get the job done quickly. Thus, Optus has found no alternative to stringing cables on electrical poles. Telstra has in the main used its existing underground ducting where possible, though they have made noises about using overhead cabling in an attempt to keep pace with their competitor.

All of this has caused a great deal of unrest in our community. I know that many of my colleagues have been contacted by constituents, many hundreds of them, protesting the unfettered access grown from telecommunications companies. Certainly in my electorate of Sturt, it has become a very major concern among my residents.

There is widespread disapproval of overhead cabling. It will further block the skyline in those streets where residents must still endure overhead electrical wires, posing a further danger to the trees. Overhead cabling provides an inferior service as the lines are subject to the elements.

Ugly as they are, perhaps each cable should be adorned with a sign stating `Sponsored by the Australian Labor Party', just to remind people that Optus paid the previous government $800 million for the right to attach cables as they saw fit. It bemuses me then to discover that some prominent Labor Party people in my electorate have been active in collecting signatures demanding that the federal government take action to stop overhead cabling.

I would like to know where they were when the code was being written by their Labor colleagues, when the coalition argued against the carte blanche access for these companies. When you tell a small child that he or she can eat as much chocolate as they like, you cannot very well complain when they make themselves sick.

These people knew full well that the code they wrought on the public will remain in effect until 1 July 1997, when it will be replaced by a more appropriate set of restrictions framed by this coalition government. Once that code is finalised, we will all be in a better position to see what can and needs to be done.

Senator Schacht, the current opposition communications spokesman, admitted recently that the Labor government had got it wrong, never for a minute believing that there could be a competitive rollout of cable. Unfortunately, Labor badly mishandled the whole issue of pay TV from the outset. After equivocating for years on whether Australia should even have the right to pay TV, they eventually invoked a regime which was clumsy and cost ineffective.

Following Austel's finding that existing Telstra ducts were not of sufficient magnitude to carry the cables of both companies, the Minister for Communications and the Arts (Senator Alston) has adopted a commonsense approach. He has asked Telstra and Optus to investigate the possibilities of sharing one cable.

In South Australia alone, the cost of undergrounding all cables has been estimated at $10 billion. It is a vast sum, but then the cost of the rollout of dual cables will not come cheaply, either. It is time for Telstra and Optus to get their heads together and discover some mutual ground.