Mr LEE(11.18 a.m.) —I begin by thanking my colleague the honourable member for Werriwa (Mr Latham) for outlining the opposition's position on our attitude in supporting all of the 17 amendments. I will confine my remarks to amendment No. 17, which blocks the government's attempts to delete the minister's ability to issue a direction to Telstra. I place on record my appreciation to Senator Harradine and Senator Colston for supporting the opposition's amendment in the Senate. We think this is a very crucial power for the minister for communications to have.

I am not a lawyer—I am an engineer—but I do know that when judges have to make decisions on legislation that is passed by the parliament, they sometimes take account of what ministers say. Given the fact that this minister, the Minister for Sport, Territories and Local Government (Mr Warwick Smith), representing the Minister for Communications and the Arts (Senator Alston), and this government have tried to frustrate our at tempts to retain that power of direction in the hands of the minister, I hope that any judge that is making a future decision about the legality of these issues will take account of the views not just of the government and this minister but also of the parliament.

The fact that the Minister for Sport, Territories and Local Government is at the dispatch box this morning accepting this amendment means that their party and their government is accepting that the minister for communications will retain that right, that power of direction. There is no point in the minister for sport trying to use some weasel words—as he did in his earlier remarks this morning—by saying that in some way the government is only going to be entitled to the rights that they are entitled to as the owners of certain shares in the company. Minister, there is no point in trying to use your words in this debate to in some way undermine the amendment that you are accepting. What this amendment does is give the minister for communications the power to issue a direction to Telstra.

If we had not been successful in the Senate, the minister for communications could not have issued directions, because that would have been oppressing the minority shareholders. Even though the government has two-thirds of the shares, you cannot oppress the minority shareholders. If this government allows Telstra—whether it is one-third privatised or not—to take certain decisions, here are a few examples where we would be calling on the minister to use that power of direction.

If Telstra tried to introduce charging for directory assistance, that would be a breach of the undertakings given by the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) in this chamber earlier this year. We would be in here calling as loudly as we could for the government to issue a directive to Telstra to stop the introduction of such charges. If the power of direction were not there, the public could not rely on the government to use its two-third shares to ensure that there would be no charge for directory assistance.

The second example is the one we have been talking about this week. If there were an attempt to introduce differential local call charges across the country, we would demand that the minister issue a directive to Telstra. After 1 July 1997, under the government's new legislative regime, if the government does away with section 183 in the act that prohibits discriminatory pricing, and if the government tried to allow Telstra to drop the price of local calls only in the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne where Optus is competing, we think that would be against the public interest.

We think it would be wrong for the people who live in the other suburbs of Sydney to also not get access to a 20c local call. It would be wrong for them to be paying 25c if the residents of Chatswood, Hunters Hill and other places in the Prime Minister's electorate were to get 20c local call rates. It would be wrong for the residents of Launceston, in the minister's own electorate, to keep paying 25c if Telstra customers in the affluent suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne had the benefit of that lower charge.

They are just two examples of why we think it is imperative that even a part-privatised Telstra operates in a regime where the minister for communications retains the power to direct. The minister can only use that directive after he follows certain procedures, so the minister has to be accountable to this parliament.

The point I want to make is that, in accepting these amendments, the government are accepting that they are going to have this responsibility in future years. There is no point in the minister in his contribution today trying to argue in some way that the power of the minister is limited to the power of the representative shareholder who owns that two-thirds share. That is something I would appreciate the minister conceding in his future remarks in this debate.