Mr TUCKEY(11.39 a.m.) —Protection of regional and rural Western Australia interests me greatly as that is exactly how my electorate would be defined. It is 220,000 square kilometres, has 62 local authorities and the people have re-elected me with ever-increasing margins and with an erosion of two per cent of the Labor vote every time, and they know and trust my advice on these things.

It is worth looking at this whole issue in the way that these people opposite are trying to portray it. To back up their arguments, they got their majority with the socialists of the Democrats and others to put up a second report on cross-subsidy and all the problems of the rural areas. They made sure they had control of that particular committee, the report of which they called Telstra—to sell or not to sell. They ignored the fact that previously when they were in government they got their expenditure committee, of which they also had control, to put up a report, which is in our records, labelled Poles Apart. It specifically dealt with the cross-subsidy at a time when it was not their government that was running the cross-subsidy story; it was Telecom, as it was then known, trying to protect its monopoly.

The reality of all this was that they wanted a different outcome. So, with the member for Watson (Mr Leo McLeay) in control of the expenditure committee, they brought out Poles Apart. But what did Poles Apart say about cross-subsidy? Paragraph 7.8 states:

Whatever the accounting difficulties, the Committee still supports the present cross-subsidy for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is crucial to distinguish between `cross-subsidy' and `profitability'. Telecom customers in high-cost areas are not necessarily unprofitable for Telecom. They contribute less per service than users in low-cost districts but their contribution to Telecom's revenue is still positive. Non-metropolitan customers of Telecom in 1984-85 paid for all the direct costs incurred in their districts as well as for $433.8 million of Telecom's total indirect costs.

They are trying to tell us that a new and privatised company will throw that sort of revenue away. But they went on to say:

A further benefit to the system provided by urban and remote users which may be offset against the costs of their service lies in what economists call an `access externality'. Put simply, this means that the value of telecommunications systems to any particular user will increase as the total number of users with whom he or she can communicate increases.

In other words, it takes two phones to make a telephone call and a lot of people would not buy a metropolitan service if they could not ring people in the country. They are not my words. They are the words of the Labor Party dominated expenditure committee. I think the minister at the table, the Minister for Sport, Territories and Local Government (Mr Warwick Smith), was also there and he will confirm that that committee was dominated by the Labor Party.

When it suited you to put that issue down, you produced the facts. There they are in 1984-85. Probably $1 billion now of Telstra's indirect operating costs are being funded by its rural people. The suggestion is that you are going to run around and tell them that you do not want them as customers. In a commercial arena of course you will.

Then we have this problem that we have to have ministerial control because of jobs. I see that the matter of public importance yesterday was, `If you privatise National Rail there'll be a loss of jobs.' That raises one simple question: if a private operator is going to reduce the number of employees on the grounds of efficiency in the national interest, in the taxpayer's interest, why has it not happened already? Why are you, as the representatives of the taxpayer, demanding unnecessary jobs?

A business organisation, be it the property of the taxpayer or the private sector, should not be a welfare organisation. It should operate efficiently and of course welfare should be a separate vote in the budget and we should have all the compassion in the world when we deal with that situation. But any job that is not productive within Australia, whomsoever the employer, is very damaging to our economy. We have to be prepared to differentiate, in the interests of all the people of Australia, not some little section that believes they have the right to a job where there is no work. That is outrageous.(Time expired)