Mr NAIRN (2:19 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for the Arts and the Centenary of Federation representing the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Minister, would you inform the House of all of the recommendations of the Telecommunications Service Inquiry? What is the government's overall response?

Mr McGAURAN (Minister for the Arts and the Centenary of Federation) —I thank the member for Eden-Monaro for his question. He, like all members on this side and anybody interested in the welfare of regional and rural Australians and, indeed, of people in metropolitan areas, welcomes the Besley report as a very constructive and even necessary advancement on debate on the way forward for communications. We have been very open and forthright in our communications policy. We do not duck and weave and deceive and mislead, unlike the Labor Party, whose only plan in this area is to send out the members for Perth and Melbourne to swan around boardrooms at merchants banks, testing the water. Instead, we do the hard work; we have the policies. On coming to government, we introduced the customer service guarantee, we strengthened the universal service obligation and we put aside $2 billion from the partial privatisation of Telstra to upgrade regional and rural telecommunication networks. The Labor Party has totally abandoned the interests of Australians, like it has in so many other policy areas.

The findings of the inquiry are very clear. Firstly, as has been said already, Australia generally has a world-class telecommunication system; secondly, people in metropolitan and regional centres have good services and are generally satisfied with them; but, thirdly, there is a significant proportion of people in rural and remote Australia who do not enjoy some key service aspects; they are simply not adequate at this stage. That is why we wanted the Besley inquiry to fully and comprehensively consult with people in regional and rural areas, so we could identify the problems and address them. We do not bury our heads in the sand, unlike the Labor Party, which completely and utterly abrogates responsibility for constructive public policy.

The inquiry highlighted three specific problems for rural and remote consumers: firstly, there is poor performance in repairing faults; secondly, many small businesses and families cannot get reasonable access to the Internet, or no access at all; and, thirdly, a number of businesses or companies in rural and remote areas do not get the same telecommunications services, which they need to operate competitively, as businesses in metropolitan areas get. Those of us who represent regional areas know this to be the case, and we are glad our constituents were able to air their issues and grievances. Over the life of this government—4½ years—we have invested literally hundreds of millions of dollars to address these issues and now we will address them further. The government recognises the importance of fixing these issues, unlike the Labor Party. We are developing a plan to address the issues as part of our final response, and we are not going to introduce legislation to privatise Telstra until that plan is developed and made public and until the problems of regional and remote consumers and communities are addressed.