Dr STONE (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) (4:40 PM) —I move:

In general, these amendments are reasonable refinements to the bill and are acceptable to the government. These amendments provide for the primary universal service provider in the extended zones to have exclusive access to the annual USO subsidies in the extended zones for a period of three years. This reflects the need to provide the primary universal service provider in these extended zones with certainty of access to the ongoing subsidy for the area, given the level of investment required. They require mandatory public consultation on marketing plans for the provision of alternative telecommunication services, or ATS, where the marketing plan is materially different from an ATS marketing plan previously approved by the Australian Communications Authority, the ACA.

They require ATS providers to give customers information about the substantive differences between ATS and standard USO services before the provider enters into an agreement with a customer for the ATS. They deem that advice given to the minister by the ACA before 31 December 2000 in relation to the setting of USO subsidies is taken to be advice given to the minister in accordance with the proposed act and they require the proposed review of the USO arrangements after three years to consider whether contestability and the ATS arrangements have resulted in an improvement in technologies and services available to people in rural and remote Australia compared to what is on offer to people in metropolitan Australia. I commend these amendments.