Mr McGAURAN (Minister for the Arts and the Centenary of Federation) (3:45 PM) —When I saw this MPI shortly after midday today, I thought that the member for Perth must have new information, that there must be some scandal he had unearthed within the administration of the department of communications, or some secret government document floating around to cause him to revisit an issue that nobody could sensibly or credibly revisit. And why late in the week? Why hasn't it been an issue all through the week? I had to conclude that there would be new information, but there is not. It is the same old charge. It does not matter how often or how plainly, directly or unambiguously we say it, the fact is that the member for Perth either fails to understand or chooses not to understand that the government's plan for the privatisation of Telstra is conditional upon there being provided adequate services for people in rural and regional Australia. The Prime Minister has said it, the Deputy Prime Minister has said it, the minister for communications has said it and I am saying it on behalf of the government. Could you please, finally and at last, accept that that is government policy. We have a policy, we state it, and we give it in the plainest, most direct language—unlike the Leader of the Opposition whose prolix tendencies and urge to waffle have now become the hallmarks of his leadership. There is no issue here. The member for Perth failed to establish anything new or anything that in any way shows that the government has a secret plan or intention to privatise Telstra unless and until satisfactory arrangements exist to deliver adequate services in regional and rural Australia. It is as simple as that. The full privatisation of Telstra will not occur until that condition is met.

In the meantime, our priority, our burning desire is to get more services into rural and regional Australia. That is what we should be debating. We should be debating the adequacy and the level of services for people in rural and regional Australia. We should not be launching personal attacks on the Leader of the National Party or at the Besley inquiry as the member for Perth has done on yet another occasion. After all, the words of his own matter of public importance state that it is to discuss:

I want to talk about the government's programs, about our initiatives, and about how, incidentally, the Labor Party has opposed each and every one of them. From the partial sale of Telstra we have devoted $1 billion to a range of very new and innovative services to country people across the board, and they have welcomed it. The Labor Party has not welcomed it, but people in country Australia most certainly have. Labor has opposed not just the billion dollars through the Networking the Nation program but also the other billion dollars through the partial privatisation of Telstra that was directed into Natural Heritage Trust funding. So we have a program, we have policies and we have a plan to restore the communications infrastructure of rural areas, yet Labor has opposed them. Labor has no alternative policy. Labor has made no funding commitments in any way to either replace or extend those programs. The funds from Networking the Nation have delivered enormous benefits, and they have had a significant effect on the way people in rural communities go about their commercial and social lives. For the first time we now know that 51 per cent of regional homes have a computer. There was a 21 per cent increase in just three months last year. Regional people are now able to access the Internet from public Internet access points—libraries, community centres, shire offices and other locations—many of which are provided by projects funded from that Networking the Nation fund. These programs are reducing the digital divide between rural and metropolitan areas and are making it possible for many more Australians, wherever they may live, whatever their postcode, to take full advantage of the enormous potential of the Internet. Labor has opposed the $20 million in Telstra funding to deliver affordable online access, $20 million which we put aside for online access to communities in rural Australia through the Farmwide Regional Access Network, better known as FRAN to its many admirers and adherents. Labor opposed Telstra funding for the $150 million tender to provide untimed local calls, untimed call Internet access and other carriage services to remote Australia. Labor opposed $25 million to provide continuous mobile phone coverage along 11 of Australia's major highways. They also opposed $71 million in Telstra funds to deliver SBS to more than 1,200,000 more Australians than previously was the case.

So let us have a sensible, constructive debate that has meaning for the people we represent. The distrust of and cynicism about the political system, about politicians and political parties, is because we will not talk about and act upon the issues of binding concern to them. Here we have an opportunity. The member for Perth gave us the opportunity, for which I thank him. He turned the debate, in his own words, to discuss the interests of people living in regional, rural and remote Australia. And what did we get from him? We got abuse and generalisations, and we got verballing of the Prime Minister. Somehow, in some imaginative way, the member for Perth took the Prime Minister's words in question time to be a commitment to the full privatisation of Telstra—unconditionally. That is not it at all. The Prime Minister made it abundantly clear today, and he has done so previously, that the full privatisation of Telstra will not proceed until the government is satisfied that there are adequate services in regional Australia. How many times do we have to say it—in how many different ways and in how many different languages? I ask the member for Perth: what is your preferred language? Is it French, is it German, is it Spanish?

Mr Hardgrave —Gibberish.

Mr McGAURAN —It is gibberish. That is the preferred language of the Leader of the Opposition. Whatever your choice of script is, we will deliver it. We will find an interpreter. Someone somewhere in this Parliament House must be able to formulate the words that I have just enunciated in a way that the member for Perth will understand. Where are the petrol questions? Where are the business activity statement questions? Where are the trust questions? For heaven's sake, that is all too hard. For months and months we have had petrol questions and we had—what—four of them today, but we gave the opposition 10 questions in stark contrast with the five or six questions they used to give us when we were in opposition. But there you go.

Mr St Clair —They ran out of fuel!

Mr McGAURAN —I think they ran out of fuel, as one of my colleagues says, and they are left with a filler; they have got to have a filler. And what is it? It is telecommunications—and on the most trumped up charges against the government that we are going to have the full privatisation of Telstra. Really! The tactics committee must have got out of bed today and said, `We've got the government on the ropes once again. We've got them on policy issues of significance and of burning public interest and attention.' And what happens? By the middle of the day, of course, the government had responded to the communities across the length and breadth of Australia and the opposition had nothing to do for the rest of the day except, of course, to pursue the hoary chestnut of the privatisation of Telstra.

I have a confession to make. It is very hard for government members to participate in a lengthy debate on this, because what can we say other than the obvious that has been repeated ad nauseam—which is that we are not privatising Telstra until there is adequacy of services? How could we be criticised for that? Why would the member for Perth ridicule the Leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister for stating that? That is what our constituents want. Don't think country people are ideologically blinded on this. They know very well that, because of the new competition that the government has fostered and their exposure to a great many carriers, Internet service providers and the like, privately held companies answerable to a board of directors and a share register can behave—within a regulatory framework set down by the government—better in their interests than some lumbering Postmaster-General type of organisation. And, remember, we have the legislative framework within which carriers and telecommunications companies must abide.

So we have put on them the customer service guarantee, we have the universal service obligation, we have the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman—either all new initiatives by this government or else expanded with increased powers of enforcement. This government has an exemplary record on the regulation of the behaviour of an ever expanding and highly competitive market. We have opened the doors to lower prices and a wider range and better level of services, all within the protection of the public interest by way of regulation and legislation—in stark contrast to Labor. What was Labor's record on the provision of telecommunications services to people in rural and country areas? I can speak on behalf of my electorate of Gippsland—it was zero. It was as if we were off the end of the map. As the online world and the telecommunications revolution was gathering apace in metropolitan Australia and internationally, our country areas were left further and further behind. Now they have caught up and, in some cases, as the Deputy Prime Minister said today, have leapfrogged even metropolitan areas. We as a government do not choose to favour one sector of the community over another. Instead, we want all Australians to have equal access to the very latest and best—and, indeed, necessary—communications services.

How can anyone in the Labor Party show their face in a communications debate, having closed down and sold off the analog phone network? You were going to leave millions of country Australians without a mobile phone service. So it takes a great deal of brazen conceit to come to this parliament and accuse the government of not providing enough services. And, by the way, the member for Perth just stuck on the one charge against the government—that we are going to fully privatise Telstra. There was no discussion about levels of service. Has he got some criticisms about our levels of service? Let us hear them—maybe we can even improve on them further. But the point is that we are moving to repair and restore the very best of services.

Mr McGAURAN —The member for Perth is yelling out across the table, `Rely on Besley.' The character assassination that he has engaged in in regard to Mr Besley and other members of that inquiry makes such a call hypocritical. The Besley inquiry was a superb examination of the level of rural services. Services are to be improved and any sale of Telstra is to be conditional. They were going to sell the analog network. Wasn't that marvellous—denying mobiles to millions of Australians?

Mr Ronaldson —Doesn't Simon want to sell Telstra?

Mr McGAURAN —There are stories that there are members of the Labor frontbench who have floated, in conversations with merchant bankers, whether here in Australia or in New York—and even recently—the idea of the sale of Telstra. But they will not identify themselves. We hear their names, but we would prefer—rather than relying on third-hand accounts—them to identify themselves as people who are prepared to look at the sale of Telstra under the same conditional requirements that we have.

We have a whole range of programs that the member for Perth and his colleagues have opposed. They have no policy. They are caught out on telecommunications policy in the same way that they are caught out on policy on all aspects of government administration. It is quite pathetic, really, that the Labor Party has to come in on the last afternoon of a parliamentary sitting week and just recycle the falsity of the Telstra privatisation debate. There must be other issues that they would wish to put forward so as to win the support and confidence of the Australian people.

The member for Perth has given us an insight into how he and his colleagues view regional Australia, because he referred to Telstra Countrywide as a `sop to country areas'. He has also claimed that our commitments to regional Australia are bribes. Telstra Countrywide have done superb things in my electorate of Gippsland, and I am sure that that is the case across the nation. They have located very dedicated, enthusiastic people—who come from or are intimately familiar with country areas—in those offices. It is no sop. It is resulting in material benefit to my constituents and those of my colleagues. To say every time we do something for regional Australia they are bribes! If the member for Perth really believes that action for country people is only bribes and sops, he is insulting the intelligence of millions of Australians, as he has with this completely concocted and false matter of public importance.