Ms O'BYRNE (7:40 PM) —I would like to take this opportunity to speak about Kim Beazley's, the Labor Party's and my personal pledge to keep Telstra in majority public ownership. Recently Martin Ferguson, the shadow minister for regional development, infrastructure, transport, regional services and population, and I signed a pledge in Launceston to publicly guarantee that a Labor government will not allow any further sale of Telstra. The support for this pledge in my electorate has been very pleasing. We know that it has the support of the considerable majority of Australians and Telstra shareholders.

Australians know that a fully privatised Telstra will mean a cut in services; Australians know that a fully privatised Telstra will mean a focus on profits rather than customers; Australians know that a fully privatised Telstra will mean lost jobs; and Australians know that a fully privatised Telstra will focus its efforts in the large mainland capitals of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. What Australians want to hear—and they have heard it from the Labor Party— is a guarantee that they can believe, a guarantee that says, `We will keep Telstra in majority public hands.' That is the only way they can know that Telstra services and jobs are safe. While maintaining and improving services and maintaining jobs, Telstra in majority public ownership is able to act as a conduit for increasing our infrastructure—a nation building role. Even Senator Alston, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, has recognised what an important role Telstra must play in building our nation's infrastructure. On the ABC's Media Report on 15 March this year, Senator Alston said:

Another reason the Labor Party is making this public pledge is that it does not make economic sense to sell off Telstra. The sale of the first half of Telstra has resulted in the Australian taxpayer being $475 million worse off. This is because over the last three years the cost of selling Telstra and the amount of dividend lost to the government has been more than the interest the government has saved from public debt interest; in other words, Howard has cost taxpayers more than $3.3 billion to save less than $2.9 billion. Make sense of that if you will! No family can run a household budget with that sort of reasoning, and I do not believe that the federal government can do so in a sustainable manner either. Surely Australia would be better off to rely on an ongoing dividend stream from Telstra rather than this short-term, short-sighted approach.

In Tasmania, people are sick and tired of waiting days and, in some cases, weeks to have their phones connected or repaired. A shameful example of this happened in Scottsdale, a town in my electorate. I have been informed of a situation where some cables were chewed through by rats. This situation was identified by the Telstra technician and was still on the list to be repaired nearly a year later. It is not just routine maintenance that has suffered since the partial privatisation of Telstra. Identified safety risks are also receiving unacceptable treatment. At one nursing home in Bass, a Telstra technician identified an unsafe pit cover. I think we could all safely agree that a nursing home is not a place where safety risks should be allowed to go unattended. Those elderly nursing home residents waited for months for that dangerous pit cover to be made safe. This is completely unacceptable. We cannot tolerate the risk that further privatisation will lead to more of this second-best treatment for the people of Bass. Since 1996, more than 400 Telstra jobs have been lost in Tasmania. A recent Telstra memo revealed plans to slash even more jobs in rural and regional areas.

The Prime Minister says that he will not sell off Telstra until services are adequate. What on earth does that mean? I am sure that the Prime Minister has adequate services to his home. Does that mean that all services are then deemed to be adequate? The Prime Minister wants to sell the rest of Telstra. It is in black and white in the budget but, once again, the government is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the people of Australia. The government plans to fully privatise Telstra in the 2003-04 financial year. Its commitment to services is yet another attempt to deceive Australians. It is not a commitment to services but a commitment to deception, and it is a rash attempt at political expediency.

The Howard government is committed only to the dollars it will receive from the sell-off. It is not committed to dollars that will benefit Australia in the long term through a continuing dividend return but to dollars for short-sighted attempts at political expediency. I believe that the community sees through these supposed commitments and the core and non-core promises of this government. I believe that people are seeking the kind of leadership and honest commitment provided by the Labor Party and Kim Beazley through being up-front and clear about the intentions of a future Beazley government. Like so many things in Australian politics and public policy, this is a debate to which everyone is welcome to participate in, particularly coalition members and candidates from around the country. I look forward to any attempts that may be made to convince the Australian community that there is a correct reason to sell off the family silver. It is disappointing, but hardly unexpected, that only the Australian Labor Party is committed to a Telstra that serves and is owned by all Australians.