Mr BYRNE (6:26 PM) —This is my second opportunity to speak in this place since the federal election. The last one was last night, when I discussed some serious issues of concern regarding the Defence Estate Organisation and Asset Services. In addressing that particular issue under the appropriation bills, I did not have the opportunity to thank the voters of Holt for returning me, and I would like to take this opportunity to do so, this being the first opportunity subsequent to the House sitting. I would like to thank them because they returned me by a reasonable margin. Considering the environment during the election in that region at that particular period of time, I was very grateful for their support. I would like to comment briefly on the atmospherics that I experienced during the election and to touch on some people's concerns.

What struck me when I was doorknocking in train stations and shopping centres in the electorate was the sense of disillusionment that people had about the political process—that sense of alienation, that sense of lack of security, that sense that governments are unable to do anything and to achieve anything and that in many situations politicians are basically self-serving, time seeking individuals that just pocket public moneys and do very little good in the community. Whilst that sentiment was utilised to some extent by the government to achieve a result, it has very serious and grave consequences. What manifested itself in the election campaign was a response to globalisation, the disenfranchisement that many people feel as a consequence of globalisation and the disconnection that people experience from their community. People believe that governments or oppositions of either persuasion are not addressing that concern.

Whilst there may have been a manifestation in terms of people's concern about immigration and illegal immigration, in a sense governments have not addressed the source and cause of that concern. Whilst some of the disenfranchisement can be utilised for political purposes—as I believe has been done in the election campaign—the problem is that, unless we address this very corrosive strain in our community, it will lead to people's complete abandonment in their belief in government institutions to achieve anything. That will give rise to further extremist groups and parties that do not actually represent the national interest. Notwithstanding that, we should be addressing this in a bipartisan way. Whilst this is a partisan place, if we do not address these issues of concern—mark my words—it will basically be to the disfavour of both sides of the political divide.

We had a great opportunity last year in the Centenary of Federation to address some very serious issues of a bipartisan nature like salinity, greenhouse gases and nation-building projects, but we did not avail ourselves of the opportunity because we because we got caught in a partisan fight about ideas. People should have expected that. I cannot believe that when we celebrated the Centenary of Federation, at the place where it was convened 100 years ago, we did not have a debate about serious issues that afflicted our community. Whilst there was a lot of pomp, circumstance and ceremony, what I believe did not happen was the debate we should have had about where we are going to go as a nation in our next 100 years.

What we seem to be doing is responding on a very piecemeal basis to the latest crises rather than setting a road map of where we should go. In that meeting in Centennial Park 100 years ago, the politicians of the day discussed issues like the High Court and taxation systems. We had a similar opportunity to do the same thing again and I think that both sides of the political divide would have benefited from that. I am very disappointed that we lost the opportunity to do that. Towards the end of the year it degenerated into playing on the community's fears rather than addressing the community's very serious concern about even the very role of government. If people believe that that is going to go away then they are deluding themselves, because I believe that what has happened is that we are covering up a serious crisis of faith that people have in politicians and in the role of state, local and federal government. I wanted to put that on the record.

I certainly saw that our aim in the Labor Party can be nothing less than, as politicians, building a high growth, high wage economy where every Australian has an equal opportunity to fulfil their potential. A critical part of building Australia up is ensuring that all Australians have access to information and education. Late last year—and this gives an example of how governments should be intervening in things—Telstra announced changes to its Big Pond broadband service which had the effect of very substantially increasing costs to users. It is ironic that only Singapore-owned Optus offers a monthly flat rate broadband service, while the majority Commonwealth government owned service charges a lot more. Some users complained of massive blow-outs in their charges, from $60 a month to many thousands of dollars, as a result of these changes.

This presents an appalling symbol to the community and it is bad policy. Dial-up access to the Internet is not adequate for much of the information in its many forms of audio, video and graphics, which is conveniently accessed only by broadband users. For Australia and Australians to fulfil their potential, access to broadband Internet must be made affordable for all Australians. Telstra and the government are failing to take the lead here. In fact, they are taking backward steps by making broadband less accessible to their customers than foreign-owned Optus has. Wireless local area networks—known as LANs—offer the prospect of Australians being able to access the Internet via wireless technology. In other words, around universities, schools, workplaces, cafes, parks and other public places, users will be able to access the Internet, check their email, do research or catch up on the news on laptops or PDAs, personal digital assistants, which the member for Scullin referred to in his last address.

But all this presently existing technology being introduced across Australia right now in many workplaces will be for nothing if Telstra stifles its growth by charging too much for Internet access. You do not need to be a technology expert to understand this, and I am certainly not. We cannot afford to be left behind in the technology and information race. Telstra's greed and indolence strike at the very heart of our country's promise and potential prosperity. I wholeheartedly endorse the member for Melbourne's call to stop Telstra from acquiring media and other non-core businesses. It needs to clean up its own backyard before it looks at buying its neighbours' houses. It needs to get the fundamentals right; it needs to be reminded of the importance of telecommunications to nation building.

Telstra's failure to ensure widespread and affordable access to its broadband is an example of Telstra failing Australia. An inevitable feature of the information age is the amount of information exchanged, which will grow exponentially. Telstra must clearly and emphatically support that process, not undermine it by charging high prices by the megabyte. You may ask: why does broadband matter? It boils down to this: in order to maintain our living standards we must build a knowledge economy. Why must we build a knowledge economy? Because we now live in world where capital, expertise and information can be moved around the world with the click of a mouse.

It is no longer essential or even particularly important for successful economies to control all the elements of the production process. Raw materials, traditionally our great strength as an economy, are obviously becoming less important. The value of Zegna suits is not in the award-winning Australian wool used but in the design and the cut of the garments and the strength of the brand, which all generate profits in Italy. The value of Nokia phones is not in the brilliantly well minted tantalum, extracted by the Sons of Gwalia, which makes up the capacitors—which are an important part of the miniaturisation of the electronics of mobile phones and laptops—but in the engineering, in the clever interface design and industrial design of the phones and, again, in the strength of the brand, all of which generate profits in Finland. In these examples we can see the undeniable truth: since this country was founded, the world economy has radically changed, and we must change with it. We must adapt or we will lose the high standard of living which we have been privileged to inherit from our parents and grandparents.

As we confront these facts, we must accept that our need to change is urgent: we do not have time on our side. My biggest worry about our country—and about the government—is that it lacks a sense of urgency about this change. The Treasurer obviously seems to be asleep and not concerned with these particular matters, and I am concerned about the Prime Minister's attitude towards this, one of the most important challenges that we face in our economy. Growth is up—there is no doubt about that—but it is underpinned by private domestic demand, and it is being funded by ever-increasing amounts of consumer debt.

If you do not think that this is an urgent problem, just consider this: every year we buy from the United States $12 billion worth of goods more than we sell. What do we buy? We buy aircraft and parts, telecommunications equipment, computers, and measuring and controlling instruments. What do we sell? Bovine meat, crude petroleum, alcohol and a small but promising number of motor vehicles. That is one example, but it is a damning one. The Americans are selling us high-margin, high-technology products; we are selling them meat, crude oil, alcohol and a very limited number of motor vehicles. We are behaving economically like a Third World nation but we are living like a First World nation. It is unsustainable and it is untenable. We need to confront, as Paul Keating forced us to, the harsh facts of life. Regardless of whether or not we acknowledge it, Australia is in trouble. We have an urgent problem that will undermine our way of life, our capacity to defend ourselves and our standard of living—our ability to ensure the welfare of all Australians.

I note the Greens are enjoying some political success at the moment. Far from being conscious of our national economic crisis, they are deluding themselves. They seem to think that we can hide from our economic problems by ignoring them. They seem to think that we can run and hide from our national obligation of creating jobs and ensuring equal opportunity for all Australians. If you read the Greens' policy, you see that they want to cut business immigration, they want to cut skilled migration and they want to cut immigration, even though it can bring us precious skills, capital and contracts for our economy. They want to tie up businesses in even more red tape and taxes than we currently have. Their policies, I believe, are anti-jobs and their vision is anti Australian. Their policies are not designed in the best interests of our country.

Labor too must confront some home truths over the next few years. As the government totters and falls, we must be ready to govern and able to lead, but we must ensure our own house is in order—we must critically review every policy area and reconsider every past commitment. But our objectives can never change. Labor has always done the heavy lifting of leadership in Australia. Labor leaders saw us through the national security crisis that Menzies left us in 1940. Labor leaders modernised this country in the 1970s with tariff cuts, free health care and access to higher education. Labor leaders in the eighties and nineties opened this country up to the world, floated the dollar, reshaped the role of government in the economy, established a universal system of national savings for retirement and attempted to integrate us more with the region in which we live. Labor attempted to achieve reconciliation with the first Australians.

In this new decade of this new century, the government have again neglected the hard work of leadership in essential areas. They think, I believe, that reforming the economy is about introducing new taxes. No single business person that I have spoken to—and I have spoken to many, and they include lifelong Liberal voters—regards introducing a new tax as a significant reform. It was a big tax and it was a new tax and it gave us more of a substitute, but it is not actually a substitute for the reform that we require. The heavy lifting of leadership remains—ensuring access to broadband services and information for all, creating real incentives to invest in new ventures that build on knowledge, building partnerships between working people and those who employ them, building up our national brand in our region and beyond as a nation of tolerance and diversity that produces products, services and businesses of quality and integrity.

Labor have done some hard work, and we still have some hard work to do, but we stand ready. Labor must be ready to hold this discredited government accountable for every attempt to deceive the people of Australia, which they have done. The `kids overboard' scandal, the Brereton bugging attempt and, most recently, the High Court hatchet job disgrace mark this government. Labor must be ready to listen to our supporters as to what we got wrong at the last poll, be ready to learn from our mistakes and be ready to modernise and restructure our great social democratic party. But, above all else, Labor must be ready to do something the Prime Minister fails to do every single day he occupies the Lodge—Labor must be ready to lead.

I have spoken about broad, thematic issues and I now want to go to the specifics. I would like to touch on a local issue which illustrates a component of Telstra's betrayal of the Australian people. It relates to a difficulty that a constituent of mine has in the local area. The basic facts are these: Telstra has a monopoly in the area of Narre Warren—I am told that this is due to a court case in which Telstra was able to block any other service providers coming into the area. The Leonard family of Peveril Court, Narre Warren, tried various service providers, but they were often frustrated by the number of times it took to connect through to them. Finally, the Leonard family changed to Big Pond in the belief that this would improve their ability to connect and subsequently remove the need to pay for charges for every failed attempt at connection, which was what was happening.

The Leonard family found that, instead of a connection problem, they now had a problem with the speed of their connection. They thought that it might be their computer and had the hardware and software checked out, but instead found, when they took the computer to a friend's place in Berwick, that the speed of the connection was double that of Narre Warren. They then decided to approach the technical support group of Telstra. The technical people of Telstra finally admitted that Telstra has slow speed lines and exchanges at Narre Warren and cannot guarantee a speed greater than about 28.8 kilobits per second. The Leonards found that this speed does happen on good days, but generally the speed was between 20 and 24 kilobits per second and as low as 16.2 kilobits per second on some days. According to the Telecommunications Ombudsman, Telstra is only required to provide a speed of 24 kilobits per second, which means that the family finds it impossible to use the service to view videos for the children's homework.

The Leonards then decided to seek out other options for the delivery of the service. Telstra's suggestion was an expensive satellite service the family could not possibly afford. ADSL does not even exist in the area and neither does cable, because of the current monopoly that Telstra has in the area referred to earlier. This means that the cheaper service of Optus is not available to any of my constituents in Narre Warren. The Leonards then asked Telstra if they had any intention of rolling out cable in the area; they got no response. This is an individual example of the general themes I was discussing. Telstra should be addressing this, not running a monopoly and then choking people's access to a growth sector of the economy—actually guaranteeing and delivering a service that it should be providing.

I would also like to talk about the Women's National Basketball League and my local team, the Dandenong Rangers. I would like to touch on a concern and to issue a challenge to the ABC on this matter.

Mr Nairn —The Capitals won.

Mr BYRNE —Yes, I know, but only because the Dandenong Rangers had injuries—and I am sure that Deputy Speaker Barresi, who is the member for Deakin, would agree with that as well. The problem with the Women's National Basketball League is its coverage on the ABC: to date, as I understand it, it has not been guaranteed. That causes me a great deal of concern, because women's basketball is not being televised on the other commercial channels to the extent that it is on the ABC. The service that is being offered by the ABC offers women positive role models: instead of seeing anorexic models striding along the catwalk, they see strong women that are great athletes. I am concerned about the fact that, if the ABC does not commit itself to this coverage, young women will not be able to see these role models in action. Consequently, I would like to issue a challenge to the ABC: make sure when you come to sign your contracts in September this year that you give a guarantee. The men's league recently lost one of their major sponsors, Ansett, and, as reported in the Age in August last year, the ABC is currently reviewing its coverage of the Women's National Basketball League. TV coverage is vital for the league's sponsorship and existence. Particularly now that Jonathan Shier has left, maybe the ABC can get back to its charter of providing an alternative to commercial channels and show programs which add to the nation's identity.

Locally, the Rangers are very important for the psyche of Dandenong. They are a successful team which should have won the premiership had it not been for injuries, and they act as role models for young women in Dandenong and in surrounding areas. TV profile has been one of the most important reasons why the women's league and, in turn, the Olympic team—the Opals—have been so successful. The success of one feeds into the other. Currently, women's sport is not well represented on commercial TV. It is a minority sports category, even though participation in it is in the majority sports category.

As I said at the outset, I urge the minister and the ABC to seriously consider the impact of removing such coverage from the game. There is no specific commitment from the ABC currently to continue coverage of the Women's National Basketball League, only to continue to broadcast live sports events. Sponsorship for the Women's National Basketball League and the Opals is dependent on the league being on free-to-air TV for the next two years. When approached last year, the sports minister's response was that any comment from her could be construed as government interference in the ABC. Let me say this: the national broadcaster has an obligation to the young women of our community to ensure that this coverage continues. To not do so is to deny women positive role models. I would urge the government to do what it can—notwithstanding its reluctance to intervene in the affairs of the ABC—to encourage the ABC to keep up this much needed community service.