Mr McGAURAN (Minister for Science) (4:33 PM) —Here we go again—the great filler! When the Labor Party has nothing else of pressing importance, it relies on Telstra. There were no questions in question time about Telstra. Some of the issues raised by the honourable member for Melbourne during this MPI were raised earlier in the week, but not all of them were. He raised a number of issues that he could easily have cross-examined the government on in one of the over 50 questions the Labor Party had available to it this week. But, no, it is the end of a parliamentary sitting week; we do not sit again for two weeks.

The Labor Party had the opportunity to set a one-hour debate, and what did they do? There is nothing in the health portfolio, the transport portfolio, the regional services or the agriculture portfolios. Of the 30 portfolios for which opposition members shadow the government ministers, there is no matter of great import that must be raised in the House during the MPI. It is a matter of disappointment to me. Instead, they just pull out of the drawer the old Telstra attack. They have done it many times before. I would never accuse the member for Melbourne of being repetitious, but he is coming perilously close to it because it is getting to the point where it is hard for him to get through his 15-minute contribution without referring to his old speech notes—regurgitating, recycling his old phrases and his best lines. I admire him for his persistence. But the fact is that you have nothing new to say.

The Labor opposition have no alternatives and no plans with regard to the Telstra situation, notwithstanding that the member for Melbourne, the shadow minister for communications, has issued a public comment that the present ownership structure of Telstra is unsustainable. In other words, the member for Melbourne concedes the problem but proffers no solution. At one stage earlier this year he suggested, in a thoughtful if not misguided paper, the separation of Telstra. In other words, you break up Telstra. You sell off its most profitable parts—the Yellow Pages—but you keep in place under socialist control by way of a central government the fixed-line network, the infrastructure. You would break up Telstra and privatise its most profitable parts. He has run from that little solution at 100 miles an hour. I do not know how much thought or time he gave to conjuring up that possible solution, but he has abandoned it now. We do not hear a peep from him anymore about the separation of Telstra. When are we going to hear the Labor Party's solution? It is obviously to retain the status quo, which the member has said is unsustainable.

Mr Baldwin —They are going to sell it off!

Mr McGAURAN —The member for Paterson suggested that the real policy of the opposition is to sell off Telstra. Of course it is. Do you think there is anybody in the Australian community who doubts it? Having said it is an unsustainable economic situation, what is the solution? It is no longer that you divide it up, sell off bits and privatise it in part, as the member for Melbourne floated in May this year; it is instead that you sell it. Of course it is. We received assurances, sworn guarantees, that the Commonwealth Bank would never be privatised and nor would Qantas. The Labor Party in government privatised everything that moved. If it was not nailed down, it was privatised. What is more, the Labor Party never took a privatisation policy to—

Mr Tanner —We didn't sell Telstra!

Mr McGAURAN —The member for Melbourne lamely interjects to say, `But we never sold Telstra.' You had not got around to it! You were going to! Paul Keating called in John Prescott, the then managing director of BHP, in about 1994 and floated the idea with him. The member for Brand, Kim Beazley, who was minister for communications or Deputy Prime Minister at the time, has never told us his full involvement in that discussion. The Labor Party would have sold Telstra—the point is that they ran out of time—and they would sell it again in the future. They have never asked the Australian people to endorse, ratify or sanction their privatisations. They were always done by stealth and by misleading the Australian people. In about 1994, if my memory serves me correctly, Ralph Willis, the then Labor treasurer, actually wrote to all employees of the Commonwealth Bank at the behest of the Commonwealth Bank's union—we have the letter—saying, `We will not be privatising the Commonwealth Bank.' Actually, it would have been earlier than that—

Mr Forrest —I was a customer then.

Mr McGAURAN —The honourable member for Mallee was a customer. We have gone to the 1998 election and the 2001 election with our policy proposals for the privatisation of Telstra. We have not misled anybody; we have sought a mandate from the Australian people and that is how it will always be. We have had a policy at every election, such is our conviction about the need for transparency and honesty with the voters. We put forward our proposal. That stands in stark contrast to the Labor Party, who privatise by stealth. The point is that the Labor Party cannot be believed on this issue. So the Labor Party have a problem: the press gallery does not take them seriously because they have no alternative, no solution and no plan; the general public do not take them seriously on this issue because of their track record of deception. There is a level of distrust in the general community when it comes to the Labor Party and privatisation. The honourable member for Melbourne has continued his slanderous attacks on the Estens inquiry. The honourable member for Melbourne set out to destroy the credibility and worth of the inquiry before it had even started—

Mr Tanner —It wasn't hard.

Mr McGAURAN —That's right: the honourable member for Melbourne takes delight in blackguarding good and honest people who do a fair job. The Estens inquiry put forward the pluses and the minuses of the performance of Telstra—the positives and the negatives. It was a full, balanced inquiry. They went out and accepted 606 submissions, they had 41 meetings and they have made 39 recommendations, many of which identify the gaps in service or infrastructure in regional and rural areas, which the government is committed to repairing. The Estens inquiry reached a conclusion, which was:

during the term of this government—

because of the competition—

That is fair; it lays down the challenge to improve services, but confidently predicts that we can solve the problems as they exist in regional and rural Australia. I return to the issue of Labor Party assurances on issues such as privatisation. My friend the member for Paterson has just handed me a quote from Ralph Willis. Ralph Willis was interviewed on Business Sunday on Sunday, 31 October 1993. He said this:

So, in other words, he is saying that the government will retain 50.1 per cent. He continued:

Sarah Turner, the interviewer, said:

Ralph Willis said:

It was privatised completely and fully within months. Deceptive conduct; misleading of the public! CountryWide has been established over the last 18 months in regional areas and it is staffed by very dedicated and committed people who provide an excellent service on the ground across the length and breadth of the country. I have CountryWide in Gippsland and the member for Murray has Country Wide in her area. If we have problems we go straight to them. They have people on the ground addressing the issues. Telstra does not deserve to be criticised and ridiculed in the way the Labor Party sets out to do.

What really angers me more than anything else about the Labor Party's attacks on Telstra's performance is that in 1991 the Labor government corporatised Telecom; they called it Telstra and gave it a commercial focus. In other words, it was no longer a government department; it was a government business. Under the Corporations Law the board was required to act in the commercial interests of Telstra from the moment Labor did that. Otherwise they were in breach of the Corporations Law. They could not take uneconomic decisions. So from 1991 services to assist disadvantaged areas, individuals and communities throughout regional Australia have been funded by direct budget appropriations, and it will always be thus. That is why the ownership of Telstra is not the deciding point. Even if 50.1 per cent of it remains in government hands, the government will always have to appropriate from the budget—as we have done; $1 billion over the last five years—to bring the standard of services up for people in regional and rural areas. The ownership of Telstra is a furphy. The issues are the level of service governed by the regulation and competition policies of the government of the day and what direct budget contributions the government gives to Telstra—or any other carrier for that matter—to assist those in disadvantaged regions.

So it is a phoney debate. The debate should centre on what the government is doing with regard to regulation. Look at our track record with the universal service obligation and the guaranteed customer service standards. It should focus on the level of competition and how many carriers and Internet service providers are now out there. We have issued 35 carrier licences in the last five years. As the Estens inquiry acknowledged, competition has driven down prices. The debate should then concentrate on how much the government of the day will lock in to pay Telstra or another carrier to bring up the standard of services. They are the issues the government has addressed over the past five years. That is why the Estens inquiry, in an unbiased and transparent way, could conclude that services have improved markedly. We have come a very long way. We have a way to go yet, but it is achievable. Instead, the member for Melbourne would have you believe that Telstra has gone backwards—that things have got worse—and he selectively quotes from submissions to the Estens inquiry in support of that contention.

Mr Tanner —I quote all the good ones.

Mr McGAURAN —But of course: you advertise an inquiry and you invite submissions from people with issues or complaints. Many of them are legitimate; we accept that. We want to assist those people. Of course, we want to know where the areas of concern are. It might be argued—I will not, though—given the number of complaints to the inquiry compared with the number of subscribers and consumers throughout Australia, that it was not an unexpected number.

There were also a number of submissions supportive of Telstra. Members on this side of the House actually put out press releases inviting their constituents to make submissions to the Estens inquiry because we want to know the truth. We want everything on the table, unlike the Labor Party who have one fixed ideological and political position and they will never waver from that. They will never deviate from it. What else have they got going for them? What other principle or policy does the Labor Party hold true to their heart? There is not a single one—not a jot. The only one that they will hang on to is one that is simple and simplistic: their opposition to the full privatisation of Telstra. The government's position is to wait until we believe regional and rural services are up to scratch before we introduce legislation to the parliament. The legislation has to pass through the parliament and only then would Telstra be privatised, according to the market conditions at that time.

So the Labor Party is looking increasingly shallow, even desperate, because at the end of a parliamentary sitting week, what is its MPI—the crowning debate of the week, the debate that you send the troops home with, with a spring in their step and courage in their hearts? Instead, the Labor Party backbenchers listening to this are going to think, `Not again, is that the best we can do?' Sure, the member for Melbourne is dogged and determined. You have to give him marks for that but he is pushing up hill on this one. You are going to see Labor members exiting this building with their shoulders slumped and their heads hanging low because they are not finishing on a high, not when they have to drag out the old Telstra bogey. It defies logic, and the clear thinking, fair-minded members of the opposition know it. They are hungry to get into an issue of real substance and of differentiation from the government. So David Britton—the man brought in, I understand, to advise the opposition on tactics—will look at the tapes of question time and MPIs this week and, surely, with his experience, background and judgment, he will tell the member for Melbourne and the tactics committee, `Don't bowl up this hairy old chestnut ever again.'