Senator SCHACHT(5.27 p.m.) —I rise to speak on the package of telecommunications bills 1996 as listed on the Notice Paper . When stacked up, this package can be seen to total 400 to 500 pages of legislation, memoranda, explanatory notes and second reading speeches. The process of preparation surrounding these bills which now are before us to be debated has been going on for some two to 2½ years.

It is known, of course, that the previous Labor government, when changing the structure of telecommunications in Australia in 1991-92 to allow competitive carriers into the marketplace, at the same time announced that on 1 July 1997 the regulatory regime would be deregulated, that there would be no limit to the carriers and service providers and that full-blooded competition would be allowed. I think as early as 1995, the then minister Mr Lee started the process of drafting this package of bills. That process was substantially completed when the government changed.

The new Minister for Communications and the Arts (Senator Alston) continued that process at further forums and discussions. The bills were introduced into the parliament in late 1996. By agreement with the opposition here in the Senate, the bills immediately went to an ERCA legislative committee for final examination—and not in any way to delay the bill, but to develop a process whereby consultation with interested parties could be had in a constructive atmosphere so that senators could be educated about the full nature of the scope of these bills and deal with any amendments that may be proposed.

As I said when the report from the committee was tabled a few weeks ago, that process was extremely constructive. I think that having a round-table type of committee with almost everybody at the table, all being recorded in Hansard, with senators being able to get people to argue amongst themselves on different viewpoints and then asking departmental representatives what they thought of proposed amendments—and I acknowledge Mr Shaw and his officers, who at present are in the advisers box, who sat patiently through all of that—was a very constructive arrangement.

I have never been noted as a great devotee of Senate procedure in this place or as having any great interest in it, but I would want to say to the Procedure Committee that the performance of the ERCA legislative committee in the way this matter was handled is actually a model that should be used for a lot of legislation—where you get the contending interest groups at the table at the same time and they argue with each other rather than with the committee members and then you can ask questions to elucidate more information and to create the argument. It means that you are much more quickly able to make a judgment about the merits of the argument because people are there at the same time. I would have thought that Senator Allison from the Democrats and the government members would all agree that the process was very constructive.

As a result of that process, the government has now tabled its report, and I congratulate the government on taking up so many of the unanimous recommendations from the committee, representing the government, the opposition and the Democrats. Although we put in minority reports on certain aspects, the majority of the recommendations were supported by all parties. That support was gained from a spirit of compromise on all sides, even though individually you might not have absolutely supported one particular recommendation as it came out.

At the end of last week the government circulated their response to all members of the Senate committee. It is a daunting document that goes for some 93 pages of further amendments, explanatory memoranda and notes. But overwhelmingly the government had dealt with the unanimous recommendations of the committee.

I wish the clerks of the Senate well in putting all of it into a running sheet for the committee stage of the debate, together with amendments that will be coming from the opposition, the Democrats and maybe the Greens. I hope that we can do that expeditiously and sensibly to make sure we keep our wits about us in handling these amendments.

The opposition and the Democrats both put in minority reports covering a number of very important areas. The opposition certainly acknowledges that overwhelmingly we are in support of this bill. Why would we not be? When we were in government we started the process, the theme and the principles in this bill, and it would be hypocritical of us, to say the least, if we totally opposed the bill.

There are certain areas we want to raise in which we believe improvements can be made to this legislation, and we will be moving amendments accordingly in the committee stage. I am pleased to note that on two of our recommendations the government has already basically accepted opposition suggestions—on the issue of industry development and on the issue of making sure there is no possibility that major infrastructure, such as telecommunications and the like, can be declared as low impact. We welcome the government's acceptance of those amendments from the opposition.

The opposition has also had informal discussions on a continuing basis with the government, the minister and his staff on other areas where we still have differences but where maybe we can reach a compromise. There has also been very constructive discussion with the Democrats in a number of areas. In the end, I would be surprised if we get complete agreement in every area but that discussion has been the theme for handling this bill through the Senate committee and subsequent to its report.

The areas where the opposition will be putting strong amendments and arguing for them include, first of all, what is called carriers' powers and immunities. We believe absolutely that local government, representing the local community, must have the right to appeal against the construction of major telecommunications infrastructure in Australia—whether it be mobile telephone towers, microwave towers or overhead cables.

That issue is now far too strong in the community to allow the old system of complete immunity under the federal constitution from people being people being able to object to such developments. The government, the opposition and the Democrats have strongly supported an appeal process. The debate we now have is what form the appeal process will take.

The government has put forward a proposition that the codes of practice in many areas of how the appeal process and the planning provisions will operate will be left to the states. The opposition opposes that. We believe that the development of a sensible, national telecommunications system means that that responsibility should remain with the Commonwealth parliament.

We therefore propose that national guidelines be prepared for all of Australia after an open, consultative process with local and state government, carriers and interested parties in the community, and that when that document is prepared by the ACA it should become a disallowable instrument in the parliament. Of course, that means that from time to time as circumstances change it can be amended, added to and changed.

We believe that once that is established, when there is a dispute between a carrier and a local government, under our model we want to say if that council objects to the carrier or the carrier cannot get agreement with the council one or other of the parties can appeal direct to the ACA for determination—an independent body to weigh up the national interests of a telecommunications system with the local concerns in the community. I believe that is a simple, cost-effective way which means that this parliament will have discharged its duty properly in its constitutional responsibility for telecommunications.

The government proposal is different in that it relies on the state government stepping into what I think is an unnecessary void being created. They would then draw up their own guidelines, which means you will end up having six state and two territory sets of guidelines. By their very nature they will be different. I believe this leads us to move away from a national responsibility and national guidelines. Even if a state planning authority is appealed to, in the end if one of the parties disagrees in most cases they will be able to appeal to the ACA. I believe it is an unnecessary step in the middle that is unnecessarily complicating and is expensive to provide.

I have put to the government on several occasions variations about how we could get a compromise between the minister's position and the opposition's position. One that the opposition is willing to discuss with the government—and I put on the record here—is that the federal parliament and what will be the ACA draw up a national guideline that is available across Australia so that when a state planning appeal authority is dealing with an appeal they would have a national guideline to look at to see whether the issues of telecommunications were being properly dealt with in that guideline, which, as I say, is a disallowable instrument in this parliament. This parliament maintains the oversight of that guideline but the minister still gets the state planning process into the system. I believe that is a reasonable compromise which the opposition is willing to look at.

We absolutely believe the immunity to lay overhead cables must end at midnight on 30 June. Carriers have been told since 1992 that the immunity will end on 30 June 1997. They should plan accordingly. The government's proposal to extend that by another three months to complete the roll-out is not extending immunity; it is playing semantics. The community is expecting, and has been told for a long time, that the immunity will end on 30 June. I think the parliament should stick to that and we will be supporting an amendment accordingly.

We also believe those communities that now have extensive overhead cables rolled out should have some long-term plan available to them to have the cables put underground. We will be moving some amendments. We accept the fact that there are some parliamentary procedures in moving an amendment to impose levies on carriers. Only the House of Representatives can introduce a levy or a taxing bill; it cannot be done from the Senate. But at the very least we believe this is an area that the parliament cannot walk away from. Unless communities that have overhead cables can see in the intermediate to long term there is some process to get rid of them, there will be consistent antagonism in the community against the carriers on this issue.

As I said before, we believe that the communications towers, et cetera, should no longer have any risk of being classed as low impact and therefore be exempt. We also believe that in the future all overhead cables, even those below 13 millimetres diameter, which is the government definition, have to go underground. I think that is the very minimum the community will ask us to support.

I have already mentioned industry policy. We are pleased the government has accepted the opposition's amendment for the minister for industry to be able to sanction carriers when they promise industry development programs but do not carry them through. I note that we are doing this not in a way that puts us out of kilter with the World Trade Organisation arrangements. This is being done in accordance with World Trade Organisation rules. I think if anyone else from America or Europe wants to have a go at us it ought to be put on the record now that this is not contrary to the WTO rules.

The area in which we still have differences with the government is the area of pricing arrangements and services to the country areas. Competition is coming to the cities for local loop telephone calls. Optus, if they can gets its overhead cable to work for telephony, have said they will offer local call rates at 20c in markets like Sydney and Melbourne. When those local call rates are offered in the city they should also be offered in rural and regional areas of Australia so that country people get the benefit of competition directly, even though they may not have a competitive market of their own.

We do not want to have the re-run of the argument about petrol. In country areas there is angst against the petrol industry that there is no reduction, no discounting, of petrol in rural areas; it is only in the city. Quite rightly, country people feel hard put upon about that. We do not want the rural areas feeling that there is a two-tiered price system operating, discriminating against the country. We will be moving an amendment accordingly.

We also believe that by the year 2000 we ought to guarantee all Australians will have the availability of digital data capability—that is, on-line services of 64 kilobits per second, which is a substantial improvement on the present power available of on-line services for Internet and so on. It is very important that our rural areas get access to the same capacity as our city areas. At the moment the government is saying that 94 per cent will be available. It is the last six per cent that is difficult. I agree that it is difficult and that it could be costly, but I believe that you do not have to lay all the infrastructure out. You can do it in a way that when someone wants it you provide the service so that they can get access to digital data capability even in rural and remote areas.

If we want our farming community and our small business community in rural and regional Australia to be internationally competitive they have to have access to the latest communication system. They have to be able to connect to their marketplace elsewhere in the world or elsewhere in Australia. If they do not have access to the same level of communications on-line services they will be disadvantaged and accordingly not be as profitable and not be as prosperous. This is an important issue for the opposition, and we hope that the government can support our amendment in this area. They have come a long way in supporting this, but the last bid to ensure the last six per cent get it by the year 2000, I believe, is very important.

There are some other amendments we have, which some people might say are a little bit more esoteric to the general public, that deal with competition notices and tariff filing notices. We believe that Telstra should file tariff notices so that the ACCC can see what the dominant carrier is charging and, if necessary, can take action if it believes it is acting in an uncompetitive way. We believe that tariff filing notices should be compulsory for a period into the future. We also believe that the service providers should have reasonable access in the transition period to competitive prices from the carriers. Again I say that that is not an issue that the general public are overwhelmingly besotted with. But if you really want to develop a broad based telecommunications system with all its services growing, the service providers have got to be given reasonable access to the interconnect fee that is available to carriers between themselves. We believe our amendment in this area is very useful indeed.

Finally, we will of course be supporting amendments to guarantee that business on-line services get a standard flat rate untimed local call charge. As it is at the moment, we do not accept the position of the government or the carriers that automatically that is going to jam them. We think that with new technology this should be seen as a new business opportunity.

All in all, the opposition overwhelmingly supports this bill, but in the areas I have outlined we believe we have important amendments that will enhance the outcome of this package of bills. That will mean that we have a robust and healthy telecommunications services industry in Australia.