Senator ALSTON (Minister for Communications and the Arts)(4.10 p.m.) —I think the first thing to be said is that we are not trying to prejudge the extent to which there will be competition in the bush. It is very difficult to anticipate these things, and I suppose the reason we keep talking about Ballarat is that I happened to go there last week and launch this new product. In many ways it is a typical example of how, all of a sudden, Ballarat seems to be the testbed for regional Australia, when maybe six months ago you would have said, `Well, the bush is going to be left behind.' All of a sudden they are going to be the only people in Australia who will have free local calls to Northgate customers, and suddenly there is the prospect of untimed local calls between Ballarat and Melbourne, which is about 130 kilometres. So I would hope there will be a lot more pleasant surprises in terms of competition in the bush.

I think there are very encouraging signs in the US. Northgate, for example, together with Austar is talking about a billion dollar investment in Australia in the next couple of years. All of the signs in the US are that there is ferocious competition in regional areas. Indeed, Northgate's big claim is that they concentrate on regional areas. They are not interested in the capital cities. In the same way that there are companies out here now targeting rural areas for cable television, we are now starting to see companies that are targeting the rural areas for telephony.

What Northgate say, for example, is that they would anticipate at the present time that 50 per cent of their business would come from voice calls, 25 per cent of their business would come from cable television and 25 per cent of their business would come from data. Within five years they think it will be 50 per cent from data and only 25 per cent from voice calls. So you continue to see these sorts of revolutions. It is really only in those areas where you do not actually find competition emerging in the short term that they would then have to get the benefit of this weighted average model.

What we are particularly concerned to do is to ensure that it is passed on but that, in the first place, you get those significant reductions to pass on. I think what we are talking about here is a series of opposition amendments. Our model is already on the table, although it is in another act. The current legislative framework allows only for disallowable instruments. I think probably in the first instance we would take the view that this is such a major area of concern that you could not conceive of a situation where someone would disallow that and it would then be a vacuum. So in a practical sense I think there would have to be negotiations about it.

Quite clearly, as we said in the earlier exchange about reviews, I take the view that these things ought to be constantly under review. They should not be artificially under review in two years or four years—with people keeping their eyes closed until then and saying, `Who cares?' in the meantime.

We would be particularly sensitive about making sure that the benefits are passed on to the bush—and not just because of the National Party. We certainly have made quite a deal of noise about the importance of rural Australia because, after all, we have more seats in rural Australia than our National Party colleagues. I think everyone in this chamber is very determined to ensure that the bush does not get left behind. That is why we have already made a number of major announcements, such as the ISDN commitment.

So I will simply leave it on that basis but be conscious of what Senator Harradine said about the need to ensure that the parliament does have an opportunity to dissect the way in which this model is constructed and that we should all be prepared to revise our thinking on a regular basis. I am confident that will occur.