Senator GIBSON —My question is to Senator Alston, the Minister representing the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business. Minister, has your attention been drawn to the statement in today's paper that the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Beazley, was `anything other than a willing, even zealous, privatiser'? Minister, are you aware of the evidence to support this claim and will you outline the advantages of the government's approach to privatisation?

Senator ALSTON (Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts) —Yes, I have read with a great deal of interest the article by Kenneth Davidson in today's Age . I am sure everyone who follows the media in this country would know that Kenneth Davidson has been a mouthpiece for Telstra for very many years. He has never said anything that appealed to me for as long as I can remember and he certainly does not go out of his way to criticise the Labor Party. What does he say? The headline reads:

Is Beazley the great Telstra pretender?

He says:

Within weeks of the 1990 election, a letter from Hawke to Beazley setting out the plan to sell Qantas and Australian Airlines and introduce competition for Telecom (Telstra) was leaked to the press.

Beazley was one of the ministers leading the privatisation charge at the special ALP conference in 1990 . . .

And on it goes. He also says, very damningly:

If Beazley is to have any credibility in the debate over privatising the remaining two-thirds of Telstra, he must either admit the privatisation and competition policies . . . were wrong, or he has to explain why full privatisation of Telstra is different to, say, full privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank.

Of course, Mr Beazley has more form than Reggie and Ronnie Kray combined. The fact is that even Kenneth Davidson, who is absolutely opposed to any form of privatisation, ends up saying this:

Yet if a Beazley Government hung on to Telstra and used it as a milch cow—

as Keating did to the tune of $3 billion—

. . . the country might be better off with full privatisation.

What a damning indictment. Is it any wonder that that mistress of the little ironies, Cheryl Kernot, said back in 1995 in relation to Labor's privatisation plans:

Listen, we are not buying these empty assurances.

It is a very serious issue. Some of the research that I have seen suggests that some people regard Mr Beazley as a bit of a likeable buffoon. They are absolutely dead wrong because this is a totally unprincipled Labor Party led by someone who is a clone of the New South Wales Right school, the whatever-it-takes merchants. He is the bloke who got up in the parliament at 9.31 this morning to deny that he had a conversation with Mr Blount of Telstra in particular terms. He said:

. . . I am alleged to have said to him that I favoured the privatisation of Telstra. I have never had a conversation suggesting that particular proposition on my part . . .

He has been flushed out. He has been forced to try and come clean but he has not. These are weasel words. Kenneth Davidson does not believe it; his article makes that clear. I do not believe it and the Australian public will not believe it. If he says, `I have never favoured the privatisation of Telstra,' let him tell us precisely what was said in that conversation.

As Kenneth Davidson makes very plain, Kim Beazley has privatised everything that moved. As Cheryl Kernot says,

`I mean, the Labor Party is just similar to the Liberal Party. It's Kim Beazley as finance minister who has been involved with the sale of the Commonwealth Bank and with the sale of Qantas. It is not much of a choice.' Madam President, the only difference is that we are up front, we are transparent, we will tell you in advance. Labor, of course, will lie their heads off in opposition and say they will not privatise, but as soon as they get there they will take the money and the box.

It is not good enough. I can understand why Kenneth Davidson is simply overwhelmed by and has had a gutful of this sickening hypocrisy. That is why, for the first time, he has spoken out in the way that he has. He reflects the views of hundreds of thousands of Australians who know what Labor's attitude to privatisation is. They are simply sick to death of the pretence that is going on. Kenneth Davidson is absolutely right and Mr Beazley will have to do a lot better than going into the House with a carefully crafted, narrow cast message which he thinks gets him off the hook. It does nothing of the sort. (Time expired)