Senator ALSTON (Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts) (3:06 PM) —by leave—In relation to notices of motion 1133 and 1136, standing in the name of Senator Bourne, the government is quite happy to provide the substantive information referred to in the orders for the production of documents arising from those notices of motion as follows. To address part 1 of Senator Bourne's first motion directed to me, following consultation between Senator Bourne's office and my office Telstra has supplied a statistical breakdown of employment reductions by region, covering the period April 1996 to March 1998. That information is contained in document 1. To address part 2 of Senator Bourne's first motion, the Department of Communications and the Arts has identified three documents which may be relevant to this request. That information is set out in documents 2A, 2B and 2C.

To address part 1 of Senator Bourne's second motion addressed to Senator Kemp, the Office of Asset Sales and Information Technology Outsourcing has prepared a document setting out its estimate of the $580 million cost of the sale of the remaining two-thirds of Telstra. That information is contained in document 3. To address part 2 of Senator Bourne's second motion, the Office of Asset Sales and Information Technology Outsourcing has prepared a document setting out a detailed breakdown of the cost of the sale of the first one-third of Telstra. That information is contained in document 4. I now table all of those documents.