Senator BOSWELL (10:12 AM) —I do not want to make any reference to prayers; we will just let that go. I do want to respond to some of the remarks made by Senator Faulkner. Senator Faulkner, you have continued to attack the National Party, and it is your right to do so.

The PRESIDENT —Senator, your remarks should be addressed to the chair and not directly to Senator Faulkner.

Senator BOSWELL —Through you, Madam Chair, Senator Faulkner and his colleagues have continued to attack the National Party. Let me say that the reason the National Party has taken this decision is, time and time again, to support the sale of Telstra bill. At every National Party conference, at every CWA conference, at every NFF conference and at every isolated children conference, it continually comes up that we are left behind in the communications race, we cannot educate our children unless we have the latest technology, we cannot get into the markets and we do not know what the cotton price is, the computer will not work and it takes 25 minutes to get a page off it—and that is if the sun is out and it is energising the batteries of the tower. All those things continually come up. Please get us into the 21st century, or the 20th century. We are being driven by steam out there. Our faxes will not work and we cannot hit the Internet when we want to. Please, if you want us to be competitive, if you want us to drive forward, if you want us to be the exporters that carry the rest of this nation on our back, then give us the tools to do it with. This is the one and only opportunity and we may never have another opportunity to get the people in the bush up to speed with their telecommunications problems.

Opposition members interjecting—

The PRESIDENT —Order! There are far too many people interjecting.

Senator BOSWELL —I can go backwards as well as anyone. I can look over my shoulder and take them back to the 1950s, but that is not going to drive this nation forward. You cannot live out there unless you have the gear to work with, and this is the only opportunity we will ever have to have the gear to work with. So I do not want any more criticism. You do not understand the bush; you have never understood the bush and you never will understand the bush.

You are trying to frighten them. You are trying to make them fear things and you will not succeed, because the people out there know that they must move forward and they cannot move forward with you. I have discussed this with the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) and I believe him. That is one thing that you can never understand: you have to have deals. You cannot even believe which way either of you vote; you have to have show and tells. You never even trust each other; between the factions, you are always fighting about party positions.

Look what has happened to you, Senator Chris Schacht. You should be up on the top of the ticket. You are dumped almost to an unwinnable position because your factions do not even trust each other. You are one of the senior members over there and you have been dumped, absolutely dumped. You have been deserted by the Left, you have been cut off by the Right, and you have floated down right to the bottom of the ticket. But we do trust our coalition partners. If we did not trust them we would not be with them, we would walk out on them; but we do trust them. We believe in the bush that a handshake is as good as your word. They have given us a handshake and we trust them. Let us not have any more of this, `the National Party has deserted the bush'. The National Party is trying to take the bush into the 20th century and this may be the only opportunity that we get to do it.