Senator ALLISON (7:48 PM) —There are just a couple of other things I want to add to my remarks earlier about this amendment. As we know, earlier this evening the government amendment giving all Australians digital data capability, in theory, was agreed to—anyone will be able to call Telstra and say that they want an ISDN line connected to their house or their business. But the issue here is that well over 90 per cent of Australians have been able to obtain ISDN for a number of years but very few have taken up that technology. Some estimates have suggest ed that only 65 ISDN lines have been connected to residential premises. It is fairly obvious to the Democrats that the reason for this is the prohibitive cost. So I again ask the question: what is the point in having this capability available to all Australians when it is priced out of their reach?

It is arguable that ISDN is of much greater significance to those people in rural and regional areas than it is to those in the cities. The reason is that standard telephone lines in the cities are capable of quite high speed data transfer. Most city dwellers can connect a modem to their standard telephone line, dial their Internet service provider and transmit and receive information at quite high speed. Consequently, they do not have any real need for ISDN technology. But it is quite a different story in rural and remote communities. Their telephone lines quite often are not capable of carrying data at high speeds and so access to the Internet is prohibitively slow. And, of course, the slower it is the more expensive it is for those people using it.

It is those people in rural and remote areas who can potentially benefit the most from access to an ISDN line. But with the government proposing to simply allow Telstra to charge standard commercial rates for ISDN, those people will simply not be able to afford the service. Many of those people would have had ISDN available for quite some time but would not have been able to afford it. The government's amendments will simply mean nothing to those people. Those people want the government to make ISDN available at an affordable price.

To use an analogy here, it is like the government approving the use of a drug to combat an illness. If that drug is simply not affordable and the government will not take action to reduce the price of the drug, the approval of the drug for use becomes completely pointless. So, too, the availability of ISDN to Australians is pointless if they cannot afford to subscribe to the service.

Our amendment has two parts to it. The first part is to make ISDN available to all Australians. It achieves the same result as the government's amendment that we have just agreed to. But the second part is very signifi cant. It refers to the supply of the capability at a price to be determined by the Telecommunications Review Committee. That new committee must determine what is an affordable price for access to ISDN. In doing so, the committee will be able to invite public submissions and call witnesses to give evidence at a public hearing or hearings—there may be the need for more than one. Then the price will be reviewed by the committee at least every two years.

We know that ISDN has the potential to provide enormous benefits to people in rural and remote Australia, and the Australian Democrats would like to see those people being able to access those benefits. The minister commented during the debate on the previous amendment that ISDN is a premium service. That may be the case, but it should not be priced as a premium service. It should be available for those people who are very keen to have it but at this stage simply cannot afford the purchase price.