Senator ALSTON (Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) (5:21 PM) —That clearly is not Senator Harradine's assessment of the situation. It is not a proposal that has been seriously considered in any of our discussions. In fact, I remember when this was put on the table during the election campaign. Indeed, it was accompanied by an outrageous proposition from Mr Beazley, put out selectively in a local press release, that residents of Mandurah—which just happened to be in his electorate—would also get local call charges. Talk about selective treatment! I do not know by what logic that could be extended to Tasmania, other than, as Senator Schacht quite ingenuously says, `It helped us win two seats.' That was presumably about the only logic involved; otherwise it was an outrageous preference for a particular group or location. How you would resist—

Senator Schacht —What are you doing now?

Senator ALSTON —Do you want the answer to your question? What we are doing now is offering a package of benefits that will be enormously more beneficial to creating the right infrastructure and the right educational, economic and social benefits for Tasmania to turn it into an intelligent island. I do not see what is particularly intelligent about giving one group of the population local call rates that no-one else gets, simply because they have a couple of marginal seats on offer. That is basically your logic. That did not appeal to us, I have to say. When you announced it at the time, I saw it as the death knell for your performance and, quite clearly, it was. But it was not something we were going to emulate and I do not think anyone else has seriously emulated it since.

If you want a further testimonial, look at what Premier Bacon had to say in the papers today. He welcomed it as a very constructive package for Tasmania. So whilst you might have thought it was very smart politics to pick up a couple of marginal seats, everyone else obviously saw it for what it was: a grubby little bribe that was trotted out at a moment in time when you did not think you were going to win anyway but you managed to con a couple of people in a few marginal electorates in Tasmania. We are much more interested in taking a national approach to these issues. If you are serious about reforming call zones, you do not do it by looking at where the marginal seats are and you do not do it by preferring one state ahead of all the others; you do it on a logical, rational basis. And I have not heard any evidence that you even understand what that means.