Senator MASON —My question is to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Alston. Will the minister inform the Senate of any recent breakthroughs in telecommunications laws and regulations, and what will these break throughs mean for Australian families and businesses as they use telephone services?

Senator ALSTON (Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) —Senator Mason is off to a very good start indeed, because that is a key question.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator ALSTON —I know it is something you lot have not the slightest interest in pursuing, but the fact is that competition has been the main game in telecommunications in recent years. Since 1 July 1997, we have had 28 new carrier licences issued, and of course that is very good news for consumers. It has meant, for example, that international calls have fallen by something like 60 per cent over the last three years since we have been in government and long-distance domestic calls have fallen by between 40 and 70 per cent. That is a tremendous amount of progress.

Senator Mark Bishop —Are domestic calls now coming down?

Senator ALSTON —I know you are not interested in competition; about the only competition you are interested in is competitive branch stacking, and I know you have raised that to an art form in recent times. It is going very well, it is consuming all of that policy making time that you should be setting aside. We are more concerned to ensure that the competitive regime is improved to the maximum extent. The recent raft of legislation that accompanied the further Telstra privatisation does just that because it tightens the competition notice regime. It makes it easier for people to get access to the system. They can approach the courts in their own private capacity rather than through the ACCC. In a raft of ways, the ACCC will have the capacity to ensure that negotiations take place at an earlier point in time. They will be able to attend and mediate and access negotiations without being prevented from undertaking further arbitration. These are all very powerful tools to drive further competition.

We have also had a historic decision in relation to local calls. For the first time, the last bastion of Telstra's monopoly services has been opened up in such a way that the regime will never be the same again. We did give them a bit of an indication of our thinking, because we went to the last election promising that we would do just that if the ACCC were not so minded. In the event, I think they agreed with us that it was very timely, and I have no doubt that all of the other carriers in the business will be very supportive of the regime as well. We expect there will be some technical and operational delays but I do not see that they should take any more than a matter of months and certainly not the two years that I have seen suggested in the media. Opening up services like ADSL, again, is critically important.

In addition to those initiatives, we have had the setting of the implementation date for local call rates, free phone number portability and we have a new facilities access code. I should advise the Senate that the government is not going to proceed to have Senator Schacht declared a low impact facility: we now think that is abundantly self-evident! But, as Senator Hill pointed out, there are a number of other candidates and I would have thought that Senators Carr, Cook and Bolkus, who is not even here, would be prime candidates. We will be taking a close look at whether we need to take any further regulatory action in the interests of competition for consumers, because we think that all of those voters out there ought to have two decent teams in action. At the moment, it is a very unfair contest with the A side playing the B minus.

We will certainly continue to push the policy agenda. It is only a shame that the other side do not seem to take it seriously. I see your leader is out on a listening tour—a magical mystery tour, presumably. He went to an employment seminar, stayed for five minutes, delivered a paper and went home. If that is the sort of leadership being demonstrated, you can see it is going to be a very cold winter for the Labor Party over the next few years. All I can suggest is that the listening tour, if you are really serious about it, will tell you that there is a bit going out on there. It is called number crunching. Ask Mr Crean and Mr Ferguson and you will get a flavour of what the alternative is. (Time expired)