Senator McLUCAS (7:43 PM) —I rose in this place last year to speak to this very bill, which was rejected on 30 October 2003 by honourable senators. Labor has been and remains resolute in its opposition to the privatisation of Telstra. I again rise to contradict the government's intention in the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 2003 [No. 2] to sell down the remaining government shareholding in Telstra, for this bill would have a detrimental impact in the communities that I represent in Queensland and on services in other regional communities throughout Australia.

However, before I touch on those matters I want to turn to the government's motivation in returning to this place with identical legislation. Given that the parameters of this debate have remained unchanged over the last 4½ months, the action of the government appears to be a waste of both valuable chamber time and taxpayers' money. Yet the government had the opportunity to act. The government could have acted on matters of concern like providing protections to the continuing applicability of freedom of information legislation to Telstra. But they have not. There is also the matter of the future application of Commonwealth occupational health and safety legislation and there is the need to enshrine and strengthen protection for Australian telecommunications users living outside capital cities.

A privatised Telstra would be a giant private monopoly too powerful for any government to effectively regulate. It would be extending that power, with its deep pockets, into the media by buying up half the Australian media. It would focus inevitably on the most lucrative markets in the biggest cities at the expense of people in country Australia. We saw, only recently, Telstra spending in excess of $600 million, a vastly inflated figure according to financial commentators, to buy the Trading Post Group. When I read of that event, it signalled to me yet more focus, on the part of Telstra's current executives, on corporate acquisitions rather than on core business and only served to reinforce my opposition to this bill. It seems to me that if Telstra wanted to get out of telephony and buy a television network instead, that would just be terrific for this government. If the people of Australia think that is a far-fetched scenario I have got sad news for them, for only a few years ago Telstra did in fact attempt to purchase the Channel 9 network.

It gets worse. Last week we heard about the government's plans for a $3.25 million pre-election advertising blitz. Labor has released documents that reveal a Howard government plan which involves promoting Telstra positively in newspapers as a payback for receiving big advertising contracts. This is nothing short of a shameful, taxpayer funded cash for comment scandal. We learnt in the Townsville Bulletin today that these efforts to sex up the image of Telstra in the lead-up to the sale are known as WHAM, an acronym for Winning Hearts and Minds. Judging by the recent polls the government needs a bit of WHAM, but the taxpayers of this nation should not be asked to fund its desperate grab for votes.

It was embarrassing to watch Mr Anderson, the Minister for Transport and Regional Services and Deputy Prime Minister, last week on the issue of Telstra's service quality. Minister Anderson could not make up his mind about whether or not Telstra's services to the bush and the regions were up to scratch. His bet each way last Wednesday and Thursday came at a time when Telstra's own internal documents show soaring fault levels that cannot this time, in the light of these same documents, be blamed on the weather. But rather than address these faults it seems that this government would rather spend taxpayers' money buying useless propaganda than getting Telstra to do their job properly.

Here we are again debating the same legislation with no augmentation to FOI, occupational health and safety, service requirements or the focus on utility functions that most honourable senators called for last time around. It is a stark reminder of the government's ideological agenda. The words, `Just flog it,' sum up their position on Telstra perfectly. The outcome of this debate seems certain. Given that this is the case, why are we here today when there is no shortage of urgent legislation awaiting our consideration? Let me say that Senator Boswell has no idea. In fact, the Leader of the National Party in the Senate was reported in the Cairns Post on Saturday as saying, `I don't know,' when asked why the government was bringing back this flawed bill to the Senate for another round of debate. Fellow senators, it is clear that we are here only to progress this government's ideological agenda and to augment their political positioning, and the taxpayers are footing the bill.

While the government continues to pursue its agenda, the situation in regional Australia improves not one iota and the National Party, including senators who know better or who, like Senator Boswell, should know better, continue to kowtow to the Prime Minister. As Senator Boswell and his colleagues well know, North Queenslanders have made their opposition to further privatisation well known throughout the Estens and the Senate inquiries. Our business community has likewise voiced concerns about service levels through its participation in surveys which overwhelmingly demonstrate community concern. I spoke in detail on these points during my last speech and can assure honourable senators that the situation has not changed.

That is because the people of Far North Queensland know what is coming. They know that a giant, privatised Telstra will focus on the most lucrative markets in the major cities, following the dollars as shareholders dictate, at the expense of small markets like ours and lower income earners. As well as poor mobile phone coverage, faulty telephone lines and service difficulties with fixed telephone services, access to high-speed or broadband Internet services has emerged as a problem for regional Australians. Poor broadband coverage, inadequate dial-up Internet data speeds and constant Internet line drop-out are a fact of life in many communities.

On 17 March this year, over 20 residents of Holloways Beach near Cairns turned out on a very wild and wet night to tell Labor's shadow minister for information technology, Senator Kate Lundy, of how they have been led a merry dance by Telstra over the past two years on ADSL. The meeting at the Holloways Beach Community Centre was organised in consultation with Mr Col Evans, the president of the Holloways Beach Residents' Association, after my office had received numerous complaints. These complaints, I might add, came not only from Holloways residents but also from people living in the adjoining suburbs of Yorkeys Knob and Machans Beach concerning the lack of ADSL in these areas and the quality of existing dial-up services. I should point out to the Senate that these communities are approximately five kilometres from the CBD of Cairns.

A woman by the name of Glenda Andersen was unable to attend on the night but was one of many people to ring my office. She said:

At the meeting itself, some residents spoke of having been misled about the timing of ADSL services being provided from the Yorkeys and Holloways exchanges. Mr Robert Wood, from a business called Sands On The Beach, said that 95 per cent of his guesthouse business was generated through the Internet and when the business was set up two years ago Telstra had told him that ADSL would be available within six months. He is still waiting. Masons Studio Jewellery said they would have opted for ISDN if the Telstra sales representative had not dangled the ADSL connection carrot before them almost a year ago. That business's supply chain is totally dependent on the Internet and problems with dial-up reliability and poor bandwidth have meant missing many valuable opportunities.

The owner of the local newsagency at Holloways, Mr Bruce Sharples, spoke of the surprise that tourists staying at the major resort opposite his business experienced when having to grapple with dial-up rather than broadband. But of course that is all they, as a business, can offer because Telstra has not enabled the local exchanges for ADSL. Not surprisingly, Senator Lundy, who has an enormous level of technical knowledge about the nature of exchanges and broadband services, asked the Telstra representative present to explain how the existing exchanges are configured. Obviously, once we have that information we can work out the level of investment required for these facilities to be upgraded or replaced. This is Telstra's bread and butter but unfortunately the Telstra representative on the night was not able to furnish residents with this information. My office was advised on 23 March by Mr Wally Donaldson, the local manager of Telstra Countrywide, that he also is unable to provide us with this basic information and that we will have to make inquiries through Telstra's national public affairs process. Senator Lundy and I will do that. We will follow that up through Senate estimates if necessary.

The other interesting fact that came out of the meeting was that these residents have had to register their interest for ADSL on not one but two separate Internet sites and have, on each occasion over the past 12 months, more than met Telstra's arbitrary targets for the provision of the service. So let us be clear: these targets that Telstra actively promotes mean nothing in reality. And as of last weekend the bar has been lifted to another level. Telstra's representative is now soliciting ADSL applications from members of the community—including, sadly, through the meeting that we held. The purpose of soliciting the applications, we are advised by Mr Donaldson, is to augment the business case for the FNQ Countrywide region to put to Telstra management.

This is all very well and good but if the business case has not yet been put, why has Telstra used its websites and sales advice to raise community expectations about the timing of ADSL service delivery? Surely the business case is as simple as estimating take-up rates using the demographics of Yorkeys Knob, Holloways and Machans and then estimating the forward revenue and making a judgment about whether this revenue warrants the cost of whatever exchange upgrades or replacements are necessary. It is really not that difficult. I would commend an introduction to marketing textbook to Telstra to assist them in reaching a speedy decision on this issue.

And, if Telstra decide they are not going to upgrade the exchanges, the community needs to be informed that this is the case. This would enable them to investigate or negotiate alternative high-speed data services with other carriers. But rather than make this decision two years ago, Telstra has been happy to continue to collect revenue from dial-up subscribers experiencing high drop-out rates whilst reassuring these communities that ADSL availability is just around the corner. Since this meeting my office has had representations from other areas of Cairns. We have taken a call from residents in Brinsmead, an inner city suburb of Cairns, and I had a letter from the Cairns Adventist School. The letter said:

We have recently applied for an ADSL connection at our School. However we have been informed that our present lines will not support ADSL and that the signal would be too weak. As a growing education institution we need to be able to offer students and staff the best form of Internet connection. It seems strange that we are a school based in the central part of the city and yet we are unable to access ADSL ... we have found it difficult to liaise with Telstra and they are unable to give any answers ... it's not as if these are outlying rural areas.

Well, in my book this level of service is simply not good enough from a moral standpoint, nor is it ethical business practice. No wonder communities are researching alternatives. Telstra, in my area, is clearly providing inappropriate advice to many local businesses and residents who have acted in good faith on that advice and are now inconvenienced and out of pocket as a result.

Finally, I should report that the Holloways meeting was told that the member for Leichhardt, rather than highlighting this issue, has simply fobbed off queries with a similar approach. At least, according to one meeting attendee, he has been more honest by stating that in his view we are still some 18 months away from ADSL on the Cairns northern beaches. When one considers that the government is happy to sit back and allow Telstra to spend $600 million on the Trading Post Group but will not direct it to spend what is needed to upgrade these exchanges to ensure residents get something approaching the data standards the corporation should be providing, Mr Entsch should just hang his head in shame.

I have highlighted one issue facing my local community. But there are hundreds of communities all over Australia who are getting a taste of what life will be like under a privatised Telstra. Many communities are suffering from poor or unreliable services or the complete lack of services as our network degenerates to something that seems held together with sticky tape and BluTack. And Australians are meant to believe that this bill will protect Telstra from being sold until certain standards in rural and regional areas are met. From the Sunday Age of 21 March we learnt that Senator Lees may now be `prepared to reconsider her position if the government significantly improved telecommunications services across the nation and promised to spend all the proceeds from the sale—estimated at $30 billion—on the environment and upgrading infrastructure.' Well, you would not want to hold your breath on this given what has happened to the Democrats' deal on GST, brokered by none other than Senator Lees herself.

Paul Pollard's paper for the Australia Institute, Missing the target: An analysis of Australian government greenhouse spending, makes it very clear that the Democrats, under the leadership of Senator Lees, were dudded. The Howard government repeatedly trots out the line that it is spending $1 billion on greenhouse programs. In 1997 it committed itself to $180 million over five years and in 1999 to $796 million over five years. Pollard's analysis shows:

Pollard goes on to state:

The Government should abandon this unsupportable claim.

The Government's failure to spend, in the timeframe agreed, the money allocated as part of the GST tax deal with the Australian Democrats is the primary reason for its inability to meet the target of $1 billion.

Earlier this month, the Australian National Audit Office also analysed the Australian Greenhouse Office's failure to deliver on the government's promises.

Why should the environment be treated as a third-rate issue which can only be addressed by asset sales? I urge Senator Lees and other senators who sit on the crossbenches not to again fall for this contemptible way of dealing with the nation's pressing environmental problems.

It is clear that the government's guarantees about future proofing are nothing more than pro-sale PR puffery. The government is allowing Telstra to let Australia go backwards in terms of broadband. We are 19th in the OECD in terms of household connections. This is not just a niche issue; it is a fundamentally important issue for the development of regional Australia. It is what key corporate stakeholders and institutions from the north have told this government, but the government, as we know, is not listening. I hope my fellow senators, particularly those in the minor parties—the Greens, the Democrats, the Independents and One Nation—are listening. I urge them all to support Labor and join with Labor to give voice to the view of the overwhelming majority of the Australian people, that Telstra should not be sold.