Senator EGGLESTON (3:09 PM) —I rise to speak on the motion to take note of the responses given by Senator Coonan to questions asked of her today. Senator Mackay of course is taking the fixed Labor Party view about Telstra—that is, in order to provide a reasonable level of telephone services and other communication services to the Australian community the government must own that service. Of course, that is absolute nonsense. You do not need to own a service to regulate a service and that is the government's position. We believe, quite emphatically and without any doubt whatsoever, that the basket of regulatory regime factors surrounding Telstra is such that the public of Australia is guaranteed an excellent telephone service, regardless of who owns Telstra.

It is a shame, I think, for the people of Australia that Senator Mackay, and other members of the ALP, are so ideologically committed to the socialist concept of state ownership and thereby the people of Australia are suffering. I am bound to call the attention of the Senate—since Senator Mackay talked about higher line charges—to what the practical impact has been of the government deregulating the telecommunication service. The government deregulated the tele-ommunication services and, as a result, we now have over 100 telecommunications companies in Australia providing services to the Australian people. The most important outcome of that competition has been a dramatic drop in the cost of telephone charges. The Australian people have benefited enormously from deregulation of the telecommunications system brought in by the Howard government. It would be a genuine tragedy no less for the people of Australia if we were to go back to the regime which existed under the Labor government, where there was a single provider and no competition whatsoever. That meant poor service, slow action in putting on new services, slow action in undertaking repairs and that technological innovation and variety in those kinds of services was never implemented in Australia, whereas it was in other countries.

For many reasons, the ideological position that we on this side of the house have adopted—that is, a belief in the benefit of competition and that it is good for the customer—has been more than adequately proven, proven in spades in fact, by the experience we have had in the telecommunications industry. As I said, there are over 100 telcos these days, prices have dropped and Australians around this country, not only in the big cities but also in rural areas, have access to the most sophisticated telecommunications in the world.

The fact that we held a Senate inquiry last year into the sale of Telstra seems to have escaped Senator Mackay's mind, even though she participated in that inquiry. We found during the inquiry that people around Australia, and in rural areas in particular, were quite happy with their basic telephone service and they wanted more sophisticated services. They did not want just a basic telephone service anymore; they wanted access to broadband, fast fax and the Internet. Again, competition will bring those services. It is the competition to Telstra, from Optus in particular—who are offering very sophisticated communication services via satellite—which has no doubt led Telstra to introduce the concept of Telstra Country Wide, which has had a very dramatic effect on improving services in country areas and which has brought a great benefit overall to the people of rural Australia. Again, I state that were we locked into the socialist policies of the ALP and a single telecommunications provider in this country, the people of Australia would be much worse off than they have been under the competitive regime introduced to the telecommunications industry by the Howard government.