Mr RICHARD EVANS (6:15 PM) —I have been listening with interest to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley) and I wrote down the valuable points he made during his speech. He said that the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 1998 cannot deliver in the bush, will not cover losses, that the dividend is bad for the budget and that it means the annihilation of a great Australian company. He then proposed and floated the conspiracy theory of foreign interests. He then said that it would be exploited as a monopoly. He asked, `Is debt a problem?' and, as a failed finance minister, he said, `Of course it isn't.' Then he gave the rolled gold guarantee that in government the Labor Party would repeal this legislation.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you cannot believe anything the Labor Party says about any issue. We have heard its false promises in election after election in recent years. It brings these promises out and then repeals them soon after. For instance, the Leader of the Opposition has just said that he would never contemplate selling Telstra, but on Meet the Press in 1994 he said:

Privatisation in the limited sense would work. I mean, you could privatise Telecom if you set your mind to it.

Just two years later, he said:

I have already indicated that I have never advocated the sale of Telstra, publicly or privately, and nor have I speculated that the Labor Party would do so.

Yet two years earlier he had said something different. He also did not mention in his speech some of the broad objectives that he and his party have towards privatisation. In 1994, the Leader of the Opposition said:

The broad micro-economic reform objectives pursued by the government through asset sales include improved accountability and efficiency, increased competition through the reform of market structures, and reduced government involvement in sectors where it is no longer justified.

These are very good comments coming from the Leader of the Opposition. He went on to say:

And despite some critics suggesting asset sales amount to selling off the family jewels, they do not result in a loss of infrastructure but rather a transfer of ownership.

He also said:

Asset sales allow the government to maintain public services and benefits to the Australian people while maintaining the deficit reduction strategy without increased taxes.

He said that in 1994, yet in 1998 he is saying the complete opposite. On 7 July 1994, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, said:

But there are broader benefits to be gained from moving the ownership of assets into the private sector, most notably in achieving greater efficiency, stronger performance and improved competitiveness in some of our key national enterprises.

Surely, that is what this legislation is all about—improved efficiency and improved competitiveness. That is what the Leader of the Opposition said when he was in government, and he now says in opposition something very different. The Leader of the Opposition also said in 1994:

The real measure for whether privatisation should occur is whether there will be a net social and economic gain from moving a particular enterprise into private ownership.

I think there is a lot of benefit in selling the rest of Telstra. I am sure that we will be outlining those points further on in this debate. Mr Deputy Speaker, do you recall the now opposition leader saying in a speech in 1994:

The government has therefore been able to sell down to 51 per cent ownership of the Commonwealth Bank, however, it has also retained government control in recognition of the value the government places on having a voice in the industry and an opportunity to contribute to its stability.

That is very similar to what he said in his speech today. He said, on behalf of the government at the time, that it would never sell the Commonwealth Bank. That is what he said on 7 July 1994. On 31 October 1993, Ralph Willis, the then Treasurer, in answer to a question from journalist Sarah Turner, who asked, `So unlike before, this time your commitment is iron clad?', said, `Absolutely, yes.' He said that they would never sell the Commonwealth Bank. What happened? They did.

The Leader of the Opposition was communications minister for a short time—he failed as finance minister and so he was communications minister—and he talked about how the Labor Party made great strides in technology and communication. Yet back in 1983 when they first came in, he said that the Labor Party was the reason for these advances. I can recall personal computers being almost the size of a fridge in 1983. Of course there have been advances, but the Labor Party cannot claim credit for those advances. We are moving into the 21st century—the information age. We have to go with it, and that is why we need competition to provide these services.

When the Leader of the Opposition was communications minister, the Labor Party failed to require Telstra to speed up digitisation of telephone exchanges, whereas the coalition has. When he was communications minister, the Labor Party failed to provide rural Australia with high speed digital data capacity. The coalition has. The Labor Party also failed to examine the operating definition of standard telephone services. The coalition is doing that. The Labor Party failed to provide any substantial support to meet the specific telecommunications needs of rural Australia. The coalition is doing that.

The opposition opposed the coalition's idea of $250 million for regional telecommunications. The Labor Party failed to ensure that people in rural Australia continued to enjoy reasonably equivalent mobile phone coverage after the year 2000. The coalition is doing that. The Labor Party says one thing in government and does another in opposition. It is not moving forward to the 21st century. It is locked into the pre-1980s era. It is not moving forward to the 21st century where there are information workers and knowledge workers. The opposition does not understand that principle.

The Leader of the Opposition gave a rolled gold guarantee, both tonight and on 16 March, and he said, `We will seek a mandate at the next election to repeal this legislation and we will expect the Senate to support us.' He is saying that he is going to the next election saying, `We will repeal this legislation.' By implication, he is saying that he will now support this legislation in the Senate, knowing that this legislation is not going to come in until after the next election.

By implication, he will be supporting this legislation in the Senate, knowing that it does not start until after the next election because, if he wins, he will be able to repeal it but, if he does not win, we would have the mandate, and therefore it should progress. Therefore, the opposition should be supporting this particular bill with the idea of getting its mandate at the next election.

The Prime Minister (Mr Howard) went to the community in the last election saying, `I want to sell one-third of Telstra,' and the community said, `Yes, okay. Sell one-third of Telstra.' He also said, `I will not sell any more of Telstra until I come back to you for approval.' These amendments are all about getting that approval from the community. At the next election they will have a clear choice: if they vote for the coalition, they want to have the rest of Telstra in the hands of the Australian people; if they do not, if they vote back the Labor Party, they obviously do not want the two-third sale happening. I think that is a fair choice for them to be deciding upon at the next election.

The coalition inherited, unfortunately, huge government debt. The opposition leader said that debt is not a problem. If you ask people in my electorate of Cowan whether debt is a problem or not, they will say that debt is a problem. It is about $96 billion and the interest payment on that debt costs taxpayers about $8 billion per year. What we are trying to do here is start paying back some of the debt created by the Labor Party. The proceeds from the Telstra sale will allow the coalition to reduce its inherited debt by about 40 per cent, with massive immediate savings on interest payments and a massive reduction of the Beazley debt legacy which he left for future generations. The Leader of the Opposition quoted some obscure person, but Chris Richardson, a respected economist from Access Economics, says:

If we pay off government debt, then we're saving money forever, and the net balance . . . is in favour of the Telstra sale to the tune of $1.5 billion a year. That's the saving in interest versus the . . . loss of income from Telstra.

So we have a respected economist supporting the idea of the sale of Telstra. Let us look at what has been done internationally. On 5 March 1998 there was a story in the Wall Street Journal that said:

Telecom deregulation in Britain delivered a nice surprise—

What was that? It was jobs—

as competition breaks out, service improves, prices drop and business booms.

The article went on to talk about how British Telecom was criticised heavily for wanting to cut jobs and privatise. In fact, in the past four years British Telecom struck 7,500 jobs off its rolls, but rival UK companies added 19,500. So what does this mean? It means that competition is good for the economy and certainly is good in the telecommunications industry.

Which countries have privatised carriers? Fully privatised carriers are in countries like Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, the UK and the USA. So it is not going to be a brave new world. We have already had the experiences of other countries and what they are doing in this region of telecommunications.

The Leader of the Opposition was talking about delivering in the bush and he was saying that no-one can ever guarantee that. We have gone one step further. We are putting these guarantees into the amendments today. What we are talking about is universal service obligations. We are going to be fining those suppliers if they do not perform. What better way of providing the leadership in doing this than by providing these guarantees?

Where is the Labor Party on this issue? It seems to me that it is all over the place. One minute it is saying it does not want privatisation and then suddenly it does. One minute it is saying it wants to move into the 21st century and the next minute it is saying it does not want to. One minute it is making promises about tax cuts, reducing debt and other suggestions and when it gets back into power it does not do that. What we have here is a Labor Party that says one thing and does another. I think people in the constituency out there, particularly in Cowan, are tired of hearing one thing from the Labor Party and then it doing something else. What Australia requires in government is people who can stand by their word, not people who say one thing and do another.

The Labor Party is all over the place on this issue. It used to say in government—and I could quote from Graham Richardson—that it was always a good idea to sell off Telstra. In fact, he quoted, I think, the former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, who wanted to sell off Telstra. But in opposition now it is saying it does not want to touch it. It is admitting that it is afraid. It is afraid of going into the 21st century. It is afraid of new ideas. It is afraid of expanding the ever-growing information industry and information technology. It is afraid of the burgeoning communications industry. It is afraid of all these things. Why? Because it wants to get back into government. It wants to get back to the way things were. It wants to get back into the fat of the lamb of looking after its mates in government.

Where are the ideas coming from the Labor Party? I do not see much of them on the communications side of things. Who is the communications industry spokesman on this? I think it is Senator Schacht; I am not sure. I think their candidate in Dickson is now the official spokesman on communications—not even in the party, not even in the government, and this particular candidate is now its spokesman on it.

I wrote a list of the points the Leader of the Opposition made. I did not get anything about the future in there. I got nothing about what they want to do. All they want to do is not privatise, but they have said that before. They said they were not going to privatise Qantas and they said they were not going to privatise the Commonwealth Bank. What happened? They did.

The opposition leader talked about weasel words, weasel this and weasel that. That is very appropriate because I think his bluster was full of wind—more like The Wind in the Willows perhaps. The big badger of The Wind in the Willows was talking about the weasels. The weasels and the stoats are on the other side. We know who Rat is. We know who Mole is. We know who the big badger is. From the member for Werriwa (Mr Latham) today with his new book and with his brave new world ideas, we know who Toad is as well.

The Labor Party are bereft of ideas; they have got none. They are old world. They are old ideas. They are not really on top of this whole debate. I recommend this bill to the House.