Mr TUCKEY (10:05 PM) —Talking about selling out the bush, I take a lot of notice of the member for Calare (Mr Andren) when every time he votes with the Labor Party over native title. If that is not a sell-out of his rural constituency, I would like to know what is. He goes to the people of his constituency and says, `Vote for me, I'm independent,' but when it comes to an issue as important as his constituents' property rights he votes with the Labor Party. He does not care, as demonstrated by his vote on schedule 4—a schedule clearly defining the circumstances under which people can keep from going to court by referring to one part of the Native Title Act to find out whether or not their property extinguishes native title. So, when we start to moralise in this place about representing our constituents, get on the right track.

The reality is that the member for Calare made another great admission: he cannot get a telephone fixed in his electorate. I have been here for 18 years, mate, and I can tell you that throughout that time I have had complaints about people who could not get their telephones fixed—and that was manna from heaven for me electorally, because I got them fixed the same day, and I still do. If you cannot do it, there is something wrong with your capacity—not with Telstra. You are a failure.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl) —The member for O'Connor will address his remarks through the chair.

Mr TUCKEY —Let me repeat that to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. You would well know that from your work in your own electorate. Fixing the tax act, that is difficult—but not being able to get a telephone fixed! The member for Calare has been keeping a record of his failures so he can come in here and make a speech. What a blooming hopeless member of parliament! Let us put that aside, because I do not want to waste much time on him. I do not have much appreciation for his ability.

The reality is that we have looked at this issue in many ways. Let me remind the House of one thing: when the government of the day borrows more money than the value of its assets, they are sold, they are gone. This House is responsible for rebalancing the books. The tragedy of the privatisation program of the ALP was that, firstly, having promised the workers of the Commonwealth Bank, having promised its own caucus—and it does not say much for them—and having promised the people of Australia that it would never sell more than half the Commonwealth Bank, it came back and sold it.

The other tragedy was that they spent the money. They had already borrowed and taken our debt up to a point where we have an annual interest bill of $10,000 million a year—much more than they netted from Qantas. I think they got only about $4 billion for Qantas, and it was nearly as much as they netted out of one tranche of the Commonwealth Bank. We have got that every year because of the money they borrowed. Having sold the assets of this country, what did they do with the money? They spent it. They come in here and they tell us that the easy way back into government is to do the same thing again—but the next time round there will be no assets to sell. The simple reality is that they sold Telstra because they borrowed in excess of what it was worth. That should never be forgotten. This government has good reasons for selling Telstra, and they are all to do with economic efficiency. The reality is that the government is also obliged to do it for the future of our children.

The member for Calare, as I recollect, suggested that we have lost $3,000 million a year in dividends. I have just put a phone call through to my office because I understand that figure is closer to a billion dollars a year. The interest savings on this current proposed repayment of $40 billion arising from the sale of the rest of Telstra will reduce our interest costs by $4 billion a year. The net cash flow value to the Australian people is $3,000 million a year, which we might put into some of the issues that are the responsibility of government, such as addressing the health and retirement needs of the less fortunate in our community.

The simple fact is that you do not need to own a communication facility to deliver the service. It was Maggie Thatcher who set that example in England. I will never forget her remarks to our party room many years ago when she said in her special voice—and you, Mr Deputy Speaker Nehl, would possibly remember this little lecture too—`You have to get government out of business. After all, if we politicians were any good at business we would be in business.' That is the fundamental question. The member for Calare turns around and says to us that there is no difference between the efficient running of a private business and that same business in the hands of government.

It is interesting that so much attention is being paid to public hospitals around Australia at the moment. I remind the Labor Party that the only hospitals held by the Commonwealth were the repatriation hospitals, and they quite correctly decided to get rid of them. It is interesting to me that in my state of Western Australia the state government declined the opportunity to run another hospital. It is a very interesting set of figures because as a consequence a private operator, Ramsay Health Group, got the hospital. They reduced the staff from 1,100 to 700 and got rid of all the waiting lists in 10 months. Surely that is what we are about. Surely we are about getting rid of the waiting lists in hospitals and providing better services that people want from telecommunications.

The member for Calare bemoaned the fact that there will be only five major telephone companies left in the world. We are creating the circumstance where one of them might be Telstra. If we left it in the hands of government it would certainly never happen. But they will be in the position to raise the capital on the stock exchanges and expand what is already one of the biggest ownerships of international cables of any country in the world. It is an accident of history but we have them. We are perfectly positioned through Telstra to be one of those five great companies and to bring in huge import revenues to Australia.

Mr Price —Import revenues?

Mr TUCKEY —Yes, we will import the money. You can call it export revenue if you like, it does not matter, but it is a rather peculiar situation where the money is flowing back and the service is going out. The reality is that all of that is possible because we are providing the opportunity.

I well remember the arguments arising from the Labor Party when they said to us all those years ago that you could not keep the Commonwealth Bank any longer in the hands of the government because we could not give it the funds necessary for it to compete with other private banks. Please remember where all this started. It started, I think correctly so, when the previous government decided to introduce competition to the telecommunications market. From then on, as it was with the Commonwealth Bank, it becomes imperative that you privatise these concerns or their private competitors run over the top of you.

We heard the member for Calare start to run all his furphies. The member for Chifley (Mr Price) might have had something to do with this, because back in 1986 the Labor government, in trying to establish its case for the deregulation of the telecommunications industry, was confronted with the first campaign of furphies. The union was out there, as they are again, spreading fear and loathing wherever they hope someone will listen.

Mr Price —Shareholders.

Mr TUCKEY —No, that is the union. The shareholders are the workers. There is a big difference in this day and age between the institution of the union and the people who go to work every day. The union is a self-generating, self-protecting institution. It has nothing to do with the welfare of workers. I watched the MUA people come here the other day, and one of them had two Mont Blanc pens in his pocket—two! I can tell you what they cost because I have managed to afford one. I nearly thought about time payment. We were told of this massive cross-subsidy, so they had an inquiry and they gave it the rather catchy name of Poles apart in 1986.

Mr Price —I'm innocent, Wilson.

Mr TUCKEY —If you were, it is an interesting point, because what did this report discover? It talked about this cross-subsidy. They had been told the minute that you bring in deregulation we will have to walk out of the bush. We cannot stay there. The committee did a bit of homework on this and it said:

Whatever the accounting difficulties, the Committee still supports the present cross-subsidy for a number of reasons.

It did not say there was not a cross-subsidy on an individual basis, but it stated:

Firstly, it is crucial to distinguish between `cross-subsidy' and `profitability'. Telecom customers in high-cost areas are not necessarily unprofitable for Telecom. They contribute less per service than users in low-cost districts but their contribution to Telecom's revenue is still positive.

That was back in 1986. It continues:

Non-metropolitan customers of Telecom in 1984-85 paid for all the direct costs incurred in their districts as well as for $433.8m of Telecom's total indirect costs.

In other words, a profit of nearly half a billion. The report stated:

As the largest component of these indirect costs relates to items such as interest on borrowings, which are not necessarily directly attributable to non-metropolitan areas, the loss of all rural and remote Telecom customers would in fact impose a net additional cost on metropolitan users. Rural and remote users contribute towards Telecom's indirect costs and any contribution to these costs is better than none.

Another part of that report said that there was actually a cross-subsidy paid to private telephone users in metropolitan areas. It is a fact that there is a lot more to providing a telephone service than providing a bit of wire. In paragraph 7.9, the committee makes a point about access externality. What that means is people do not buy telephone services if they cannot ring their relatives in the bush; businesses do not buy telephone services if they cannot ring their customers in the bush. The reality is that those services will be provided on good commercial grounds.

Again, the member for Calare bemoaned the fact that someone only had a copper wire and might not get an Internet service. I want to see them get Internet services, but I think they are more likely to get them through a low orbiting satellite service than they are through running out another bit of wire. In fact, those services will be implemented here in Australia by Iridium in September, according to the advice given to a seminar organised by the government members' backbench committee on communications the other night. We were shown the handpieces that will be used which will allow you to access the digital network if you are within range. You just plug the digital phone back into the other handpiece, which is not much bigger than the phones that came out at the origin of mobile phone services, and you can talk through that same phone, through the satellite, wherever you want to go.

The opening cost for that outfit is about $5,000 and the price per minute is going to be about $4. But for how long? There is a second low orbiting satellite company called Global Mobility which is about to start up. Of course, we know from the history of modern technology that those prices will fall dramatically. Those phones are suitable for faxstream; they are suitable for all of your data transmission in a limited way. So the realities are that the options that are arising are such that Telecom probably could not have competed in all these fields if it was coming back to government all the time.

But, of course, the member for Calare happened to raise the issue—his little story that no doubt he will run all around his electorate with—of what has been going on in Auckland in terms of the power supply. What a scandal it is that every second Australian has been told that is a privatised operation. He was a bit more clever; he used the word `corporatised'. Of course the Labor Party corporatised Telecom; it has been corporatised for years, but it remained a government instrumentality until the coalition sold a third of it. The reality is that the Mercury power supplier in Auckland is a government instrumentality. It is government that let the lights go out. It is about time that that point was made and people stopped telling fibs about it, because that is the situation. We read it in the media—they stand to be criticised on that as well because they let this myth be perpetrated that Mercury is some private organisation owning the distribution system in Auckland. It is not; it is a government system.

The reality is that it is not the role of government to own business, but it does have a role to regulate such essential services as telecommunications. The Labor Party were the ones who decided to deregulate it and they did so with our support. At least we stuck to our principles in opposition, something that they have abdicated completely. But the realities are that, in imposing those regulations, you do so as a condition of licence. I heard someone argue one day that you do not tell Woolworths how many supermarkets they can open. Local government does to a degree, but the reality is that Woolworths are selling groceries and they do not get licensed to do so. When you licence someone in this area, you naturally impose conditions, and this government has. In fact, it has relied somewhat on the universal service obligation which I think was originally laid down by the Labor Party. I will stand corrected by the member for Chifley if I am wrong, but that has got to be upgraded. It is patently silly to suggest, for instance, that a group of people in a small community of 200 are so remote that they should have to wait 27 months for a phone.

Mr Price —There's nothing in the bill that upgrades it.

Mr TUCKEY —In fact, if the member for Chifley wants to bet with me that we do not address this issue, he is welcome to do so. Sir, I do not know what we would be putting on it; maybe we could bet each other a haircut or something like that? But, other than that, the reality is that we are going to make sure of it. I have got huge faith in Minister Alston. I have had communications with him from day one about mobile phone services—about analog and digital. Whilst the Labor Party signed up for digital and left the government of Australia with a problem that was very difficult to address, because time has proved that there is a place for analog in our network, it is our government that has told those people that when digital is the only remaining service it has got to cover the total areas previously covered by analog. That will mean some additional stations because we know digital does not cover the same distance. That is what they will have to do. That is appropriate.

I thank the minister for listening to my entreaties, and no doubt those of others on our side of the House, saying that we had to do something. It was he when looking at the change to digital transmission—it is unique to my electorate at the moment with satellite TV—who came out voluntarily and offered $750 to each and every owner of the old style analog black box to assist them in buying a new digital one. There has been no fanfare about that, but that is what the minister has done. He has had other problems with this changeover due to commercial thuggery, you might say—TV stations beating each other around the head and leaving their customers until last—but the minister has been active doing everything within his power to address these matters, and I congratulate him for it. He will address the outstanding issues relating to the universal service obligations which will be sensible and will represent the interests of country people.

Mr Price —They are not in the bill.

Mr TUCKEY —I am making the point that it will be changed. We have talked to him in our party room. I think he understands the representations we make. One that I made was, as I have communities of 200 people living within a few kilometres of a community of 4,000 people, why should it be that one group gets a guaranteed telephone connection in a matter of days and the other in a matter of years? It is a silly proposition and it does not recognise the demand on the infrastructure. That needs changing. The minister listened to that, and I am sure we will see something come out of it. As I stand here, I guarantee to my constituents that it will be done.

The fundamental issue of selling Telstra is to give it the chance to be the major organisation that Australia needs and to give Australians, including the workers of Telstra, the chance to be the recipients of that profit through shareholding. Also, the government taking its proper role to regulate the entire industry in terms of adequate service levels is the way that all governments should run. Without it, we end up investing all our money in business when it is our job to look after poor people. (Time expired)