Mr PRICE (5:00 PM) —Before I was so rudely interrupted by the adjournment debate last night, I think I was trying to make the point that if you looked at the 1991-92 deregulation, you would see that a lot of effort went into trying to ensure that there was adequate consumer protection and a proper regulatory authority. I think it is fair to say that, in consulting with small business, the trade unions concerned and a whole variety of people, a lot of work went on behind the scenes before we saw the final legislation. What surprises me most about this is that there has been so little consideration of the impact on Australians, particularly, as I was mentioning, in the poorer urban areas of Australia as well as rural and regional Australia.

I am surprised that there were no commitments sought by government backbenchers, particularly National Party backbenchers, in relation to what is a current or appropriate universal service obligation. I am surprised in this day and age that we would still consider it to be an ordinary telephone service. We cannot guarantee that people will be able to use faxes under this definition; we cannot guarantee that they will be able to use the Internet. It is a colossal advantage, in using the Internet, to link up with your service provider and be charged an untimed local call—but that is not the case in rural and regional Australia.

There has certainly been a guarantee by the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), as much as we can take him at his word, that there will be no timed local calls for ordinary residential customers for call and data services—but that is not the case for small businesses or farmers. That really surprises me. In a sense, rural and regional Australia are being sold out.

I was disappointed when we were in government that there was never a proper inquiry into universal service obligations. I am staggered now that the government are committed to totally privatising Telstra that this is of no concern to them. There is nothing in the bill that says that the honourable member for Leichhardt (Mr Entsch) or any of the government backbenchers are in the least bit concerned about what services Australians are entitled to, irrespective of where they live and, in particular, the quality and speed of the repair of services.

It is all very well to say, `We are going to fine the carriers $10 million.' I am not so sure that is going to deliver things for you. As a private company listed on the stock exchange, what right of redress will people have? Don't forget that, once this bill goes through, the directors will have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to improve the bottom line. What is at stake? Profits before service; profits before enhanced services. Unless there is a dollar in it, they are not going to do it.

What is staggering is the fact that currently we have a real live example of what privatisation means. In rural and regional Australia there are independent cameramen who file stories to capital cities about important happenings in rural and regional Australia on a daily basis. They do that by going to a local exchange and hooking up to the reach network. In that way, their video is filed instantly back to the capital cities. What is this government doing? What are the back benchers who allegedly represent rural and regional Australia doing? They are allowing them to close down.

The reach service will disappear completely on 1 August. We have heard not a whimper from rural and regional government members. They are completely unconcerned. What is the response from Telstra? They say that the network can be used for other things. I agree with that; it can be. There is no argument about that. They say that there are alternate means of providing the same service. Yes, there are. Those independent cameramen can go out and purchase a quarter of a million dollars worth of equipment and do the same thing by satellite. Who is pulling whose leg? It is not going to happen.

The impact of this will be that we are going to get stories that affect rural and regional Australia back in the capital cities 24 hours after the event. That is a real tragedy. We do not hear any of the government members getting up and saying, `We are concerned about it.'

Mr Entsch —Because it is a nonsense.

Mr PRICE —It is the absolute truth. We are getting a half apology from the member who is going to follow me in this debate. I will follow his contribution with great interest. I have not heard them make a whimper about it.

When you have a large corporation whose sole responsibility is down to the bottom line, these are the sorts of decisions they can make. If extra capacity is needed in the exchanges to improve the quality of service to rural and regional Australia, it should be provided. Let us hear a defence from the member for Leichhardt as to why the power of ministerial direction is now being totally removed. The minister had the responsibility under our legislation to direct Telstra.

Mr Billson —They never used it.

Mr PRICE —It was always there, my good friend. You are not even going to have the opportunity to use it, you silly fool. You are denying yourself the opportunity to use that power.

I have always been interested in industry policy and, indeed, had a little bit to do with the communications industry policy that was adopted. I must say that communications and computers is the growth industry in the world. It outstrips tourism. Fundamental to the changes in deregulation in 1991 was the concept that both carriers would pull the smaller providers into the international markets; and that has worked successfully. We set a very ambitious target of $2 billion worth of goods and services in exports. My understanding is that we did not meet that, and I do not believe that it is a failure not to have met it. It was an ambitious target. But exports increased mightily.

Because this is a public corporation and because you have not put the safeguards in the legislation, the big loser is going to be the Australian industry. Increasingly, you are going to see Telstra wind down its research laboratories, which are of world class standard, and it will no longer be as focused on exports as it was required to be under our legislation. Inevitably, Telstra will buy overseas and off the shelf. We can say, `That's a good deal for consumers, isn't it? We might get some equipment cheaper.' That is probably right; it probably will be a bit cheaper. But we are denying ourselves the toehold that we currently have in the fastest growth industry in the world—not in Australia, but in the world—in which we have demonstrated, whether it is at the level of the large companies (Alcatel, Ericsson, Siemens; that size of company) or at the level of the smaller innovative companies (the J-Techs, et cetera), that we are world class players when it comes to design and production and that we have done very well indeed.

What you are doing is saying, `We want no more. This is not good for us. We forsake these industries; we forsake these jobs.' Regrettable as it may be that the current jobs are being lost, I fear most for our kids and their kids and their job prospects in this fastest growing industry, which is growing faster than tourism. It is interesting that the Minister for Sport and Tourism (Mr Andrew Thomson) is in the chamber because he often says, quite rightly, how important tourism is to Australia. The communications industry is equally important, and there are no safeguards in the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 1998 in relation to that. I think it is an absolute tragedy.

We will plot the demise of these industries from the day this legislation is given royal assent. I hope it never happens because I think it will be a tragedy. All the solid work—not so much that the previous government put in—that these firms put in, that Telstra and Optus put in, will come to nought. We will again no longer be the lucky country seizing opportunities as they present to us. We will be the careless country, avoiding the opportunity to seize and expand on an opportunity that has already been created.

I promised myself that I should report at least one letter I have received on this issue. It was from a constituent who said, `I note that the Prime Minister is so proud about the ordinary people of Australia becoming shareholders.' I have no difficulty with that proposition, and in fact I quite welcome it. But the constituent said in the letter to me, `If this is so important and such a high priority on the Prime Minister's mind, why doesn't he demutualise Telstra?'—that is, from the remaining two-thirds give to every Australian what they already have, man, woman and child. Instead of the indirect way all Australians currently own two-thirds, give them the shares. I would be particularly interested to listen to the learned and thoughtful member for Leichhardt to hear his reasoned arguments about why we should not demutualise. But I said I would put that on the record.

I want to finish on this point: we have not in our deregulations previously, or the government in their privatisations, got consumer issues right. There is no doubt that, if you look at the CoTs problem with Telstra, or at small business, medium sized business, ordinary householders and farmers dealing with such a large corporation, there is an issue of unequal power. I think now that we are completely privatising Telstra, we need to embrace the Ombudsman back as a public ombudsman but funded by the industry.

More particularly, I think there ought to be an annual licence renewal process whereby ordinary citizens of this country and their representatives can bring these large corpora tions to public account. We do not have that at the moment. Although we have Austel—the Australian Telecommunications Authority, as it now is—which I think does a particularly good job, we do not have that annual public accountability. As I said throughout my speech, I am surprised at how the backbench on the government side have allowed the Prime Minister and the executive to rush into the flush of full privatisation without giving any thought at all to the consequences for their own constituencies, immediately and in the longer term. I oppose the bill.