Mr STEPHEN SMITH (10:19 AM) —As the Minister for the Arts and the Centenary of Federation, Mr McGauran, correctly identified when he introduced this package of legislation—the Radiocommunications Legislation Amendment Bill 1999 and two associated bills—these are a series of `unrelated minor amendments which have been requested by the Australian Communications Authority (the ACA) and its predecessors, in consultation with the telecommunications industry and consumers'. These amendments are largely unrelated to each other. They are also essentially technical in nature. In this area, as in very many areas of communications, things which appear technical in nature may well have more substantive measures underneath them.

The opposition's view is that, whilst we are very happy for these measures to go through the House and through this Main Committee in a non-controversial way, we are in the process of consulting with the industry to satisfy ourselves and ensure that none of these proposed technical measures cause any difficulty. To give one illustration, the bill proposes to allow the ACA to control emissions to and from domestic and foreign space objects and there is a technical argument as to what the definition of a space object may be.

It is almost certainly the case that none of these issues will raise great controversial or contentious matters but, to ensure that they do not, in the other place this matter will be referred to the relevant Senate committee for inquiry. I would be most surprised if that inquiry was not resolved on the papers without the need for any form of public hearing or the like.

For the purposes of the debate here, we are happy to support the measures. They are technical in nature. Other than the one item I have referred to, we have not, at this stage, discovered any hidden bombs, so to speak, but we are reserving our rights to do so if consultation with the industry or evidence to the Senate select committee requires us to move any amendments, technical or otherwise. I have indicated this personally to the minister for the arts, who handles these matters in the House. I have also indicated the same to the office of the minister for communications to ensure the focus of the Senate committee's activities will be technical in nature rather than having people think there is some hidden agenda here. We support the measures in that context.