Senator SCHACHT (10:44 AM) —On behalf of the opposition I rise to speak on the national transmission network legislation and to outline our very strong opposition to this legislation, which is the privatisation of the national transmission network in Australia. We have had a reasonable opportunity through the Senate legislative committee process to hear the evidence from the government to justify why this agency should be privatised. In the time given there was a lot of evidence received. Some of it, you might say, was from the usual suspects in favour of privatisation, as you would expect, while others expressed concern about it. The main concern that a lot of people raised was the lack of information provided by the government as to why the agency should be privatised and what the advantage was to the national interest in its privatisation.

The government itself could not answer those concerns other than, in our view, by stating an ideological position that it was a good idea to privatise for the sake of privatising. The government mentioned that when the agency was sold, the money would go to pay off public debt. When we asked for any idea of what the agency would bring when it was privatised, the government's Office of Asset Sales said, `Those are estimates we do not want to divulge because it could effect the price we receive.' But, even when asked for a broad range of figures, they still would not give them to us. We even offered to have in camera briefings of the committee to find out that information. Again, that was not forthcoming.

Other people have speculated that the agency may bring $200 million, $180 million or $250 million. That is not a large amount of money, and its contribution to paying off public debt will be minuscule indeed. The savings on the interest at the present bond rate of about six per cent would be only a few million dollars at the very most. Compare that to maintaining in public ownership what is a national asset. The community, through various governments of the day, including previous coalition governments and Labor governments, has invested many hundreds of millions of dollars to build a national network right across Australia with something like 1,500 transmitters and translators available for our national broadcasters—the ABC and the SBS—and, where appropriate, for commercial broadcasting services and community broadcasting services.

This is a national infrastructure. The government should be assisting in the provision of services to all the community on an equitable basis. A commercial sector would never have built a national transmission agency with a national infrastructure, providing a service to all Australians wherever they live. You would have got them building transmitters in each of the capital cities, but you would not have got them building transmitters and translators out in the rural and regional areas of Australia. Both governments—Labor and Liberal—have, in the past, made that contribution.

Yet, for some reason, out of the blue, this government, without justification, has decided to privatise. There is no demand in the community that this agency should be sold off. It is not being sold off because it was not performing or there was a deficiency in its performance, or because the Australian public said, `The National Transmission Agency is useless; let's get rid of it.' No arguments like that came from anywhere. One might say, `Well, a lot of people in Australia may not be aware that there even is a National Transmission Agency in existence.' I think many people probably believe that the transmitters and translators that the ABC and SBS use are actually owned by the ABC and SBS and do not understand that there is a separate, dedicated, corporatised agency providing that service.

But, nevertheless, even if they did believe that the ABC and SBS owned the transmitters and they were not performing properly, there would still be issues raised at the political level, at the parliamentary level, that this service was not up to scratch and ought to be changed—that something should be done about it. There was no justification given in the hearings by the government that the National Transmission Agency was inefficient and not performing. In fact, the evidence was to the contrary. Even Mr Hutchinson from the Office of Asset Sales agreed—and the government, DoCA and the finance department agreed—that there had been a substantial improvement in efficiency in the National Transmission Agency since the early 1990s, since it was given a new structure and administrative arrangements under legislation introduced by the previous Labor government. Those estimates are in the report. It is not disputed that there was a 40 per cent improvement in the efficiency and the productivity of this agency in public ownership.

If any organisation, public or private, had a 40 per cent improvement in half a decade in the delivery of service, you would give it a big tick. But why would you want to sell it? The only reason is that this government sees it as an ideological position that they want to support. I think it is also part of their view that selling the National Transmission Agency also justifies the ideological position that they took over the major privatisation issue of Telstra.

It is no surprise that the Labor members of the committee—Senator Lundy and I—have put in a minority report which opposes privatisation. I also note that the minority report of Senator Lyn Allison of the Democrats is along similar lines to the Labor Party's submission in that it opposes the privatisation. Again, we and the Democrats have a similar view.

I want deal with three or four of the major issues from our minority report that did come forward in the hearing, even though the hearing was short. Quite rightly, we did not object to this matter going to a legislative committee. First of all, I want to deal with the community service obligation. It is clear from this legislation that it is a big ask for the Australian people to believe that the community service obligations in this proposal are going to be substantive enough to guarantee that in the future the National Transmission Agency, or whoever buys it, will provide services, particularly to non-metropolitan Australia. Service may be provided for five years while the ABC and SBS have to continue to use the privatised National Transmission Agency. But after that five years is up, it is really buying a very big pig in the poke in terms of what is going to happen to the provision of these services in regional Australia.

What has been occurring in the administration of the National Transmission Agency is a natural and proper cross-subsidisation. The administration costs of the provision of services to the regional areas of Australia has in effect been subsidised by having a national agency. There is no doubt that a private operator will start getting into full cost recovery, and that means that in the bush, after the five years are up, operators, whether it is the ABC or the SBS, will start being charged differently. The ABC and the SBS could then say, `Well, we are off. We are not going to have a contract with you mob. We will go and maybe provide our own transmitter or do a deal with somebody else.' What that then means is that a national infrastructure is shredded or broken up into different parts, which means a different level of service to different parts of Australia. That is the logical conclusion of selling the National Transmission Agency.

We do not believe the legislation in any way guarantees appropriate community service obligations. We do not believe that there is a mechanism in this legislation to ensure that the higher cost of providing a transmission facility in the rural and regional areas of Australia is adequately dealt with. The minister will get up and proclaim that it is and will say, `Trust us. It will be okay in the future.' People in regional Australia no longer take those promises about the provision of services—the promise of `Trust us. The service will stay the same'—from any government. They have seen too many examples, both in the public and the private sector, that services to regional and rural Australia are the first to suffer when you put in full cost recovery.

I also want to point out some other issues of national interest. In our report we comment on the submission from the Friends of the ABC. I know this government thinks that the Friends of the ABC is a bunch of left-wing radicals whose aim is to carry out a political campaign against this government. The Friends of the ABC is actually one of the most moderate organisations of people I have met. They are overwhelmingly Liberal voters. When you meet the Friends of the ABC you are not meeting a left-wing branch of the Labor Party; you are meeting upper middle-class, middle-aged woman and men—overwhelmingly women—who are concerned about maintaining the ABC. The Friends of the ABC are not what this government might choose to call left-wing suspects, et cetera. They are overwhelmingly supporters of the coalition and have been historically for a long time.

They raised their concern on the national interest that in the long run these facilities may well be fully controlled by some foreign interest. Having your national transmission facilities run by somebody from another country is an issue. You do not want to be xenophobic about it, but it is an issue that in the national interest this ought to be controlled by Australians, because it is a national structure of communication across the nation. It is the fabric which keeps the nation together. Providing this communication, we can ensure that a government announcement in a time of emergency is distributed right across Australia. Again, the government might say, `Under the Defence Act we can in times of emergency call on those powers to get our message across,' and so on. But I think this goes wider on a day-to-day basis. This is an instrumentality which does provide, under Australian ownership, an infrastructure that is important to all Australians.

I now come to an area where I think the government is really asking us to buy the very biggest pig in a poke. It is the so-called compact between the government and the ABC and SBS regarding future funding for transmission. When this bill was being discussed before the committee, we asked the government, `Have you reached agreement with the ABC and SBS on how much money you will provide to them over the next five years to pay for the transmission costs when you are forcing the ABC and SBS to buy those services from a privatised national transmission agency?' The government could not give us any information that an agreement had been reached. When we asked the ABC and SBS, when they turned up, still all we could get was, `Well, discussions are proceeding.' If the government cannot, here in the second reading debate or in the committee stage, outline to the Senate what is the actual financial commitment that the government has given for the next five years to the ABC and SBS to cover the costs of transmission, it really will be an awful outcome. Once the agency is sold and the ABC and SBS have not got a contractual arrangement locked away that the money will be made available, the government can do what it likes to the ABC and SBS and can cut the transmission funding.

Normally you might not be too worried that a government in good faith and goodwill will reach an agreement, but you would not trust the this government as far as you could throw it in its dealings with the ABC. This very morning the minister for communications, Senator Alston, is not here debating this bill. Guess where he is? He has gone up to the ABC board meeting in Sydney to beat them around the head over allegations of bias against the coalition and to demand changes within the ABC on programming to overcome the minister's so-called concern on bias. The minister is there abusing the ABC this morning, not down here explaining to us how much money has been committed by the government to the ABC and SBS to pay for the transmission costs.

At the very least, the government should have the ethics and the morality to come in here and say, `Yes, we have reached agreement with the ABC and SBS. We are going to provide them with $120 million per annum for X number of years,' or whatever the figure is; and the same for the SBS. It has now been several months since this bill was before the committee. As far as I am aware—I stand to be corrected—no agreement has been reached. I trust Senator Brownhill, the parliamentary secretary at the table, and I ask his advisers from the department, `Have we reached agreement with the ABC and SBS? Has there been an announcement made? If there has been agreement reached, why has it not been made public before the second reading stage of this bill has taken place?' If it has been made public and I have missed it, I apologise, but I do not think it has been reached.

Perhaps I am being too harsh on Senator Alston. Perhaps he has gone to the ABC board this morning to say, `By the way, I can tell you that this is what we have reached agreement on and I'm signing off with you here today. We are going to provide you with an appropriate amount of money for the transmission costs of the ABC and SBS.' I have to say, in view of this minister's track record, that that is a very big ask indeed.

The next issue, about why this agency should not be privatised, is: irrespective of the running costs of the National Transmission Agency that the ABC and SBS have to pay, what money is available for the digitisation program? We in the opposition believe you cannot divorce the cost of the digitisation program now that it has been put on the table by the government in another bill on the digital program for introducing digital television and digital radio to Australia. In the budget, this mean-spirited, mealy-mouthed government promised the ABC $20 million and then said, `If you are good and if we like what you do in your programming, we may give you some more.'

It is blatant blackmail by this government to intimidate the ABC as we lead up to the next election. Never before has a coalition government acted in such a disgraceful way as this minister has, egged on by the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) and the Treasurer (Mr Costello). It is blackmail of the ABC to say, `We will give you $20 million now. Sell all your other property and introduce full outsourcing of programming, and then we may give you some more money for the digitalisation of the ABC for its equipment.' We all know that, early next century, if the ABC's equipment is not digitalised it will go out of existence as a national broadcaster. That is exactly what this minister and this Prime Minister want to happen to the ABC—to destroy it as a broad based national broadcaster, independent of government, providing factual and broad ranging views to the Australian people.

It is ironic that, today, this bill for the privatisation of the National Transmission Agency and its major impact on the ABC are being debated when the minister himself is at the ABC board, up there abusing them, accusing them of bias—

Senator Brownhill —Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. To make accusations about people doing things when the opposition do not even have a clue what is happening up there at the moment is absolutely out of order.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Murphy) —There is no point of order.

Senator SCHACHT —I say to the parliamentary secretary, Senator Brownhill, that we know the minister is up there accusing them of bias because that is what he said on the public record. He said it in this place in the last two weeks. He said himself, on the public record, that the ABC is biased in the covering of a number of national issues and, `We don't like your coverage.' He accused the ABC of bias first, then wrote a letter to the chief executive of the ABC demanding a response to his allegations of bias. He should have at least written first if he had concerns and, before he made the allegations and charges and public abuse, then made some comment. He did it round the other way.

We know what he is there for. He said it himself. He is going to raise these issues of what he sees as bias. It is intimidation and this sale of the National Transmission Agency is another way in which this government is aiming to destroy the ABC as a national broadcaster in this country. That is why, above all else, we will never vote for the sale of the National Transmission Agency. We believe it is a very important national infrastructure that all Australians would support. I commend to the Senate the opposition's minority report and hope that the Senate has the good sense to defeat this bill in the second reading. (Time expired)