Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am deeply concerned by the behaviour of Telstra and its decision to announce the closure of its Grafton call centre. It is a call centre that responds in Australia with Australian employees to help business—it is a business call centre. It enjoys a wonderful reputation for being very responsive and very helpful to the business community. The call centre is part of Telstra Business, as it is called, and this behaviour is not in accord with what I expect and what regional Australia expects, and there are three particular reasons that this galls me even more.

The first reason is that, when we first heard about this closure from Telstra, it said it was consolidating call centres and that the 108 employees in Grafton, in the Clarence Valley, would be consolidated and offered redeployment to Brisbane and Melbourne. So it was not only that they were taking jobs away from us but also that they were consolidating them to the major cities. Nobody anywhere, whether it be in the regions or the major cities, wants to lose their job, but if they are losing a job in regional Australia, country Australia, it is even more difficult to find another one. There may be far more scope to find jobs in the major cities.

The behaviour of Telstra is not what I expect. It is a major corporation. It makes big profits out of all of us. It makes big profits out of regional and rural Australia. I expect it to give some loyalty to regional and rural Australia, and keep the call centre there. Call centres can operate absolutely anywhere—that is the beauty of them. They do provide jobs in regional and rural Australia; they can provide new jobs in rural and regional Australia. People are asking if we are sure they are going to Brisbane and Melbourne; are we sure they are not going offshore. That is what some people feel too—that the jobs will not be consolidated to Brisbane and Melbourne but will go overseas. We do not want them to go to the cities, but some say that at least the jobs would still be in Australia. People are deeply concerned that these jobs are being sent offshore.

So the first thing that galls me is moving jobs to the major cities, and the second is that Telstra’s rationale is that it is going to cut jobs to improve service. That is absolute bunkum; it is nonsense.

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