Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to provide some input on these deregulation bills. I would like to concentrate primarily on three aspects. The first regards preselection, which in some jurisdictions continues to be an important piece of the toolkit, but it was absolutely essential in Australia during the opening up of services based competition—when we ended the monopoly of the then telecommunications system. Along with other measures, such as number portability, it is universally recognised as one of those mandated items, aside from the access provisions of competition law that enable service providers to provide alternative offerings for consumers and open up service based competition—the idea eventually being that the ladder of competition would lead to infrastructure based competition.

Members may be interested in knowing there are various understandings of what preselection constitutes—preselection via override or, as we implemented it in Australia, preselection as was an intelligent network based system enabling service providers to override carriers of choice , which we called the 'single basket multiservice delivery mechanism'. It is still present in the commercial access agreements between carriers dealing with the interconnection arrangements of networks. Competition in fixed line services—and later the VOIP services and in particular for long-distance and international calls—really did lead to preselection declining as one of those tools that were essential for delivering competition.

Now that we have the bundling of whole services for local calls, long distance, overseas services and so forth, the importance of preselection as one of those tools in the kit has obviously declined. These provisions have been subject to adaptation over time, as consumer patterns, available offerings and technologies have changed. For example, I note that in 2012 the regulation for the mandatory preselection offering was amended and it is instructive I believe to turn to the summary that is on the department's website. The mandatory preselection offering was amended because it gave service providers greater flexibility in how they supply what is called the standard telephone service to customers using wireless and fibre technologies. I find the following a useful summary of the issue: the regulation—that is, the telecommunications consumer protection service standards characteristics for standard telephone service regulation of 2012—states: 'The regulation does this by removing the requirement to offer preselection on standard telephone services supplied by using wireless in specified circumstances, particularly on the interim wireless services in new developments pending the rollout of fixed line infrastructure and it removed the requirement to offer preselection on the STS offered on wholesale only open access fibre networks such as the NBN for three years pending a review of preselection. These changes recognise that preselection can add unnecessarily the service providers costs and reduce the flexibility in responding to consumer needs.'

As I mentioned, given the amount of time that has passed since the opening up of full competition in Australia, this issue of adding to service providers' costs really was, going back 15 or even 20 years ago, something that the market as a whole needed to absorb because all players needed to participate in the regime for preselection. Everyone participating in preselection enabled interconnection between networks. Although I do not think we are going to see one of those other very important elements in the mandate of number portability—be it in mobile number portability or local number portability—diminish in value, I think it is very reflective of the changing circumstances of competition to have these provisions subject to further deregulation. It does demonstrate that these proposed amendments are consistent with a shift in the utilisation of preselection in that toolkit of mandated requirements. The proposal in this bill is to limit the obligation to provide preselection to legacy networks only and for industry savings to be realised as a result.

I did discuss the standard telephone service and I want to touch on that again. At some point we are going to have to address the definition of the standard telephone service, a concept which underpins the operation of many provisions in telecommunications regulation, including preselection. The STS is defined in the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act. The definition of STS is four pages long. It comprises conceptual performance characteristics rather than being prescriptive. It talks about STS being used for the purpose of voice telephony. It gives an any-to-any test. It gives a relationship to universal service provision and the possibility of other characteristics to be determined by a legislative instrument.

Various industry groups rely on the definition of standard telephone service in order to form their own industry codes. For example, if you go to the industry code 2005 on preselection, you will see that the definition of standard telephone service is one which, frankly, the code has always struggled with in order to make this concept work for the industry. The ACMA definition of STS, which is on the ACMA website, is quite useful. It broadly defines the standard telephone service to mean the basic fixed telephone used to speak with people in other locations. The reason I raise this is that, whilst I support this element of deregulation in the act, I do believe that long term we can pick out elements of the regulatory regime which have become costly for a lesser benefit over time but which initially would have been absolutely essential to competition. In my view, we as a legislature are going to need to have a more robust prism to address some of the fundamental definitional issues. These are things that I raised some years ago—and I know that many in the industry raised—in terms of how we were to regulate in what we then called the era of next-generation networks. Well, we are there now. Whilst I support these provisions, I believe it would be most beneficial for us to address some of those issues of the standard telephone service definition.

I want to turn to the provisions regarding the Do Not Call Register. As a result of the proposals in this bill, we now have a proposal for indefinite registrations. This reflects changing community attitudes over time—which, I might add, were also reflected in corresponding changes identified when Labor was in government. I noted in my contribution on the broader Statute Law Revision Bill a couple of weeks ago that I had seen media reports—and again this is an interesting constructive issue that I would like to raise—about small business being more readily able to access the Do Not Call Register.

I would again note ACMA's own fact sheets about calls to business numbers. The definition relies on the distinction between a telephone number used for private or domestic purposes and a telephone used for business purposes. I have a useful fact sheet here that delineates and also gives instances where business numbers may be able to be added to the register. It says: 'In practice, where a number is used primarily for private or domestic purposes, it can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. It may depend on how the number is used. Even if the number is used for some business calls, it may still be eligible to be registered if its primary purpose is private or domestic. But in general if a number is registered under a business name it is less likely to be used primarily for private or domestic purposes.' For many small businesses, I would submit, that delineation is quite false in many circumstances. It would probably knock out many small businesses that have an ABN or an ACN and a corporation to whom the number has been issued. There are limited instances in which small businesses might be able to add themselves onto the register.

As I also noted in my previous contribution here, if we are talking about savings—and I noticed that at page 34 of the regulatory impact statement a saving of $3.4 million over 10 years is identified—eliminating or reducing interruptions to small businesses by unwanted telemarketing calls could greatly contribute to productivity. I mentioned in my previous contribution on this that my own electorate office has a number which used to belong to a small business and we still get very many telemarketing calls. Admittedly, a number of the calls are from overseas and it is very difficult to apply the Do Not Call Register provisions in that respect.

In the department's December 2013 discussion paper on the optimal period of registration on the Do Not Call Register, you can see the great shift in community attitudes. In 2007, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner identified that 27 per cent of people surveyed were annoyed by unsolicited telemarketing. In 2013 that figure had gone up to 45 per cent of people surveyed. The 2007 survey found that 23 per cent of people surveyed found unsolicited marketing to be 'a bit annoying but mostly harmless'. In 2013 that figure had decreased to 11 per cent. When you consider the impact of unwanted telemarketing on a business's day-to-day running, you can see why those community attitudes have changed.

The last thing I want to mention is in relation to part 9A of the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act, which deals with telephone sex services. These provisions were introduced under the Howard government in 1999. They detail the specific numbers that could be used for what is defined in the legislation as a telephone sex service. The rationale for removing these provisions in part 9A recognised that, with the evolution of other ways of accessing this type of content—be it through the internet or through other mechanisms—the use of telephone sex services has declined over time. In particular, I note the rationale is the declining number of complaints as well.

However, if this were examined in a human rights context, in terms of a statement of compatibility with human rights—in particular, looking at the rights of the child—I opine whether or not it would be prudent, whether or not these proposed changes are aimed at achieving a legitimate objective, and whether there is a rational connection between the limitation and that objective and whether or not that is proportionate. The reason I raise this is that part 9A was introduced to address community concerns that these types of services were too easily accessed by children and the deregulation may expose children to a risk of harm, which is currently minimised by the presence and the operation of part 9A. Personally, I think these provisions are outdated and they should go. In fact, in my past life one of my jobs was advising a couple of clients on whether or not they fell within this definition—and I can tell you that it was not always straightforward. So there are a couple of people in the industry who certainly will not be sorry to see some of these provisions go.

I will now go to the remaining aspects of the bill and the provisions regarding deregulatory measures in aspects such as the e-marketing code under part 6 of the Telecommunications Act, which enables the industry to devise codes and standards which are then registered with the ACMA and are then able to be enforced if they are not complied with. I believe the evidence shows that this is no longer necessary, because the Spam Act 2003 has been in operation for some time and has superseded the need for having this piece of industry input. Although you might consider that industry input and industry self-regulation would ultimately be preferable to having hard legislation, the reality is that the Spam Act has been working well to address those very issues which the e-marketing code provision was actually designed to do.

With those couple of comments, I welcome the further evolution of our telecommunications regulatory sector. Thank you for the opportunity.

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