Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are here today to deal with amendments moved by the government to its own Do Not Call Register Legislation Amendment Bill 2009, introduced last year. There are a number of aspects to the amendment bill, and I will deal with them sequentially.

Last year the government introduced legislation to extend the Do Not Call Register to business, government, fax and emergency service numbers. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy had announced with great fanfare what a reform it would be to extend the current register—which, as we all know, was introduced by the previous government and has been an enormous success: more than four million people have registered their residential home numbers. At the time of its introduction, the register was restricted to residential home numbers. There was not, quite deliberately, an extension to business in particular.

We have made it clear throughout this year that extending the register at this point to fax and emergency service numbers is something we would support. However, we shouted loudly from the rooftops that the extension of the register to government and business, and particularly to business, whilst simplistically well intentioned—as so many things from the government are—was unworkable in a policy implementation sense. The simple reason it was unworkable is that the legislation did not and could not adequately distinguish between a telemarketing call and a normal, day-to-day, commercial business telephone call. I made that very clear earlier this year with my friend and colleague the member for Dunkley, the shadow minister for small business. You would have had a situation where small businesses in particular, before they made a commercial call, would have had to check whether the business they were calling was on the Do Not Call Register if they did not have a pre-existing relationship.

The Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Legislation Committee conducted an inquiry into this bill—and I want to pay tribute to my coalition colleagues on that Senate inquiry—and the evidence they heard from business groups, small businesses and big businesses was that this extension was utterly unworkable, and the committee reported to that effect. For many weeks the minister’s response was silence. Clearly, what has occurred is that there was belated recognition that this policy, this announcement in last year’s budget, this promise from the Labor Party, was not workable but no-one was prepared to admit it straightaway.

Then, on Friday, 30 April, the minister made an announcement with respect to the registration period for the Do Not Call Register as it currently applies to residential phone numbers. He announced that he would be introducing amendments to his Do Not Call Register amendment bill to extend the registration period, by regulation, from three years out to five years, initially.

Provided the House and the Senate deal with this matter in the next couple of days, the effect of this will be that the registration period of three years—which, for many people, expires naturally on the third anniversary of the introduction of the register at the end of May—will be extended and everyone will have a five-year period.

In that press release, the minister also, as quietly as he could, announced that at this stage the government was not intending to proceed with the extension of the Do Not Call Register to business—a belated recognition of the foolhardiness of his original announcement. They are still proposing to extend the register to government. We make the point that that will still harm small businesses in a very commercial sense, not in a telemarketing sense, in seeking to get contracts from government and the like. Obviously, we support extending the register to five years and we have made that point in the public arena. We welcome the fact that the minister has backed down on his extension to business telephone numbers. We note that he says he is going to keep consulting to try to work out how to introduce it, or words to that effect. We would encourage him simply to admit failure on this and to move on.

When the minister announced that the government would not proceed with the proposal to extend the register to include business numbers, like so many announcements it was made on a Friday, on 30 April. There are some cynics in the press gallery who claim that the government likes to make announcements when they do not think they will get attention if there are going to be backdowns or admissions of failure. That was the immediate suspicion on this Friday and it was confirmed to many people when they went to the departmental website to look at the fact sheets because they noted immediately that the backflip and the date of the announcement was actually one week earlier, 23 April. Clearly, the Friday backdown had been planned for a week earlier, not proceeded with, but delayed an entire week just to try to avoid the scrutiny and humiliation of admitting failure on the extension to business.

Our approach is to seek to facilitate, as fast as possible, the amendment to extend that registration period, as the minister has announced. He has announced that he intends to make this five years by disallowable instrument. I say here in this House that, as a matter of principle, the five-year extension should be part of the legislation so that the parliament decides. Last time, the parliament decided on an initial three-year period and the extension could be very easily and sensibly part of the legislation. The minister has said that he is going to do that by legislative instrument, which will mean that future ministers will have the discretion on how long the registration period should be. We think this legislation should contain an amendment and that the parliament can examine it in the future. Because we want to facilitate the quick passage of this legislation, we will do two things. Firstly, we will  take the minister at his word that he is going to bring in a regulation for five years.

Having made the point about it being a matter of principle, it would be preferable that the legislation was amended and that this was done in the legislation rather than by regulation. We will not seek here today to try to force that amendment. I call on the minister to make it part of the legislation but, at the end of the day, we will support the provisions of this amendment which, of course, take away the government’s unworkable extension to business and extend the registration period for residential numbers.

We have had good discussions among the whips in terms of the practicalities at what is a very busy time for the House and the Senate. On that basis, I have agreed to restrict my remarks and I am very grateful to those members of the coalition who have also agreed to restrict their remarks so that we can deal with this matter today. I call on the minister to consider what has been said and for him to back down entirely on his extension to business, which, he knows and the government know, will never see the light of day. The consultation for an extra few months is really just a mirage to try to deflect attention from the fact that this is unworkable, that it will not be proceeded with and that, if it were proceeded with, it would cause huge chaos in the business community.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure there are many of us here who have experienced telemarketers calling or at least know someone who has. We hear the stories of how annoying telemarketing companies call your home just on dinnertime or just when you are putting the kids to bed or the baby in the bath. We might be familiar with some of the comebacks that people have used to try to get these pesky telemarketers not to call again, such as the one where you repeat everything they say and, when they ask why you are doing that, you say you are training to be a telemarketer. There is the other one where you say: ‘Hold on. Could you speak a little slowly? I need to write all of these things down.’ I could have fun with this topic all day. I speak in support of the Do Not Call Register Legislation Amendment Bill 2009, and I point out that there are some very serious sides to this subject.

The bill amends the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 to enable the registration of all Australian telephone and fax numbers, including emergency service numbers. The bill introduces regulation of unsolicited fax marketing by prohibiting the sending of a marketing fax to a number on the Do Not Call Register. The Do Not Call Register, as first introduced, did not protect fax users. While business numbers are now subject to further consultation, that is an important area that we still need to pursue. Also, it did not include emergency services organisations.

It has been a particular concern of the government that unwanted and unsolicited calls and faxes are wasting valuable business resources and could potentially affect the operation of emergency service organisations. So those annoying telemarketing and similar phone calls that some of us can often brush off with clever comebacks can actually affect, for example, the performance of small business. Contrary to the contribution of the shadow spokesperson on communications, these are issues that we genuinely need to talk about with respect to small businesses and how we can assist them in stopping unwanted telephone calls that affect their business.

During public consultation undertaken by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, submissions noted the impact of unsolicited telemarketing and fax marketing on businesses—particularly small businesses—through the loss of time, toner and paper and productivity. Also during this consultation there were good indications that approximately 86 per cent of respondents supported the extension of the register to all telephone and fax numbers.

In my beautiful electorate of Dobell on the New South Wales Central Coast, I am sure there has been many a telemarketing call made to individuals and small businesses. Small businesses are what make the Central Coast economy tick. It is important that we continue to look at this issue in relation to small business. Receiving unwanted and unsolicited phone calls could be most unwelcome and unproductive for businesses. You can imagine what a takeaway shop owner would feel like if a telemarketing call came through during the peak time of lunch, when they were trying to serve people and conduct their business, or what a flower shop operator on Valentine’s Day would feel if they were receiving calls from a telemarketer on something in which they had no interest. So we really do need to look at this and make sure that it is addressed properly.

The Do Not Call Register Act 2006 was introduced in May 2007 to enable individuals to opt out of receiving unsolicited telemarketing calls by listing their fixed line or mobile numbers—used primarily for private or domestic purposes—on the Do Not Call Register. In response to concerns raised about restrictions on the types of numbers that could be listed on the register, a departmental discussion paper was released on 15 August 2008 seeking community views on whether all telephone and fax numbers should be eligible for inclusion on the register. As I have outlined, submissions to the discussion paper indicated that the majority of respondents supported the inclusion of all telephone and fax numbers. The submissions to the discussion paper and representations made directly to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy indicated that businesses, particularly small businesses, would like to be able to receive the protections available under the register. In addition, the Emergency Call Service Advisory Committee raised concerns over the potential for telemarketing calls to adversely affect the operations of emergency service organisations and their ability to respond to genuine emergency calls.

The bill amends the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 to enable the registration of fax numbers and particular emergency service numbers. The extension of the register to these Australian numbers avoids uncertainty by consumers or the telemarketing and fax marketing industries about who is eligible and avoids the need for complicated eligibility requirements. The bill provides all new registrants with the option to choose specific industry classifications that they wish to receive calls and faxes about. Marketers will be able to access these choices when they check their contact lists against the register and will be able to make a telemarketing call or send a marketing fax if it relates to an activity covered by an industry classification about which a registrant has chosen to receive calls or faxes. This mechanism has the benefit of allowing registrants to adapt their registration to their needs by selecting calls and faxes that are wanted and relevant. This will be of particular benefit to making sure that types of calls and faxes received are ones that you actually want to receive and do not affect your business or cause an imposition in unwanted telephone calls or faxes.

The default position will continue to be that registrants opt out of all telemarketing calls and marketing faxes. A registrant will be able to take positive action to opt in to receive certain types of marketing calls and marketing faxes. It is proposed that the amendments will apply to all registrants, extending the options currently available to consumers. In addition, this will provide more opportunities for telemarketers and fax marketers to call numbers on the register and potentially target their calls more effectively to interested recipients.

In addition, the Australian Communications and Media Authority will have the ability to make a legislative instrument setting out the circumstances in which consent can be inferred to make a telemarketing call or to send a marketing fax to a number that is on the register. A number of consequential amendments will also be made to the Telecommunications Act 1997. One of these will be to give the ACMA the power to make an industry standard relating to the fax marketing industry. There are time constraints in relation to this bill so that we can get it through. It is important that this bill can pass and the process can be amended as quickly as possible. I have never had the chance myself to use one of those smart answers to a telemarketer, but I am sure that the changes to the Do Not Call Register will mean that people who do not want to receive those calls will not have to have those smart answers in the future because they will be able to ensure that they do not receive faxes or phone calls that they do not want. I commend the bill to the House.

Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise in support of the Do Not Call Register Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 and to put a few thoughts on record about how it can be improved into the future. From my perspective this is a simple and practical move to allow individuals to have restrictions on who rings them or who gets in touch with them via fax machine. For something so simple and so practical to be so hard and to have such tangled outcomes says a lot about the broader political processes in Australia today and how it is at times so difficult to weave good policy out of the vested interests that get their claws into the process.

This register is certainly, from a consumer’s point of view, one that would be broadly agreed upon and supported. That is why, I suspect, the discussion paper in 2008 from a new government was undertaken following the actions of a previous government to introduce the very concept of a do-not-call register. I therefore assume—and I may be wrong—that there is general bipartisanship from both sides of this chamber about expanding the bill and seeing a continuation of the concept of the register. This bill is expanding the numbers that can be registered to include businesses and emergency numbers. I understand there have been some concerns in the emergency services sector that calls to 000 were in a sense wasting time that should be devoted to emergency calls. That is, therefore, an eminently sensible change to allow emergency numbers to be included on the register. Likewise, a common complaint from the very large small business sector on the mid-North Coast is as simple as the amount of fax paper that is used through telemarketing and fax marketing being a waste and a cost. When I talk about small business I talk about the genuine five-employees-or-fewer family based businesses where costs of ink cartridges matter and are watched on a daily basis with regard to how they are managed. It is an eminently sensible move to include small businesses and businesses generally in their ability to be on the Do Not Call Register.

I talk about the tangled web we weave, however. I did note the shadow minister’s comments with regard to the three years or the five years issue. I do find it a very strange outcome that we have legislation before this House which is not truly reflective of what the practical outcome will be in its implementation. The dispute of three years versus five years and the hot debate of the topic of the use of disallowable instruments versus presentation of the full legislative package before us I think are unfortunate.

Likewise I make mention of the exemptions. The irony will not be lost on anyone in community that feature pieces of the exemptions are political candidates and political parties. For members of parliament and for other members of political organisations there is hopefully a deep sense of irony about us all wanting to be the consumers’ friends by allowing people freedom of choice about who does or does not get in contact with them but wanting those involved in the political process to be allowed to annoy people as much as we want. I do see some irony there. I would have put up an amendment to the amendment. However, I do note there is still ongoing a review of the scheme looking at those exemptions for charities and political parties. The surveys clearly show that people are still frustrated by those phone calls that they receive even when they are on the Do Not Call Register.

As a local example, the night before the by-election in the seat of Lyne the entire electorate of Lyne received an American style campaigning answering machine message from the previous member, causing enormous confusion—and, if anything, assisting my campaign. However, it was seen as intrusive. It was, in an electorate with a high elderly demographic, the cause of confusion. It did lead to a great deal of frustration for many people who felt their privacy was being invaded by the political process. That is something for consideration, for the future actions of everyone involved in the political process. It would be nice if we could empower people in a formal sense through the Do Not Call Register to include political parties and political organisations so that people do have that choice of whether they do want answering machine messages played down their phones the night before elections or by-elections.

I certainly support this legislation. It is important. I would support the five-year expansion. I hope that disallowable instrument is brought in. I do raise one issue that may be dealt with in the detail of the legislation. That is the issue of the financial implications and the $4.7 million being allocated over four years, with $3.5 million of that to be recouped from telemarketing and fax marketing industry groups through the paying of fees to access the register. I would hope we have strict guidelines, controls and monitoring by ACMA and anyone else necessary over the use and potential misuse of those lists that are being accessed through the paying of a fee.

If there is a contract in place, where someone is buying something from government and buying a list which is a do-not-call register, I would hope there are very strict guidelines around the use of that list—for example the on-selling of that list for other purposes; or the use of that list for targeted mail, compared to the use of telephones or fax machines. I would welcome feedback from the minister or parliamentary secretary, or whoever is going to respond, on that question of how tight the rules and regulations are for the telemarketing and fax marketing companies who are actually purchasing, in a sense, a do-not-call register list, and what they can then do with that list once they have paid for and then have autonomy over the use and potential misuse of that list. I would hope the guidelines around that are strict and that there is a genuine commitment to privacy through the intent of this legislation and the creation and expansion of the Do Not Call Register.

Other than that, it is good legislation and I look forward to its implementation and a wide uptake from the community. It is a opt-in exercise, so people do have to commit to getting their own numbers on the list—and on the mid-north coast, I strongly encourage that. I know there has been uptake over the last couple of years, and the more people who feel empowered through that process, the better; and the better our democracy is as a consequence.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Do Not Call Register Legislation Amendment Bill 2009. It was interesting to listen to the member for Lyne talk about many of the same things I am now going to. It is good to see there is widespread concern in the community. This bill makes important and useful changes to the existing Do Not Call Register Act 2006. It also contains consequential amendments to the Telecommunications Act 1997 in relation to fax marketing.

Many people contact my office in relation to unwanted marketing and other junk calls and the existing Do Not Call Register is a very useful service. Although it only applies to private and residential phone lines at present, the number of people who contact my office about what I call junk calls—calls that they do not want—is enormous. And many of them actually do not know of the service, so it is always good to be able to direct them to it. Most people who are referred to the Do Not Call Register are satisfied with the drop off in marketing calls, although I still receive regular reports of rogue operators ignoring the restriction. Rogue operators seem to be more prevalent from overseas call centres, particularly India, who do not always follow the restrictions we have on that form of contact here, and that is something that needs to be addressed in the future.

The existing Do Not Call Register Act has a registration period of three years for a residential or private phone number. There are now more than four million fixed line and mobile phone numbers registered on the Do Not Call Register as more and more people have become aware of the benefits. As other members have said in this debate, there is nothing worse than being annoyed by a junk phone call when you are at home with the family, trying to get inner ready, trying to put the kids to bed—or, even as I have had happened to me, walking in the door with several bags of shopping and trying to get the door open, having the phone ring, dropping everything and running in to find out it is someone I have never heard of before selling a product I do not want.

As the Do Not Call Register will reach its third anniversary at the end of this month—that is, May—many people who registered in 2007 are at risk of dropping off the Do Not Call Register unless they reregister their telephone number. One of the intentions of this bill before the House is to change that. Up until now more than 40 per cent of people who had registered in 2007, at the start of the scheme, had reregistered as at the end of April, but that leaves the other 60 per cent to find out that they have dropped off the list when they start getting calls again.

A provision of this amendment bill is to provide the minister with the power to make a determination to set the period of registration. It is intended that the initial determination will extend the registration period from three years to five years. Of course, those people who registered three years ago will now not be put in that position where they suddenly get those unwanted calls out of the blue, as it were. Importantly, this will also apply to those who are already on the Do Not Call Register, with the effect that phone customers who would have dropped off the register at the end of this month will now have another two years of less interrupted dinner times. I think everyone should be happy about that. And if this does not go through in time, by 31 May, there is also provision to reinstate any registrations that have already expired.

This bill also contains an extension of the scope of the Do Not Call Register to cover emergency service and government telephone numbers. When the bill was first put before the House last year it also had an exemption for businesses, which I understand is now not to be included due to opposition concerns. Having said that, I have had many small businesses contact me about telemarketing calls, about unwanted junk calls and about faxes. This has been particularly from microbusinesses, one or two person businesses, who have to have a fax—an essential tool for all businesses—but who do not like the expense or the wasted time, again, in getting information about things they do not want. This change, in relation to emergency services particularly, will remove the potential that unwanted marketing calls may have of affecting the operation of emergency service organisations.

This bill also contains provisions that will allow for all fax numbers to be registered on the do-not-call register. That does include businesses. So individuals, businesses, community and volunteer organisation will all be able to register their fax numbers so as they no longer receive piles of what I like to call junk faxes—what other people might call marketing faxes. It is bad enough receiving spurious information that has not been asked for but it is even worse when it comes at a cost to a household, small business or community organisation’s budget. There is the cost of paper that, in most cases, goes unread into the bin. Then there is the cost of ink cartridges or toner. Even a few faxes per day will soon cause an inkjet fax machine to run dry and that is when the cost hits home. If you wander down to your local Officeworks store or other supplier to buy an ink cartridge you find that they start at about $20, and that depends on the brand and type of fax machine that you have. They are very small. They do not last long; they get used up quickly. If you have a laser fax machine you need toner. Toner starts at about $100 and goes up from there. Again, you are paying for things that you did not want to print in the first place.

That is bad enough for a small business; it can be far worse for a volunteer organisation. In many cases they run on the smell of an oily rag and those dollars can be better spent in other areas. The other problem is that many volunteer and community organisations use what we would call old fax machines. The modern fax machines that most of us use have memories; they can do more than one thing at a time. But if you have an old version of a fax machine you might find that if it is receiving you cannot use it to send. So if you are receiving a junk fax you have to wait until it is finished before you can do your own work. That is very unfair.

There are not many forms of unwanted advertising that make the recipient pay directly for it but the sending of junk faxes is most certainly one of them. The only thing I can compare it to is spam email, because you are probably paying in terms of download. So if you are paying per megabyte or gigabyte you may be paying for some of those spam emails. The difference is that you can filter them or redirect them. You can get rid of most of them. You cannot do that with a fax, at the moment.

I may, as an example, run through a list of junk faxes that have come through my home fax machine over the recent period. It is a fax machine I have had for years; it sits on an unlisted number—that is, it is a silent line—but the faxes keep rolling in. They are many and varied but they are not useful to me. They are not about information I have asked for; they are always about something else—some rubbish. They include an advertisement for floating massages on Port Phillip Bay, another for the same but on Sydney Harbour, and faxes advertising dubious-sounding diplomas—at only one eleventh of the price of others! There are also faxes advertising holidays in Bali for dolphin watching and holidays in Thailand. There have even been faxes offering to list my fax number, for a fee of $38.50, so that I can receive even more junk faxes.

Then we have faxes advertising solar panels and home and office carpet cleaning. And there seem to be lots of faxes about laptop computers. There are faxes for go-kart racing, clothes sales, more cut price laptops and cheap restaurant meals. None of these have anything to do with the business that I have been in or am in. Certainly I have never asked to receive any of them. And of course there are ads for printer and fax ink cartridges, which I find quite ironic seeing those very ads use up the ink in the fax machine.

There are businesses that do this for a business: they sell other lists of supposed contact numbers so that people can send out yet more faxes. But I think that the fax that really took the cake was the one that was sent to me saying that I could send out my own junk faxes to 10,000 people if I pay an organisation $750 for their list and services. It would become almost endless if it went on that way. If the bill that we have before us at the moment goes through it will have the effect of allowing people to opt out of that. If they want to keep receiving such faxes that is fine, they do not have to do anything, but if they are overwhelmed by them—and I know many are—there will now be something to do about it.

The list of advertising faxes can go on but I think my point is made. Many small businesses, community organisations and households do not want faxes. Nor should they have to have them. Each one of these received faxes comes at a cost to the recipient, and their numbers are growing. This bill will provide relief from junk faxes and I am certain that it will be very popular with anyone who has ever been flooded with them. You may call it what you like but if it is not going to be used or read, to me it is junk.

The extension of the registration period to five years is also a great improvement and I am sure will be welcomed by all those who have already chosen to register their numbers on the Do Not Call register. I suspect it will also give a bit of impetus and a bit of an advertising kick to the register so that more people take advantage of it and use it for their phone services. I commend this bill to the House.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When it comes to the use of communications networks there is inevitably a balance to be struck between the convenience of being accessible to all—being able to call anybody that you like and equally being available to be called by anybody you like—and the issues that that involves in terms of exposing yourself to being available to be called by those who you may not wish to hear from.

Those issues—that are difficult to balance up—were addressed by the Howard government when then communications minister, Senator Coonan, brought forward the Do Not Call Register legislation. That introduced effective protection against consumers being interrupted in their own homes by marketing calls that they did not wish to receive. What we have seen with this bill is a rather poorly-thought-through suggestion that the same mechanism ought to be extended to business.

It is a policy intent which has been justified, unfortunately, in a rather anecdotal and emotive fashion, and without much careful and sober analysis. When you think about it, businesses are in a very different position to households. Businesses, by definition, succeed on the basis of selling and marketing their services. Therefore, it is very important that businesses have available to them the capacity to market their services. Indeed, what businesses do on a regular, daily basis as part of their core activity is communicate with each other, very often by telephone. This proposed provision to extend the operation of the Do Not Call Register to business would, if it were to proceed, have significant adverse consequences on commerce as it is carried out on a daily basis, and would do very substantial harm to many businesses.

This, unfortunately, is a fact that did not appear to have been thought about when the Rudd government decided that it would extend the application of the Do Not Call Register to businesses. The usual nanny state instinct to regulate first and think later seemed to kick in, and it is unfortunate that it was necessary for there to be quite an extensive campaign by concerned business organisations to highlight the serious adverse effects of this ill-thought-through extension of the application of the Do Not Call Register.

A substantive piece of work was commissioned from Access Economics by the Australian Direct Marketing Association. Access Economics sought to quantify in an analytical fashion the costs and benefits of the proposed extension of the Do Not Call Register. It found that it would impose some quite significant costs on all businesses including, for example, the decline in the efficiency of sales and marketing activities and the flow-through loss of revenue. Certainly, it also quantified the loss of productivity that businesses experience when they receive unwanted calls, but it made the point that this needs to be thought of in its totality. If you say to businesses, ‘You will have a significant proportion of your target business market removed from you,’ that is a material cost which needs to be weighed up against the purported benefit.

It is very clear when you analyse the position of businesses that they are in a quite different position to the position of consumers, and the proposed extension of the Do Not Call Register to businesses was not well thought through. Analysis shows that a much better position would be to say, ‘Let us not extend the Do Not Call Register to businesses; let us recognise that when you go into business you engage in the activity of selling and marketing to others and it is a perfectly reasonable part of the bargain that you are also available to be marketed to.’ It is significant that many businesses have come forward to raise precisely that concern.

We do consider it most unfortunate that the Rudd government was proposing an extension of yet another piece of interventionist regulation, a piece of regulation which was poorly thought through, which would have had significantly adverse impacts on the conduct of business and on the conduct of commerce and which would have had serious adverse economic consequences. We are pleased that that provision is now not included in the bill as it stands before this House, but we call upon the minister to acknowledge that he made a policy error in even bringing it forward and to give certainty that this matter will not be proceeded with. I certainly pay tribute to the many organisations that have worked to put the facts in front of this parliament, particularly the Australian Direct Marketing Association.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In October 2005, I introduced a private member’s bill into this House calling on the government to introduce a Do Not Call Register to protect consumers from unwanted and unsolicited telemarketing calls. The then Howard government advised that this bill was outrageous and that it could not support the bill and claimed that it would not work. Indeed, the arguments that the member for Bradfield has just raised for extending the list are the very arguments that the government of the day put up for why we could not have a Do Not Call Register at all. To come into this place claiming credibility for the legislation is a little stretched. Yes, the Howard government did introduce the bill, but only after outrageous consumer demand—only after talk-back radio ran with this issue for three years. Eventually, Senator Helen Coonan, as the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, said, ‘Yes, we have heard the public; we are going to do something about it.’ So I want to say thankyou to the consumers out there, the people of Australia who said, ‘We want something.’

Registers were already operating successfully in the US and UK and I for one could not understand why we could not duplicate that here. The technology existed. It was an easy transition. After overwhelming public support for my campaign, the campaign on behalf of the Labor Party policy, the Howard government finally bowed and decided to adopt a policy to establish a Do Not Call Register, pretty much modelled on my private member’s bill.

Honourable Members:

Hear, hear!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In that year alone, telemarketers made over one billion calls to Australian households. You do not get to claim much in this House, but I am claiming the Do Not Call Register—I am! When the register was finally launched in May 2007, the public voted with their feet with over one million numbers registered in the first month of the register going live. Since that time, nearly 4.7 million homes, mobiles and VoIP numbers have been listed on the Do Not Call Register. This translates to roughly one in three Australian households who have opted out of receiving telemarketing calls. Most Australians want their house to be their castle, not a telemarketing paradise. This vindicates the popularity of the Do Not Call Register while reinforcing the message that the public wants to be able to choose whether or not to receive a telemarketing call.

A recent survey by ACMA found 93 per cent of those registered noticed fewer telemarketing calls after registering their home phone. From May 2008 to May 2009, ACMA received 12,000 complaints amounting to a 60 per cent drop from May 2007 to May 2008—figures of over 30,000 complaints. These statistics speak for themselves. The Do Not Call Register has been an outstanding success and is testimony to the will of the community to support my campaign.

The Do Not Call Register Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 builds on the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 and the Telecommunications Act 1997. It broadens and entrenches the Do Not Call Register as a powerful tool for consumers to choose to protect themselves from nuisance calls and fax machines. There has been considerable community pressure to extend the register period of the Do Not Call Register from three years. Initially, when the bill was introduced by the Howard government it caved in to the industry and said, ‘Okay, after three years all numbers will fall off.’ This was a mistake and there has been outstanding public pressure to extend it. As this initial three-year period starts to expire at the end of May this year, there will be a million people who will fall off the register. By the end of April, 40 per cent of people had reregistered their numbers, leaving the majority of people vulnerable to having their numbers drop off at the end of this month. This bill lengthens the registration period for numbers registered on the Do Not Call list initially from three to five years, including existing registrations. This will prevent numbers from dropping off the registration at the end of this month.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Chisholm will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.