Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sir Humphrey Appleby!

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

That is exactly what it sounds like—Yes, Minister. Not only are Telstra saying this; they are putting it out in media releases—I have copies of them here. It is the stuff of nonsense. Thirdly, I have a letter here from Mr David Thodey, the CEO of Telstra. In that letter he actually says to me that, yes, they are going ahead and he knows I will be unhappy about it, but then he talks about how help is being offered to the 180 employees by the Department of State and Regional Development. That is a state entity. That galled me further because the day that this move was announced I said we would fight the good fight. I wanted to make sure that we tried everything we possibly could to keep the call centre open. I mobilised our local jobs coordinator, first of all to make him aware of the situation, secondly to ask whether there was anything he could help with and, thirdly, if Telstra did close the call centre could he see whether that call centre could be used to bring other jobs to Grafton.

The jobs coordinator then mobilised with the Department of State and Regional Development. It had nothing to do with David Thodey. It just really annoyed me that he had put it in his letter to me when I was the one who was responsible, along with other people in the community, for mobilising every possible resource we could around the staff and the community. It was really quite insulting to get that letter. It is better to be short and sweet and just say, ‘We are going ahead with the closure,’ even though I do not like it. Those three reasons really did not go down well.

There were a few other things that happened in this story. There has been widespread support in the community with a petition receiving over 6,000 signatures in just over a week and a half from people in the Clarence Valley. I got the petition organised and I hit the streets. There were people lined up in the main street queuing to sign the petition. Then we were in the Grafton Shoppingworld. I was there along with the member for Cowper, who is sitting opposite me, and the state member, Steve Cansdell. The Independent member for Lyne, Rob Oakeshott, put out a media release joining us in not supporting the closure.

We had the support of the Mayor of Clarence Valley Council, Richie Williamson. The whole council was mobilised. Richie was out on the street with me. We also had the support of the Mayor of Coffs Harbour, Keith Rhoades; the Mayor of Lismore, Jenny Dowell, who is also president of Northern Rivers Regional Organisation of Councils; and the Mayor of Ballina, Councillor Phil Silver. So there was a whole lot of mobilisation. Unions were also involved, with the CPSU on the ground. We had a rally in the town square of Grafton, which was chaired by Ron Bell, the proprietor of 2GF, the local radio station. The Daily Examiner also joined the campaign to try to stop this.

Everybody was absolutely mobilised. There was a campaign ran called ‘Hang up on Telstra’. That is what a lot of people are doing and that is what we are saying to Telstra: you deserted us as a community in regional Australia, so we can desert you by hanging up on you. Some people have closed their accounts. The mayor, Councillor Richie Williamson, has done that and so have others. I have received lots of letters from people who are saying publicly that they are doing that.

I would like to acknowledge the sterling efforts of Shirley and John Adams, who sat at Grafton Shoppingworld over the week we had the petition out. They sat there and talked with everybody, and they got signatures on those petitions. It also went out to a whole lot of businesses. It was just wonderful that they did that. It took a lot of effort and we were all mobilised. You can feel a bit helpless in that Telstra will still go ahead but we were not going to take it lying down. It is a resourceful community and it will find other things to do, but it is very harsh to be treated like this in regional Australia.

The other thing I found out was that they had known about it for some time. Remember, we had a federal election and they obviously did not announce during that, but they had known about it for some time. I attended an event in Lismore to celebrate 10 years of Telstra Country Wide. We had a great breakfast celebration where Telstra said: ‘Isn’t it wonderful? We look after country New South Wales and we service country New South Wales.’ I said that I felt like I was there under false pretences. The Mayor of Lismore, Councillor Jenny Dowell, was in some of their promotional material about that and she also made a comment that she felt similar to how I felt and that she did not want to be in it.

The other thing that happened, which really showed how seriously we take this issue, was the Grafton Chamber of Commerce and Industry, headed by Jeremy Challacombe, actually downing tools. One day, at a certain time, they came out into the main street. They closed their doors and all the businesses came out and protested as well. They got the support of the New South Wales chamber to try to organise meetings with David Thodey, the CEO of Telstra. It just showed how seriously we took this particular issue. We then got told that the call centre is going to close on 23 November. That is a month before Christmas; that is a bit heartless.

You may have all received an invitation to have cocktails with Catherine Livingstone, the Chairman of Telstra, and David Thodey, the CEO, tomorrow night between 6pm and 8pm. I answered them and said, ‘I do not want your cocktails; I want 108 jobs in Grafton.’ I will be going to the cocktails tomorrow night and I am going to have a sign up that says exactly that. I hope that other members will join me and hold that sign up because I think that is what we have to do. I do not want to say anything that is unparliamentary but that one really got to me when I received it. (Time expired)

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the motion by the member for Page. Coming, as we do, from opposite sides of the House, we clearly have our differences but I am pleased that we have been able to come together on this very important issue, which is an economic threat to our electorates—the move by Telstra to close the call centre at Grafton. I should say from the outset that the provincial City of Grafton does not lie within my electorate of Cowper but the call centre does draw employees from right across the lower Clarence and the surrounds, and it is a very important issue for the people of Maclean, Tucabia, Ulmarra and all of the settlements around Grafton on the north coast.

The loss of 108 jobs is a huge issue for any regional centre. It affects not just those who have lost those jobs but also those whose jobs are dependent on the income coming in from those 108 families. There is a loss of confidence in a regional centre when a major employer closes its doors. Certainly, this has had a detrimental effect on the community. There will undoubtedly be further job losses from businesses as a result of this closure when the income from those 108 jobs no longer permeates the economy. There will be an obvious knock-on effect. Certainly, the community is in no doubt about the impact of this closure and the way that the effects will ripple through the community.

I am pleased to join with the member for Page on this issue, but we are just two amongst many, as the member has pointed out, who have taken up the cudgels in this case. The state member for Clarence, Steve Cansdell and Mayor Richie Williamson have been involved. All three levels of government have been involved and there has been strong support from the community. As the member mentioned, Shirley and John Adams sat all week in Grafton Shoppingworld collecting signatures—6,000 signatures in fact. That is a huge local effort, showing the local passion for an important local employer. Hundreds attended a rally that was held in Prince Street, Grafton—all supporting this very important issue. Some 1,800 members of a Facebook group have been calling on Telstra to reconsider this ridiculous decision.

Commercially, I think this decision flies in the face of practical experience. Look at what has been achieved in Coffs Harbour. The Centrelink call centre in Coffs Harbour is the largest single-purpose Centrelink call centre in Australia. Some years ago it had only 120 employees, but it has been expanded and now has 408 staff. That shows the competitive advantage that can be delivered by operating a business unit in a regional centre. With modern technology there is no need for these centres to be located in metropolitan areas. I find it curious that cost savings can be involved in centralising these jobs back to Brisbane or Melbourne where it can be difficult to recruit staff and where people seeking a job have so many more employment options. In a regional centre, the workforce tends to stay in a job longer, staff turnover tends to be lower and there tends to be a strong community ethic, which helps to make for a good workplace. There are far greater reasons to locate call centres in a regional area than in a metropolitan area, and the Centrelink call centre is proof positive of that. It has expanded in size, it is doing good work and it has won awards for its productivity. It is the example that should be followed. Rather than Telstra relocating their staff to Brisbane or Melbourne, they should be creating jobs in the regions and expanding their call centre in Grafton. If the claim is that it is too small to achieve an economic critical mass, make it bigger. I do not accept the statement that the workforce in a regional area is not available. If you can find 408 workers in Coffs Harbour to man a Centrelink call centre, you could certainly find a very similar number to man a call centre in Grafton. It is just nonsense.

The biggest piece of nonsense I have heard is something that the member for Page touched on earlier—that is, the statement by Telstra that they are going to provide better service to their customers with fewer staff. I would like to know how that is going to happen. I would welcome Mr Thodey pointing that out to us at the cocktail party tomorrow night. Perhaps he could show us how they are going to produce higher productivity and better service for their customers through fewer staff. It is clearly ridiculous that we should see these jobs go from a regional centre to a major metropolitan area where there are problems with traffic congestion and overcrowding. In regional areas, we have the ability to provide the workplace and we have the land for new developments. We have all that is needed to provide an efficient call centre. It can all be provided in a regional area. But I think there is one thing missing—that is, the will to make it happen.

There is a city-centric notion amongst some corporates. There is talk about Telstra Country Wide servicing the regions, well Telstra should reinvest in the regions—not just in telecommunications but in employment opportunities. Let us not have equity of access to communication services alone; let us have equity of access to employment opportunities. A call centre would clearly be an excellent way for Telstra to demonstrate its commitment to regional and rural Australia—keep it open, make it bigger and create more opportunities, particularly for our young people. Call centres are a great place for a first job for school leavers after an entry-level job. It is a great introduction to corporate Australia. It is a great way to work within guidelines. Young people could benefit from many lessons learnt from employment at a call centre. We should be expanding this centre not making it smaller. I certainly commend the effort of the member for Page and our colleague Steve Cansdell, the state member for Clarence, and the entire Grafton and lower Clarence community for getting behind an important local employer. The rationale that Telstra uses is clearly ridiculous and does not pass muster. There are competitive advantages and we can see them in Coffs Harbour. I commend this motion to the House.

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

I rise to support this motion. I also come from a non-capital city regional area and it is important that we recognise that what is happening in Grafton is not just about Grafton; it is about regional Australia generally. We need to be encouraging corporates to keep jobs in regional Australia and move jobs to regional Australia. Firstly, I want to talk a little about the situation in Grafton—where over 108 jobs are going to be cut. One hundred and eight families are going to be affected in a small community and uprooted either to Brisbane or to Melbourne. They will not be moving close; they will be moving a long, long way away for these jobs. The flow-on effect on the Grafton community will be immeasurable in terms of the economic side of things and the social and community side of things.

When you rip out 108 jobs from a town the effect is immeasurable. It is something that small communities take a long time to get over. It is no small surprise that the community in Grafton have rallied so strongly around this issue. For the member for Page to get over 6,000 signatures on a petition in less than two weeks is not only a tribute to her hard work in the area but also shows just how widespread the feeling is on this issue. It is important not only for those who will lose their job but also for the whole community in Grafton. In such a short period of time 6,000 people signed a petition that says to Telstra: ‘You should not make this decision. You should keep these jobs in Grafton.’ I think we have a slogan from today’s contribution from the member for Page: ‘Jobs not cocktails’. We need to make sure that Telstra gets that message loud and clear. I certainly endorse her comments that we should all be going to this Telstra function tomorrow night and that all of us from regional Australia deliver the message loud and clear that it is not good enough to take jobs away from regional Australia, and that we need to be putting more jobs into these areas and making sure that these communities are supported.

In a more general sense what we have here is an example we are seeing far too often of corporates looking at the bottom line and using it as an excuse to cut services and jobs in regional New South Wales. This is neither in the interests of regional Australia nor in the interests of those who live in regional New South Wales. But it is not in the interests of Australia either. At the moment we are having a debate about sustainable population. Let us make it clear that we have big populations already in metropolitan areas which are overburdened in terms of their infrastructure. One of the prime areas where new population growth can occur, and which can be of benefit both to the country and to the area in which it occurs, is regional Australia. Corporates need to take their responsibilities more seriously and look at the options and at the decisions they are making. Moving 108 workers back to Melbourne or to Brisbane would not only damage the community of Grafton, as it would damage any rural community, but also place an added burden on big metropolitan areas that are already struggling to meet the demands on their infrastructure. We need to be looking at that in a much wider debate, which I think this parliament has already foreshadowed is an important debate for us to have throughout the country.

If a corporate took 108 jobs out of my area on the Central Coast it would devastate the Central Coast, not just because of the number of jobs but because of the money that would leave the economy. The member for Page has pointed out that over $6 million will be ripped out of the Grafton economy by Telstra taking this decision. It is not a good decision and it needs to be reviewed; we need to make sure that Telstra gets the message loud and clear. Telstra also need to be talking to the heads of their fellow corporates. Regional Australia needs more jobs. It does not need fewer jobs. We need to make sure that regional Australia gets a fair go. We need to make sure that Grafton keeps its 108 Telstra jobs.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to comment and to also support regional Australia. I thank the member for Page for bringing this motion before the House. It might be 30 years since I was in Grafton. My mother’s family comes from further south, in the New England district of New South Wales. I have many fond childhood memories of visiting and staying for holidays in that part of the world. Indeed, it was the sport of rowing that took me to Grafton 30 years ago—

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

You are still good at it!

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am still living the dream. I note that there is a lot of support here for the Clarence River. To me it is a real shame to lose over 100 jobs in a nice town like Grafton. If anything you would think that Telstra would be looking at the opportunity to do even more in a centre like Grafton. Grafton is not big by capital city standards, but it is a place of opportunity. It is a place where young people have so much to give. You would think that the leadership of corporates like Telstra would embrace that opportunity, that they would think there are a lot of young people going through those schools and there are a lot of people that could add value. You would think they would take that opportunity and also provide those opportunities to Telstra to improve their service. As the member for Cowper said: how do you reduce the number of workers and then improve the level of service? It just does not really make sense at all.

I think what has been achieved in Grafton, with over 6,000 names on the petition, is great. As I said already today with regard to Australia Post, these organisations talk about their customer service and what they are doing for people but, when the people speak, where are they? One of the best shows of what people want, of what is important to local people and to people in regional Australia, in fact to people anywhere across Australia, is in the form of a petition. When they are completely ignored it is ridiculous. It is a shame and it is ridiculous.

I look upon the situation as endemic; it is a major failing of organisations such as Telstra that do not see the opportunities. They do not see what people really need and do not see what could be achieved in these areas. I look at this situation and think this is just another case where you just have to shake your head about what Telstra has been up to. I look forward to opportunities in the future to be able to say, ‘Telstra is doing a great job.’ In three years I have not been able to do that, and at this rate I cannot see any of us really being able to give any great endorsement on what Telstra is planning for the future either. This is such a great opportunity for Telstra to say: ‘We believe in regional Australia. We believe in Grafton as a centre of great consequence. We believe in what the people of Grafton and the district can do through this call centre.’ They could say that. They could tick the box and show that endorsement. Yet they have not. They have ignored what 6,000 local people want, and, in my view, they so often ignore what everybody in this country wants. So it is hard to have a great deal of confidence. I would hope that in the future we would have reason to be confident in Telstra. They are an organisation of great ability which could deliver a great deal for this country, but there have been too many opportunities that they have missed, have passed up, on which they have not displayed any vision. I think that Grafton is just another example of that lack of vision and that lack of belief. You start to wonder what they are really all about. Where has the customer service gone in Telstra? It has been a long time but it is very hard to see what they are achieving. It is hard to see very many positives at all.

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

I speak in support of this private member’s motion moved by the member for Page. I certainly note her great concern about further job cuts at Telstra. It is also good to be able to come into a debate and listen to those on the other side actually talking about an issue that I care greatly about. It seems that we are in agreement on this issue. That is a good thing. As we all know, Telstra is a very large Australian employer. The jobs that it provides, and the skills that it fosters and grows, keep Australia competitive in telecommunications. The research it does is top rate, it has talented staff and it has second to none ownership of telecommunications assets. That, of course, is quite well-known now that we are debating the NBN in another forum here. But, in terms of job cuts, Telstra does not perform so well. I really wonder about the future of a company like Telstra when its priority seems to be stripping away the good parts of the company so that there is really only a shell left.

This seems to come down to Telstra management. We now have a new set of managers at Telstra following on from Sol Trujillo and his American amigos—I think that was the right description for them when they were here. Telstra has been going backwards the whole while. Even worse than that, the workers and customers who use that company are usually the last to find out this news. Imagine if you were an employee and you found out about the future, or not, of your job through the newspaper. I do not think that is a very fair and reasonable way of dealing with employees—telling the share market first and the employees later. I do not think that really builds company morale.

Many times over many years this has been the fate of Telstra staff. You can see why morale slips in a large company when that becomes the modus operandi. On 1 October this year the Australian Financial Review reported Telstra plans to slash 15 per cent of its workforce, cutting over 6,000 jobs, for a planned total redundancy cost of close to $600 million. The paper also went on to report that thousands more jobs would go through natural attrition, thereby making the rate of job cuts similar to that experienced under the last Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo. Of course, this was the very same person being paid $13 million a year and who left with a payout of $3.76 million after throwing those 12,000 employees on the scrapheap. Telstra’s project, dubbed Project New, is apparently about cutting jobs and yet increasing services. I think that the jobs that they are planning to cut are actually the jobs that provide the services.

With Telstra going through another round of job cuts, we see managers claim they have achieved various goals. But I really feel for the Telstra staff at the sharp end of that, the ones who will go. It is not upper management that goes in these rounds of job cuts; it is staff on the front line. These staff, as I have said before, are the ones with the skills; these are the people you need to talk to if you phone up. If you have a fault, you need them to come out and fix your service. They are the ones at the front line of job cuts. Call centres are no different. Call centres in regional areas particularly provide local jobs that are badly needed in many cases. My electorate of Deakin is totally suburban but it is a huge calamity when we have factory closures and lose a hundred jobs. I cannot even begin to imagine how bad that could be in a regional town. It would be enormous. As Len Cooper, national president of the CEPU Communications Division, observes:

Every Telstra CEO has used mass redundancies and promised greater efficiency and better customer service and they haven’t achieved it, so why haven’t they learned a lesson?

I do not know why they have not.  I can say they should listen to their customers, they should listen to their workers and they should—as a large employer—show some real corporate and social responsibility and look after the towns and cities that they serve, not only in terms of direct phone lines but also in terms of back-up services and support, so that when customers need it they can talk to a real person and can have their problems fixed easily and quickly and be back on the line.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.