Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 and the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Amendment Bill 2014. These bills are part of the repeal-day package and they are very minor reforms—even smaller than the first round in March. In March the changes in the communications portfolio amounted to about $35 million a year—not what you would call big reform. This time the savings amount to about $18 million, which is about half of that size. So the best way to describe these two bills would be that they are small, rudimentary cleaning-up exercise.

Today's bills do a number of things. They abolish TUSMA and transfer its key functions back into the Department of Communications. They repeal outdated provisions in respect of the making of e-marketing industry codes and the supply of telephone sex services. They repeal preselection requirements. They make the registration period for numbers on the Do Not Call Register indefinite. They streamline notice requirements to improve the operation of the customer service guarantee and they enable the TIO to publish documents on the web rather than in the Gazette. The amendments are not contentious and they have the support of industry and consumer representatives.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 also repeals the reporting and record-keeping requirements in part 13 of the Telecommunications Act. The opposition does not support that proposal at this time. There is another bill that is currently in the House of Representatives that proposes to deal with the issue of mandatory data retention and w argue that this change should be considered as part of that substantive bill. I have talked to Minister Turnbull about this and asked him to remove this from this bill. He has agreed, and I thank the minister for that. Subject to the government amending this bill to remove schedule 5 in its entirety, we will not oppose this bill in the House. We will of course consider any recommendations that come from the Senate committee that will examine this bill.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this legislation as it is a great example of the government taking real action to allow local businesses to prosper and consumers to benefit from a more efficient telecommunications environment. This government has laid out a new deregulatory course. There are now two repeal days in parliament each year and dedicated deregulation units in each major federal department. I thank the member for Kooyong, who from day one has been kind enough to include me in his team on this front to find different ways we can get out of the way of businesses and let them go on and do what they do best, which is to prosper and make profit. The government is about getting out of the way of business. Naturally, some degree of regulation is required to establish effective markets and working communities. But excessive red tape detracts from productivity and ultimately lowers living standards.

The regulatory burden on the telecommunications industry is especially harsh. A build-up of red tape over almost two decades has left us with numerous outdated requirements which do nothing but inhibit innovation and put barriers in the way of new businesses looking to join the industry and enhance the competitive environment. Together, the measures proposed in this bill will deliver savings to industry and individuals of $6.7 million over 10 years. That is a significant saving. The abolition of the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency, TUSMA, and the transfer of its functions will provide greater certainty for the industry by having a single agency responsible for both policy and the arrangements concerning the universal service obligation, the national relay service and the 000 emergency service. Further measures in these bills seek to improve the operation of the Do Not Call Register and remove a variety of redundant legislation.

It should be noted that the Department of Communications has collaborated quietly with all industry stakeholders on these measures, releasing a discussion paper and a telecommunications deregulation road map in the last year and following up with a stakeholder forum in May this year. Significantly for the department industry and the public were invited to join an online discussion to make the consultation process more interactive.

Looking at a number of these measures in detail provides an indication of just how important and comprehensive the bill is. Firstly, a key component in the bill relates to the repeal of the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Act 2012 and the transfer of its functions and responsibilities to the Department of Communications. This was announced in the May 2014 budget. Transferring TUSMA's functions to the department will streamline the delivery of public interest telecommunications by reducing bureaucratic duplication and enabling clear lines of accountability. This reform will also create greater certainty for industry by having a single agency responsible for both policy and the implementation of contractual arrangements concerning the universal service obligation, the national relay service and the 000 emergency service.

All too often, businesses right across our country are tied down by paperwork and having to deal with multiple agencies. This bill helps lighten the load. The bill will remove the requirement for carriers to provide audited eligible revenue returns, thereby lifting a significant red tape imposition from those carriers. Currently, around 25 carriers have annual revenue in excess of $25 million and therefore must pay an industry levy for the provision of the USO and other public interest services. At present, having to provide a fully audited return adds a cost burden of around $300,000 to those carriers, costs which are inevitably passed down to consumers. Removing this requirement clearly benefits the industry without in any way compromising the regulator's ability to assess eligible revenues and determine levy contributions. It will also deliver a modest reduction in the Telecommunications Industry Levy paid by industry and is consistent with the recommendations of the National Commission of Audit to reduce and consolidate smaller agencies in an attempt to reduce administrative and governance costs. Importantly, the transfer of TUSMA's functions will have no impact on Telstra's universal service obligation which ensures that standard telephone services and payphones are reasonably accessible, on an equitable base, to all people in Australia.

Another important element to this bill relates to the Do Not Call Register. With this measure, the government is moving to permit a onetime sign-up for the very popular Do Not Call Register. I know this, because I am on it, and I know this register is widely used by people throughout my electorate. The Do Not Call Register enables individuals to list private, government and emergency service fixed-line telephone and mobile numbers to prevent unsolicited contact from telemarketers. The register became operational in May 2007 and is working effectively to prevent invasive and, at times, intimidating telephone calls.

As of 31 March 2014, 9.4 million telephone numbers were listed on the Do Not Call Register, including two-thirds of Australian households with a fixed-line home telephone and close to four million mobile telephone numbers. However, registrations are currently time limited. Originally the registration period was set at three years; however, the previous minister made a determination under the act of 2010 to extend the period of registration on three occasions. The registration period currently sits at eight years. Without regulatory intervention numbers on the register would begin to expire from 31 May 2015. This makes no sense. It is time we removed the time limit, and that is what we will do.

The Department of Communications issued a discussion paper for consultation in December 2013 regarding the optimal registration period to which 3,020 submissions were received. Political parties, members of parliament, political candidates, religious and educational organisations and charities are all exempt from the application of the Do Not Call Act, and this amendment will not alter any public interest exemptions. Not surprisingly, a 2013 study found that 56 per cent of the respondents felt annoyed by unsolicited marketing approaches and 39 per cent of respondents expressed concern about how their details were obtained by the organisation contacting them. The extension of this registration period to an unlimited period will save consumers around $3.4 million annually and is a sensible measure.

The bill will also remove the arrangements for ACMA to register e-marketing codes. Following public consultation ACMA deregistered the e-marketing code in June 2014 as it was no longer relevant, with a cost saving of $2 million. Moreover, the e-marketing provisions in the Telecommunications Act are now more than a decade old, and there is broad stakeholder consensus that the Spam Act 2003 adequately addresses the range of problems associated with unsolicited commercial electronic messages and is sufficiently flexible to enable ACMA to address a broad range of issues. Therefore, consumers will still enjoy a strong consumer protection measure under the regulations.

Another very important element to this bill relates to preselection, which allows consumers to choose a different provider for local calls or line rentals and long-distance and/or international calls. Whilst there are 10.3 million landlines in service in Australia, only 30,000 consumers still choose to vary their service providers under preselection. Preselection was introduced in the early 1990s to foster competition and was once quite popular; however, its declining use is due mostly to bundled telephone service offerings from providers and the ease with which consumers can now switch providers anyway. Providing preselection imposes costs for industry—for example, in developing and deploying appropriate software to enable preselection to operate. The amendments contained in this schedule are proposed as a deregulatory measure to relax the future requirements to provide for preselection. Preselection functionality will continue to be available to those consumers who are currently making use of it. However, carriers will no longer be obliged to build systems to offer preselection as part of the supply of a standard telephone service—a move that is better for business and better for consumers.

A further measure under this bill includes the modernising of publication requirements which currently require publication in the government Gazette. Who reads the government Gazette?

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Me!

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Cath McGowan reads the government Gazettevery good. In fact, most people would ask: what is the government Gazette? Cath, I would suggest it is a sure-fire way to cure insomnia. Instead, such notices will now be able to be published on the Department of Communications website. It is a simple change but one that reflects this government's commitment to reducing red tape and modernising the way business interacts with government and the way government interacts with the community.

As Australians increasingly rely on communications technology to support all aspects of our lives, an effective and responsive regulatory system is needed now more than ever. These proposed amendments will relieve the telecommunications industry of burdensome and outdated red tape while maintaining consumer safeguards and encouraging competition. The proposed amendments in these bills have been arrived at in collaboration with the telecommunications industry, consumer representatives and regulatory authorities. They should be supported by all in this place.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought I would rise to speak on this legislation to highlight what is missing from it and areas that I believe that this government is not acting on. We have heard that this legislation is largely noncontroversial for people here in this House, but I rise to speak about my disappointment about what is not in these bills—the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 and the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Amendment Bill 2014. What is not in this legislation is a commitment from this government to continue Labor's plan to rollout the NBN. A quick look at the NBN rollout map says it all. Around Victoria there is good news for some areas, but very bad news for my own area and the Bendigo electorate. Splotches of purple and brown lights are spreading out in areas like Ballarat. I congratulate Ballarat and I congratulate Shepparton: two areas which are getting the rollout of the National Broadband Network, the fibre cable connecting homes and businesses to the internet. Bendigo, however, misses out. Not only has Bendigo continued to miss out but, since the election of this government, they have been knocked off the map.

On election day, areas of Heathcote, Bendigo, Kyneton, Castlemaine and Maldon were on the map. They were listed for rollout. They were going to get the connection speeds that our metro cities enjoy. But, since the election of this government, they have just disappeared, and the people in that electorate keep asking me, and rightly so: what is the plan?

A year after the election we still do not have a plan for large parts of regional Victoria and large parts of my electorate. We do not know when we are going to get the NBN rollout and we also do not know what we are going to get. All this is from a government that before the election promised that people in the Bendigo region, as well as other areas of regional Victoria, would not only get broadband sooner and quicker but they would get it cheaper. A year on we still do not have a plan. How are they going to meet this election commitment that the people in regional Victoria, the people in Bendigo, will get it sooner, quicker and cheaper if we do not yet have a plan and we do not know what we are going to get?

This is a big problem for our region. So much of our life is spent online now, yet people cannot get the basics. Weekly I am inundated with calls from small businesses, from homes—people ringing, frustrated, that when they call to find out what internet is available in their area some are told as little as there is no internet service in their area—none whatsoever. Some are told the ADSL ports are full right now and there is no plan to introduce any more—keep ringing and hopefully someone will no longer require their service and you can take their spot. It is a particular concern in Castlemaine. In Castlemaine a retailer will ring and say, 'Great news, you are in an area which has ADSL.' The frustrated local then says, 'Okay, I have heard that before, fine, I will sign up with you.' Then the retailer goes to Telstra and Telstra says, 'Yes, while there is coverage of ADSL in Castlemaine there are currently no ports of available.' So the retailer has to go back to the frustrated local and say, 'Look, I am really sorry, there are no ports available—there is no waiting list for a port to be available; you will have to survive on what you've got, which is either mobile phone coverage or dial-up.' This is the real problem we face in the bush day in, day out. The frustrating thing is that there was a plan and the plan was ripped up. Even more frustrating is that all we are seeing from this government is more and more tidying up of the papers. This bill is an example of that. It may cross the i's and dot the t's, it may increase the industry levy slightly, but it is not genuine reform. It is not bringing about the internet and infrastructure that people in the regions need when they need to connect.

Recently I met here in Parliament House an action group, iLoddon Mallee. They used to be known as iBendigo and, before that, NBN for Bendigo. They have constantly been seeking a meeting with the minister about communications. They have written to me to ask whether I can help organise a meeting with the minister. Given that I struggle to meet with the minister in my capacity as the federal member for Bendigo, I thought I would read out their letter and put on the record what the iLoddon Mallee advocacy group are asking for. They say:

I write to you in my capacity as the chair of the iLoddon Mallee on behalf of Bendigo and Loddon-Mallee communities in Victoria.

iLoddon Mallee Project Manager Marg O'Rourke and I will be in Canberra again in November. Pending a scheduled meeting with the Minister of Communications we have written to him seeking a meeting to discuss the state of the NBN rollout to the iLoddon Mallee region.

We managed to meet with Paul Fletcher in our last meeting in June. However, we felt that it is imperative that we have an opportunity to speak with the minister directly to update him on our region's preparedness.

This is an organisation that represents business communities; this is an organisation that represents local government. All they want to do is meet with the Minister for Communications to find out 'when?' They want an answer to the question I proposed at the beginning of my contribution in this debate—they want to know when the NBN will be rolled out to our region. There was a plan, the plan was ripped up and to this day we have no plan. These are the kinds of things that this government should be doing in government. These are the kinds of things that should be in this bill that is before us. Where is the plan for the NBN for regional Victoria? Where is the plan for my electorate?

Some of the good news we have had in relation to telecommunications is that the NBN towers have gone up and people that have access to these towers are connecting. Small communities like Malmsbury are for the first time ever having decent download speeds, and they are embracing it and they are loving it. The problem that we have is that some of the people that they wish to do business with or communicate with are just up the road—businesses in Kyneton or in Bendigo—but they are struggling to connect to those businesses because of the telecommunications problems and the internet speeds in our regions. I do not believe that city MPs really understand this. We simply do not have the infrastructure that we need in the regions to connect like the rest of Australia can. It is not just a problem in regional Victoria—it is a problem throughout the whole of Australia. There is now a digital divide in this country between city and metro. Communications infrastructure is just as important as roads or water. We need to make sure that we have a system that is able to connect everybody.

Another complaint that I get quite frequently concerns the push by all government services to go online—they ask that you do your paperwork online because it will save time and it will be quicker and easier to work your way through the bureaucracy. It sounds great, but if you do not have a decent internet connection it might drop out just before you hit the send button. It does not work if you do not have a decent internet connection that drops in and drops out. A recent example that was raised with me where this has become a particular problem is within our farming community, when rural financial counselling services have been going to farms to assist farmers apply for support loans. The problem is that when they get there they do not have the mobile phone coverage to be able to connect to the internet to help that farmer apply for the concessional loans. So much of our life is online and yet in parts of Victoria, in parts of regional Australia, we just do not have the infrastructure that we need to be able to connect with everyone else. That is a major problem that I see with this government—they have no plan. There was a plan but they tore it up and we still do not have a plan. What we have is bills like this that, as I said, tinker around the edges, do a bit of a paperwork, cross the t's and dot the i's but fail to demonstrate genuine reform which would bridge the digital gap between city and country.

I really hope that the minister actually picks up the letter and meets with iLoddon Mallee. They are, as I have said, a group of businesses. They include Bendigo Health, the City of Greater Bendigo, Macedon Ranges, Mount Alexander, the Bendigo Business Council and major manufacturers in our electorate. We have one manufacturer, Keech Australia, who actually design—they have a 3-D printer—and custom make equipment and designs for overseas mining. But yet they cannot have a live-time conversation with their clients. They cannot send their model or interact with their clients overseas via the internet, because the speeds are so slow in East Bendigo. They simply do not have the infrastructure that they need to be able to connect to do business.

If they were in Melbourne, not a problem. If they were in Ballarat, not a problem. If they were in Shepparton or any other area where the NBN was being rolled out before this government got elected and tore up the plan, they would not have this problem. But because they are in Bendigo and we do not have the NBN yet, we do not have that fibre in the ground connecting businesses to the NBN network, they are being disadvantaged. What they have to do is download the plans onto a disk, onto a CD-ROM, send it to the clients—and hope that Australia Post can get it there on time—and then ask them to connect and pull the program up, and then they have a phone conversation. Seriously! This is part of the digital divide that I am talking about. This is why this government is really hurting regional communities and slowing down their ability to connect.

We are constantly trying to encourage universities to go online to go to a hybrid model of in-the-classroom and online study. We say that that is what students want. It is one of the big pushes behind the reforms that the La Trobe University is pushing for. But the problem is that we do not have the infrastructure in the bush for their students to be able to connect to their classes, to their tutorials, and to engage in that online programming, because we simply do not have the infrastructure. It is just like country roads. It is like driving down the freeway and turning off onto a dirt road—if you do not have the proper internet connections, if you do not have the fibre going throughout the whole region, you have to slow down before you turn off and you get onto that bumpy road.

It is quite simple and people in the electorate of Bendigo get it, and that is why it is one of the biggest issues that is raised with me. It does not matter where they are from or who they are. They could be young people that are just moving into Bendigo to go to university. They could be older people wanting to develop their skills or go back to training, or even looking to socially connect with their grandchildren. They could be businesses. They could be any number of people that contact me. When it comes to the NBN itself, because of the delays that we have, we have some areas in the greenfields areas of Bendigo that are still waiting to be connected. They have their new home—they are new housing estates—and they are still waiting for NBN to turn up and roll it out. Even on this minister's watch, when he likes to rant about the problems of the previous government, he has his own problems of ensuring that, in the NBN areas that have been listed, the NBN is being rolled out on time.

What disappoints me the most about this bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill, is the fact that it fails to actually have a plan to continue the rollout of the NBN. So much of our lives is online, and right now people in the bush are missing out. Things are slow when it comes to the NBN. Things are holding us back. We have the innovation and we have the ability to connect to sell our products online. We have an amazing network of producers in our region. We have an amazing network of farmers that are innovating, that are wanting to use the internet as a way to follow their livestock, yet they are being held back by really slow, inferior internet connections.

What disappoints them the most is that, with the previous Labor government, there was a plan. There was a plan for rollout in our region. We were on the map. The coalition got elected and they tore up the plan, and to this day we still do not know when we will get the NBN, what kind of service it will be, and what it is going to cost. All we have seen from this minister, apart from bills like this that really do nothing, is a failure to meet with the advocacy groups who just want to work with the minister to find out when and how they can assist the earlier rollout in the Bendigo electorate.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just for something completely different, I am going to talk about the bill in front of the House. I rise today to speak on the coalition government's continued commitment to good governance. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 is not just about making changes for the sake of it. It tells the story of a government on top of the issues of the day.

One of the most popular and successful programs implemented by the Howard government was the Do Not Call Register. As you no doubt know, Deputy Speaker Vasta, this register allowed people to effectively bar their phone numbers, both landline and mobile, from being called by telemarketers—with a couple of exceptions. How do we know this is a successful program? The numbers speak for themselves: 7.3 million individuals have registered 9.4 million phone numbers on the Do Not Call Register. That equates to 95 per cent of households in Australia. Australians have certainly endorsed this program by their participation.

To allow for the mobility of the population, numbers on the register were scheduled to expire after three years and then needed to be re-registered. In 2010, 2012 and 2013 this period was extended through amendments to the act but not by careful consideration of available options for the longevity of the program. However, that extension granted in 2013 is due to expire in June next year. The Abbott government is doing the right and responsible thing and seeking the option which will continue to drive this very popular program. Minister Turnbull has examined the four options presented to him and made a determination that, once a telephone number is listed, it will now stay on the register unless the account holder of that number applies to have that number removed. This makes good sense because, unlike 20 years ago, our telephone numbers are now much more portable. Local number portability means you can keep the same phone number if you change provider, location portability means you can keep the same number if you move within the same geographic area and mobile phone numbers are able to be ported between providers.

Not that long ago you needed a new number if you moved to the other side of your suburb. What that means for the Do Not Call Register is that telephone numbers are becoming more stable. The need to clean or wash the register is not as strong as it used to be. Therefore, making registration of a number a one-time-only affair makes sense. It also saves a lot of time, money and angst.

This bill also abolishes the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency and moves its responsibilities to the Department of Communications. This fulfils our government's commitment made in the 2014 budget.

Due to the abolition of the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency, TUSMA, the government will move responsibility for the collection of the telecommunications industry levy from TUSMA to the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. This change also includes responsibilities for the universal service obligation, USO, to be monitored under this act. The aim of these changes is to lessen the burden of compliance for business and to cut through more red tape. And, more importantly, the industry levy that needs to be paid to support the operations of TUSMA will now be $1 million dollars less, thereby keeping pressure off prices.

This bill reduces the regulatory burden of telecommunications legislation through amendments to the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, the Telecommunications Act 1997 and the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. This will lower the cost burden on business and consumers by $6.9 million a year, while maintaining necessary consumer safeguards.

This bill honours the coalition government's promise to reduce costs and reduce red tape that has been strangling business for too long. The $7.9 million saved in this bill alone is enough to create 131 new jobs, at $60,000 a year. The $2.1 billion saved over the other repeal days equates to 35,000 jobs, at $60,000 a year, nearly double the minimum wage. There are 35,000 reasons these repeal days are vitally important—not the jobs themselves but the dignity and pride that comes with them. As we know, the best form of welfare is a job, not just for the money it provides but also for the sense of achievement it brings.

I wish to congratulate the Minister for Communications for cutting the red tape in his area of responsibility and note, without surprise, that much of it comes from the Labor-Greens alliance time in government. This bill is not solely about technology surpassing the legislation but about repealing what was simply bad legislation. I support this bill and I commend it to the House.

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Ryan and thank her for that good expose of the background behind the legislation. Tonight I would like to speak to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 and related bill and pick up two particular features of it. The most important one from my perspective is the universal service obligation. The bill makes some changes to existing processes for potentially lifting USO regulations in the future and it is to this provision that I want to address my remarks tonight.

Telecommunications is problematic in regional Australia, as we have heard from the member for Bendigo. It is a topic of major interest to most residents, businesses and particularly younger people who rely on digital communication via their mobile phones. It is that group of young people with whom I have much empathy.

In my speech tonight I would like to discuss the importance of the USO, outline some of the issues facing telecommunications infrastructure nationally, particularly in my electorate of Indi, and call for a national discussion about how telecommunications can better serve residents and businesses in the future, by doing four things: by expanding the existing Black Spot Program; by actively supporting co-location of mobile and broadband facilities; by proactively working with local governments, communities, businesses and telcos so that they can work cooperatively to solve problems, particularly black spots at the local level; and by government allowing the use of mobile phones, as well as landlines and payphones, to satisfy USO obligations.

I turn to the universal service obligation. This obligation is incorporated into the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. It is designed to ensure that all people in Australia, no matter where they live or conduct business, have reasonable access on an equitable basis to standard telephone services and payphones, as well as prescribed carriage services. However, currently, no prescribed services exist.

The minister has determined, in his wisdom, that Telstra is the primary universal service provider for the whole of Australia. This reference is from the Telstra USO policy statement, 2005.

The universal service regime also includes the digital data service obligation, which is the obligation to ensure that either:

(i) general digital data services; or

(ii) special digital data services;

are reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, no matter where they live or conduct business.

Telstra is a carrier declared by the Government to fulfil the digital data service obligation throughout Australia.

The USO does not extend to additional services such as mobile phones and broadband. The government considers that there is already a competitive market for such services, but that is not the case in regional Australia.

The USO policy is critically important to people who live in regional Australia. It is an expression of our national commitment to fairness and equity. The USO is our attempt as a nation to address the issue of accessibility, to overcome the tyranny of distance and resulting higher costs to service delivery in regional areas.

I encourage the government, if it is to undertake any changes to the USO, to do so with care, to bring the community with them and to ensure that the community understands the implications and benefits of proposed changes.

I would now like to turn my mind to the role of Telstra in regional Australia and here I would like to put on the record that I own shares in Telstra and am a significant customer. I have a deep and abiding relationship with the service it provides me; the linesmen who sort out my regular problems; the technicians who do the work; and the backroom office people who enable me to live, work and share a community life from my farm in north-east Victoria.

However, the aspect of Telstra that I would like to see changed is its virtual monopoly on telecommunications in regional Australia. I do not think that this works to our advantage. I would like to see greater competition and I would love to see other telcos providing competitive services in regional Australia, particularly through our USO.

When I think of Telstra I think of my mobile phone coverage. At this stage I would like actually to acknowledge and congratulate the government and the Department of Communications on the excellent work that they are doing to address black spots, especially in areas of potential emergency, where clearly it is uneconomic for the telcos—Telstra in our case—to locate towers. The consultation that has taken place with the community, the mapping of the black spots and the process for setting priorities are working really well from my perspective. The groundwork has been done. However, it is not enough; $100 million is not nearly enough money to cover the problem. My colleagues from all parts of regional Australia would agree that this is a great program; there is just not enough money. We need to enlarge it. We need to expand it.

The Department of Communications database has in excess of 6,000 reports of mobile phone black spots, and in my electorate of Indi 275 reports. With the Mobile Black Spot Program we estimate we will get three towers to help us meet this need. While I am very grateful for those three towers, they are clearly not enough to meet our need or the need right across Australia. In my electorate of Indi, local government has joined forces with business, the Country Fire Authority and others to look at how we can leverage this program to gain efficiencies, to co-locate services, to have community buy-in and to squeeze every bit of extra coverage that we can gain. Now that the processes are in place the government, and Australia, is in an ideal position to work closely with the department to address the next set of priorities. I will really look forward to working with my coalition colleagues, particularly the members of the National Party, to get the extra funding in next year's budget.

One of the problems we have in my community is how to maximise the mobile phone coverage we get through leveraging the potential of broadband, and particularly the NBN, through co-location technology. From our perspective, co-location of mobile phone coverage and broadband is essential for us to maximise delivery. However, getting competing telcos to sit down and discuss how best to maximise the opportunity offered by NBN is proving problematic. How do we get all the players to work together? Where are the carrots? How do we get even more competition in regions? If our experience in Indi is anything to go by, co-location is extremely problematic. It requires a level of knowledge by local government, who are responsible for the managing permits. It requires a willingness by telcos to work together. It requires an ability to cover the costs of backhaul from the fixed wireless towers to the networks. And in the longer term it requires an educated community able to anticipate what new technologies will bring to their communities and their businesses and to be active players in the design and delivery of these services.

Within my electorate of Indi we have been having some very specific problems that I would like to have documented in tonight's debate. Last weekend in the King Valley, as we have on many weekends in Indi, we had a festival, La Dolce Vita Wine and Food Festival. It is a festival in celebration of the Italian community in north-eastern Victoria. We had many, many visitors from the major cities. It was a very, very hot weekend. What happened, as regularly happens, was that our mobile phone service got sick. It did not quite die; it just lost capacity to deliver. The phone service did not work. The EFTPOS machines did not work. The booking systems for accommodation did not work. The real worry for the community—we can manage, I suppose, with the business fallout—was the bushfire danger. It was extraordinarily hot and a fire could easily have broken out, and our communication systems just weren't there.

These brownouts are common in Indi where we have many festivities and large numbers of tourists. It is not just the Winery Walkabout or the Celtic Festival, it happens during the snow season as well. Next weekend we have the Great Victorian Bike Ride: 4,000 cyclists all using their mobile phones will be travelling right throughout north-eastern Victoria. We fear a similar failure of our system. The political fallout is what really counts. As the member for Bendigo said earlier, the system is just not working.

For visitors from Melbourne, Sydney and other places who come to enjoy the hospitality of Indi there is an additional problem: the lack of competition. It is particularly bad for local businesses. Many visitors have Vodafone or Optus plans, but in Indi and also, I know, in many other areas of rural Australia, we do not have Vodafone or Optus coverage. We have Telstra. There is nothing more frustrating for visitors from Melbourne or Sydney—or Brisbane or Adelaide for that matter—coming to our area and discovering that their Vodafone or Optus phone do not work. There is limited coverage on the snow fields, wineries, lakes, picnic spots and camping areas. It is just not good enough. Vodafone and Optus should be as readily available as Telstra.

There are four things that I think we could do to ameliorate this problem. In the first instance, we need a general, open, national discussion about telecommunications infrastructure in regional Australia and how it can be designed in partnership with community to deliver for us for a sustainable future. We need community buy-in. There are four things I would like to talk to. We need to expand the black spots program. It is a good program; in fact, it is a great program. It was an election commitment that the government is delivering on. The establishment work has been done, priorities have been listed and partnerships built. I really encourage the government and my colleagues opposite to maximise the work done in this establishment phase and to consider expanding it to pick up the next level of priorities that we have already identified—$1 billion would be a great start.

My second suggestion for activity in this area is for the minister and the Department of Communications actively to support and encourage telcos to co-locate mobile and broadband facilities. This is desperately needed and, from the government perspective, is a low cost high impact strategy. The NBN Co. rollout is underway. Fixed wireless towers are being built in my electorate. Where mobile towers already exist there is greater possibility to co-locate NBN technology. I encourage the government to proactively encourage the telcos to work together—give them some carrots.

The third area in which I would like to encourage much greater proactive work is between the Department of Communications, local governments, community, business and telcos on solving black spots. This is a role the department could undertake relatively easily. I would like to see a public education, public engagement program where the communities and local government work together to assist in fast-tracking applications and to help people better understand the obligations that must be met. As we have heard tonight, the telco regulation area is very complex.

In my community—and I know this is the case in other communities—people are very keen to help. In many instances, they want these services more than we do. But it is a complex area and it is hard to know where to get into the system. There is a lot of misunderstanding, so intervention, improved understanding and building relationships at the community level would have a big impact. It is the sort of job that the Department of Communications could undertake with great ease. I say again that it would be high impact and low cost.

My final suggestion, directly relevant to this debate, is that the government should allow the use of mobile phones, as well as landlines and payphones, to satisfy the USO obligations. Universal service obligations could easily be delivered by mobile phones, and it does not necessarily have to be Telstra that does all the heavy lifting. As the minister goes into negotiation with Telstra on its next range of agreements, could he please consider the option of mobile phone coverage, particularly for young people who do not use landlines but who need their mobile phones wherever they go in Australia to be covered by the USO? Vodafone and Optus could readily and, I think, happily compete with Telstra on the ability to meet that USO. In closing, I think we can do better with telecommunications in rural Australia. This legislation is a beginning, but we have a long way to go.

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on these telecommunications legislation amendment bills because the focus is on deregulation. This is an area of focus for the government that is so important to raise productivity and give businesses a better chance to approach. So many people have a horror story about regulation that costs them time, money and is so frustrating when they are doing what they need to do in their operation or organisation.

There was a Deloitte Access Economics report released only last month entitled Get out of your own wayabout unleashing productivity. It was the fourth report in a series. It said:

Australia is a lucky country, with a bright future. But we have a problem – and its colour is red. Red tape, that is.

There’s too much of it … and we need to address the grip it has on our economy.

I will share just one example from my own perspective. Earlier this year, I volunteered at a local charity in my electorate in Glenelg. I found myself having to fill out a South Australian police clearance and an OH&S form just to go down and cut a few vegetables and help the local needy in that area. I am sure many others have had this same frustration across so many different areas. Recently, there was a volunteer Neighbourhood Watch group that had to jump through a large number of regulatory hoops just to hold a barbecue fundraiser in the local park. It just gets worse. There was an award given to a volunteer group for filling out forms. So it is gone to the extent of rewarding people because they have had to fill out so many forms! Where does it stop?

We need to make changes to make it easier. That is what we are doing. We have started this long process. We know that red tape compliance does not help create conducive societies and operations, especially when there is overburdening and people need to dedicate their time to navigate the various rules that government have imposed on them. The Productivity Commission has estimated that regulation compliance alone costs as much as four per cent of Australia's GDP. We are all aware that excessive, unnecessary regulation hurts productivity, deters innovation and investment and cost jobs.

I want to say a few words about productivity, because it is such an important element of getting our economy ticking the way it should. To understand why it is important, I will go through some of the context. It has been a key, long-run determinant of income growth for Australians over many decades. When productivity growth has not been high then other growth has often languished. So slower productivity growth with falling terms of trade and an ageing population present significant challenges for our future. That is why we have prioritised getting rid of this regulatory burden. It will help business operators use their resources more efficiently and thereby improve productivity.

Twice a year we are holding repeal days where our attention is solely focused on reducing the compliance burden on not just organisations and business but also individuals. As of today, the repeal measures announced by the government will save individuals, businesses and the not-for-profit sector over $2 billion—far greater than what we initially undertook to do. It is twice as much, in fact. We have doubled our efforts in 12 months. On our first repeal day, we cut 10,000 pieces of legislation, and on our second repeal day we cut another 1,000 pieces.

As the renowned economic commentator Alan Kohler states:

The cost of doing business in Australia is far too high and some of that is down to unnecessary laws and regulations.

Well, we are addressing one of those costs of doing business here. The government has also announced more than 400 new measures to cut red tape across the board, from the environment to education, health, human services and Treasury.

I want to return to the area of telecommunications and, in particular, the Do Not Call Register, because it affects so many individuals, families and businesses when they are unnecessarily contacted by marketers and others. A listing was initially for eight years and then it had to be renewed. But now you can stay on it indefinitely. This might seem rather small, but in reality it is these small changes that make it easier for everyone to get on with their lives and get on with their business.

Telecommunications and broadcasting are two of the most heavily regulated parts of the economy. That is why we are tackling a number of elements within these sectors. As they should, the department and the government have collaborated widely with all industry stakeholders on these measures, releasing discussion papers and engaging in stakeholder forums.

The regulatory burden on telecommunications is especially onerous in terms of the sector's long-term structural evolution from a leviathan government owned monopoly, to a competitive ecosystem of many large and small players. We just heard the member for Indi speak about how there is still a lot of work to do in terms of that market. But the build-up of red tape has left the communications sector with numerous outdated and burdensome requirements which stifle innovation and put barriers in the way of new businesses joining the industry. As we know, we need competitive markets and competitive industries to get the best innovation and the best outcome for the consumers and companies in particular.

These measures, announced as part of the package to eliminate unnecessary red tape and to remove onerous and outdated reporting requirements, will generate savings of over $70 million for consumers and businesses and result in over 3,000 pages being made redundant. I want to go through a few key measures: repealing regulation that currently requires subscription broadcasters to independently audit their expenditure on Australia and New Zealand drama; removing the current captioning compliance reporting obligations on free-to-air broadcasters; and, as I said before, extending the registration period for the Do Not Call Register so consumers only need to register a phone number once to ensure they do not receive those unwanted telemarketing calls or marketing faxes.

If you look at the anecdotal evidence out there as you walk around the suburbs of Australia, you will sometimes see, in some particular areas, 'Do Not Knock' stickers. This is the same principle; they do not want to be hassled. Individuals, companies and consumers do not want to be constantly bothered by answering the phone and door—unless it is a visit from their local member of parliament; they then love to hear about many of the great things the government is doing! I know the member for Throsby acknowledged that quite quickly, so it is good to see he is paying attention and also agrees with the achievements of the government's year in office.

But in terms of other measures that we are looking at, the Australian Communications and Media Authority has announced a number of measures in support of the government's deregulation agenda, which also focuses on removing unnecessary reporting obligations and updating codes of practice.

In conclusion, apart from the specific laws that get repealed, we are removing the unnecessary and overlapping regulation at different levels of government. The government is encouraging the states to introduce a new culture of regulatory rollback. Many of the most costly regulations in our states and territories need to be put aside. I know the South Australian Labor government identified unnecessary red tape and regulation as an area they need to work on further. They have been in office 12 years; I would have thought they might have done more up until this period than suddenly wake up and think to do what the Commonwealth is doing and remove the unnecessary burden on businesses and households.

We have acted, and we have got results. We have got on with the business of governance, removing these unnecessary regulations and getting results for small businesses, for households and for a better society and community. I want to congratulate Josh Frydenberg; he has done a fantastic job as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister driving this—

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He does not need any more pumping up!

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I see the member for Herbert has already done that. Well done to him. Also the Prime Minister, who I am sure the member for Herbert has also acknowledged as driving this agenda. It is an important agenda; it might be chipping small bits away, but it is important. It is important that individuals, companies and organisations—not-for-profits in particular—do not get frustrated with filling out unnecessary forms and compliances, taking their focus away from doing the job they should be doing, whether it be in the community or in the economy. Deregulation is crucial; cutting red tape frees up business to do what they do best: creating the jobs of the future, raising living standards and addressing the productivity challenge.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise and speak on yet another part of the coalition government's deregulation agenda—on this occasion the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. The deregulation agenda—as I have remarked previously and following on from the words of my learned predecessor—is about accumulation of a range of legislative, administrative and regulative changes that are meant to save money, time and costs in the economy.

I thought I might make this contribution by relying on a personal and bitter experience that I had in a previous position with regard to the costs of regulation and why this agenda is so important. Before I touch on that, I will just note that the savings in this particular piece of legislation, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill, cumulatively over 10 years is $6.7 million. I would judge, looking at the overarching sweep of this legislation, that that probably fits in around about the bottom third of the cost savings in cumulative terms, but the cumulative cost savings build on other cumulative cost savings; they in turn accumulate, and this all goes to the very important measure in our economy of efficiency being total factor productivity. I thought I might move from a quick exposition of a personal experience about the cost of regulation and into total factor of productivity and make some observations about how the cumulative effect of all of the legislation that the coalition is putting through can help make inroads in this area.

The experience that I had was largely related to the mining industry in my previous position in Western Australia. What we experienced over the last six to seven years in Australia in total by virtue of a range of largely exogenous factors was that we had what I think could fairly be described as superheated commodity prices. What people do not realise is that, between about 1998 and 2000, during the time that Richard Court was Premier of Western Australia, per tonne iron ore was selling at about US$25 to US$30. To be colloquial and maybe a little hyperbolic, it was hard to give the stuff away, but there was a slow and steady increase in commodity prices. What we experienced in the last six to seven years was superheated commodity prices. We experienced, at its peak, iron ore selling at around US$180 to US$190 per tonne. Compare that to the 1990s when you were looking at US$25 to US$30 per tonne. We are now falling back down below the $80 per tonne barrier and to around the $60 per tonne barrier. That is a very, very significant difference. What that superheated commodity prices period meant was that we could paper over a lot of cracks in the Australian economy, such as things that were not working, costs that were too high and comparative inefficiencies.

I will give you one example that is probably the best example and the greatest canary in the coalmine of the Australian economy, which I must say personally shocked me. That was with respect to the Browse LNG project. That is, the Browse liquefied natural gas project. The grand plan was that that project would involve onshore construction of a liquefaction plant at a place in Western Australia called James Price Point. The work that led up to that expectation was years in the making and involved a range of very difficult environmental approvals and native title approvals. There was an extent to which costs were affected by issues of remoteness at James Price Point.

The reason that all of that intensity of effort—which occurred under the Barnett Liberal government in Western Australia and before that time—was put into it was that the project, had it been constructed onshore, would have been colossal. The original estimates of the construction costs were around about $52 billion worth of onshore construction. I must say, I find particularly it interesting in this place the amount of time, energy, effort and policy acumen that is devoted to industries which have had a history of failure and which have failed, but which in a qualitative sense are no more important—and, in fact, I would argue they are significantly less important—than some of the other industries that fail. The only difference is that the industries that are failing that we should be concerned about are the industries that we are very, very good at, in the sense that we have a comparative advantage in them.

The Browse LNG project at James Price Point was estimated originally at around about $52 billion worth of construction dollars onshore in Australia. Just to give some idea about the size of that, that represents construction in adjusted dollars for a project that would be five or six times bigger than the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. Had this project gone ahead, that would have been representative of spending in the Australian economy of a quantum five or six times larger than the spending on the Snowy River scheme. I think that puts it in a reasonable context.

What happened ultimately was that the project did not go ahead and it did not go ahead because the joint-venture partners in the Browse Basin LNG project—Shell, Woodside and others—made an assessment that it may well be cheaper, possibly tens of billions of dollars cheaper, to attempt a floating LNG development rather than constructing an onshore plant at James Price Point near Broome. I am not of the view that offshore and floating LNG is necessarily a doom and gloom scenario. There will be multiplier effects out of that, but any rational economic assessment would have to land on a conclusion that onshore construction is far more valuable to the Australian economy and the Australian people than floating LNG for whatever benefits the latter might hold. To lose a project which was originally valued at $52 billion worth of onshore construction is a colossal failure and it is a real canary in the coalmine of the Australian economy.

Why did we lose that project? Why did this failure occur? Quite simply, it occurred because of productivity failures in the Australian economy. The JV partners basically did not build it because their original estimates of $52 billion, according to some sources, had escalated $80 billion by the time they came around to potentially making the trigger point decision about building the project. That was just viewed as far too high. The problem was a lack of productivity and immensely expensive onshore construction costs inside Australia.

The alternative that they are looking at, to again put this into perspective, is relatively speculative at this stage. It is a floating facility. At this scale, it is essentially untested technology. It is a floating facility that would comprise 260,000 tonnes of steel. That is more steel than what was used to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The vessel itself is longer than the Petronas Towers are tall and five or six times bigger than an aircraft carrier. But the JV partners, with respect to this gas field, made a decision that that alternative is a safe, cheaper and more cost-effective alternative than onshore construction in Australia.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is amazing.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also join issue with you. It is unfathomable that we would lose this project in those circumstances. Perhaps what is even more frightening is that if we lose an automotive vehicle manufacturer, it is on the front-page of The Australian for six weeks. We lost this project and I doubt that anyone who attends this chamber could remember it being in much more than one or two articles over the course of one or two days. But the comparative loss is huge.

My own view about why this occurred is that we are suffering a major productivity problem that needs to be radically addressed. This deregulation agenda is a very important part of addressing that productivity problem. Indeed, in the dying days of the previous Labor government, the government's own Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics reported that at that time—this was around about September 2013—$150 billion of high-value mineral gas and petroleum infrastructure projects had been delayed or cancelled since about April 2012. In the last year of the Labor government, based on the calculation of their own Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics, $150 billion of high-value mineral gas and petroleum infrastructure projects had been delayed or cancelled.

That raises the very important question of why. Why do projects of that scale get cancelled? These are not projects which are in the early stages of speculation. These are projects that are near to the construction stage, with all of its multiplier effects for the Australian economy. The failure is obviously not monocausal; but if you had to give a brief cause description by way of summary, it would have to be productivity. I certainly favour looking at the measure of total factor productivity.

TFP represents output growth that is not accounted for by the growth in imports, such as capital imports or labour imports; labour productivity can be increased by increasing labour and capital productivity can be increased by increasing capital when you look at the mix of labour and capital. But total factor productivity is a better essential measure of how efficiently and effectively the two main functions of production—labour and capital—combine. You are able to increase productivity with fixed levels of capital infrastructure and with fixed levels of labour if your total factor productivity is growing. Most modern economists will say that TFP will account for up to about 60 per cent of the growth within modern western economies. In August 2012, a study was commissioned by the US Society of Human Resources Management and the Australian Human Resources Institute. That study ranked Australia as the second worst of 51 comparative economies for TFP growth. In that study Australia scored 10.3 points from 100, behind Uganda but, fortunately we would have to argue, just ahead of Botswana, who was last at 51st, with zero points out of 100. What that goes to show is that we had what was described in that survey as 'stuttering productivity performance'. I recall it distinctly because this report came out very close in time to the point at which we had been informed that the James Price Point project was not going to go ahead. I remember the former Treasurer, the present member for Lilley, in my observation, brushed off the report and he said that while productivity growth had been on the decline in Australia, the nation's productivity was actually amongst the highest in the world. The former Treasurer said:

Our productivity levels in this country are very high on international standards, in the top dozen around the world.

This is trivially true, but profoundly false, because it is a bit like saying, 'Well, we won the premiership last year, so don't worry that we have lost the first 10 or 15 games of the AFL season this season.' What happens in the modern and competitive global economy is that you all in and out of the rankings incredibly quickly. So if you have a look at things like the effectiveness of the taxation system, on another report we tumbled from 66th to 103rd in one year.

In 2007-08, we ranked 10th in terms of the wastefulness of government spending, and at the end of the Labor period in office we had slumped to 48th. So when you hear anecdotally, as I certainly do and as I am sure all members from both sides of this House do, about the high costs of doing business in Australia, what people are talking about is simply this: instead of being able to deliver more products or bigger projects on a budget that is similar to or reduced from last year or the year before, the Australian reality—and what we inherited—is that, in a vast range of enterprises, just delivering the same as before now happens but simply at greater cost. If that scenario continues in a highly competitive global environment, we will be in for a very difficult time economically.

This coalition government's project about deregulation is about effecting changes there, and, as I noted at the outset, perhaps the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 is one of the more modest contributions, but it is the cumulative effect. I wanted to end just by looking from one of the more modest contributions to one of the larger contributions—that is, the one-stop shop for environmental approvals. That is a revolutionary change, in a sense, to the Australian federal system and certainly to our economy. It will bring in savings of $426 million year, which of course will accumulate into the billions. The reason why that is so important is that, when I talk about the increased construction costs of projects like the Browse project and what was anticipated construction at James Price Point, the delays that have been occasioned through the approvals process, particularly in environment but certainly in other areas, have been absolutely devastating to these projects in terms of the way in which they contribute to the escalation in costs.

I wanted to end simply by looking at the BAEconomics report, The economic gains from streamlining the process of resource projects approval. They looked at a number of scenarios, and they looked at a rise in GDP growth in scenarios 1 and 2 being driven by three factors: increased mining investment, increased mining production and the flow-on effects from the mining sector to the non-mining sector, so essentially the multiplier effects. What they looked at was whether, by 2025, Australia's real GDP would be 1.5 per cent higher, or $32 billion higher in today's dollars, if the average delay in approvals was reduced by one year. The GDP gap would be further increased to 2.4 per cent, or $51 billion in today's dollars, if the average delay was reduced by two years. This deregulatory agenda, from its modest to its less modest elements, has an accumulated effect in a whole range of industries. In the one that I have observed it will mean shorter delay times. (Time expired)

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 and the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Amendment Bill 2014. These bills form an important part of our government's deregulation agenda. This is all about cutting red tape, unnecessary and outdated regulation, making life easier for individuals and businesses. All in all, our government has identified $2.1 billion of savings in red-tape reduction. The bills before the House include measures dealing with the abolition and transfer of the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency to the Department of Communications, and also deregulatory measures in relation to extending the Do Not Call Register registration period, reducing the scope of telephone pre-selection obligations, reducing reporting and record keeping requirements on telecommunications companies; and other related amendments.

I have to say in Corangamite, the electorate I so proudly represent, the government's very strong deregulation agenda has been welcomed very warmly. Recently, the small business minister, the member for Dunkley, visited Corangamite and held a small-business forum. There were small businesses from all around the Geelong and greater Corangamite region who attended to talk about their issues. There is nothing more significant for businesses and for individuals than feeling that they are being listened to by government. It was a great opportunity for small businesses to say directly to the minister: 'This is what is concerning me. This is what the problem is.' It is all very well to talk about a deregulation agenda, but there is so much in the way of regulatory burden that is imposed on small businesses.

The only way that we as a government are dealing with this burden and delivering the $2.1 billion in savings—which is what we have delivered so far—is by identifying the specific regulatory burdens, and that is what we are doing. We are systematically and methodically going through these regulatory burdens, addressing them one by one and providing the appropriate remedies. I particularly want to thank the Minister for Small Business for visiting Corangamite, for listening and for sending out the strong message that no matter whether it is a form, not matter whether it is a piece of legislation, we are there as a government addressing these issues. If we strip away unnecessary regulations from businesses, be they small or large, we will free up business owners and people who work in business, we will give more opportunities to create jobs and we will unwind unnecessary red tape, which of course is adding so much to the cost of doing business. In the region I represent, and particularly in Geelong, there are some real challenges at the moment but there are also some great opportunities—there are so many thousands of wonderful small businesses creating jobs—and I know this legislation has been very welcomed.

In my electorate and, I think it is fair to say, right across Australia, there is concern about unsolicited phone calls. There are few things more frustrating than sitting down to eat dinner with the family and the phone rings, and it is one of those calls. We understand that frustration and, again, we are listening. The Australian people have embraced the Do Not Call Register. There are 9.3 million current registrations, with around one million numbers added every year. It has been a remarkable success. More than two-thirds of Australian households have listed their number on the register, demonstrating the popularity of this initiative, which was introduced by the Howard government. We have introduced legislation to change the Do Not Call Register so that it will only be necessary to place a phone number on the register once, as opposed to reregistering after eight years. This change means that households will no longer have to remember to renew their registration. It will help to avoid frustration, it will help to make the whole process more seamless and it will send the very strong message that we are there as a government to make life easier for Australians. While this may seem a reasonably straightforward initiative, it is also important. This significant new initiative will save $3.4 million a year over 10 years in administrative costs. Of course, it is just one more reform as part of the $2.1 billion in savings that we have delivered.

On our second red tape repeal day, on 29 October, we outlined nearly 1,000 pieces of legislation and regulation, totalling over 72,000 pages, which are to be removed. This has been very warmly welcomed by business owners, local community groups and individuals in my electorate and right across the country. It really is making a massive difference. I want to reflect on a really good example—and I would really encourage small business owners in the electorate of Corangamite to see me if they have a problem they want to address—and that really good example is Gary Kerr of Kerr's Hire. He addressed this issue under the previous government, but I think it is fair to say there was not perhaps the appropriate traction that he was hoping for. He raised a particular issue concerning the Personal Property Securities Act, which was forcing hire companies to register short-term leases. This was really imposing an enormous regulatory burden on them. It was time and money that small businesses like Kerr's Hire could not afford. I took these concerns to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Josh Frydenberg, and the government was very responsive. In our very first red tape repeal day, we made some very important changes to the legislation, such that Mr Kerr will now only need to register the goods when they were hired for more than one year rather than the 90-day period. I acknowledge that there is some more work to be done in relation to this particular legislation, and there is a review of the entire act being undertaken at the moment. I am very keen that Mr Kerr and other members of the hire industry are engaged in this process. It is a very good signal that we are absolutely determined to listen to the concerns of businesses and to take the appropriate action.

I want to particularly note the comments of the Chief Executive Officer of the Geelong Chamber of Commerce, Bernadette Uzelac. I have to say it was wonderful to have the Geelong delegation in parliament yesterday—the Committee for Geelong, the chamber, the Mayor of the City of Greater Geelong and other civic leaders—to talk about our great city and our great region. We were all very engaged in looking at what we need to do as a city to grow and to go from strength to strength. As I say, it is all about jobs. What our focus is on and what the coalition government and the Victoria government are firmly focused on is jobs. Ms Uzelac was quoted in a story in the Geelong Independent on 28 March, saying: 'There is a real cost burden for Geelong business owners who spend hours doing unnecessary paperwork or who are forced to pay staff or contractors to comply with irrelevant and outdated regulation. Geelong small businesses need the best opportunity to grow into big businesses.' The chamber represents about 800 different businesses, so it is a very important organisation and perhaps one of the oldest in Australia; it is very significant.

The Prime Minister in this House on 19 March said in relation to Mr Kerr's particular concerns:

… Kerr’s Hire’s concerns, because under the rules as they stand, many short-term leases have to be registered which means more form filling, more time wasting and more unnecessary expense.

…   …   …

… Red Tape Repeal Day will fix this, as it will tackle many other instances of redundant and unnecessary regulation.

…   …   …

… no one likes filling in forms. It costs time, it costs money and it costs jobs, and that’s why Red Tape repeal Day is so important.

The regulatory burden on the telecommunications industry is especially burdensome. A build-up of red tape over almost two decades has left us with a number of outdated and onerous requirements which limit innovation. This bill delivers by lowering the cost burden on industry and on consumers, with expected savings in this regard of some $6.9 million a year.

I wish to commend the Minister for Communications and his parliamentary secretary, who is here in the House to day, for their hard work in working with industry to come up with these regulatory savings. That is what it is all about—strong collaboration, listening to these important stakeholders and taking the appropriate action to deliver the savings and to generate jobs growth. In line with the government's current policy to consolidate smaller agencies to reduce administrative and governance costs, the government, as part of the May 2014 budget, announced its intention to abolish TUSMA and transfer its responsibilities to the Department of Communications. This will enhance lines of accountability, help the government focus on its core responsibilities and priorities, ease the cost burden on business by modestly reducing the amount of the telecommunications industry levy that industry pays to help fund the cost of delivering the universal service obligations and other public interest telecommunications services. It will also create greater certainty for industry by having a single agency responsible for policy and implementation of telecommunications universal service matters.

The bill will also remove arrangements for ACMA to register e-marketing codes, given that this is no longer relevant. Consumers will still enjoy strong consumer protection measures, of course, under the regulatory regime established by the Spam Act of 2003. Preselection allows consumers to choose a different provider for local calls, line rental, long-distance and international calls. There are 10.3 million landlines in service in Australia, but only 30,000 consumers who still choose to vary their service providers under preselection. The amendments contained in this schedule are proposed as deregulatory measure to relax the future requirements to provide for preselection. These bills are important because they reflect our government's strong commitment to reducing the red tape burden and they are important because they are part of $2.1 billion of savings that we are delivering already in just some 12 months. For these reasons I commend the bills to the House.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to 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.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all who have contributed to the debate on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 and the Telecommunications Industry Levy Amendment Bill 2014. It has been a constructive and wide-ranging debate. I note that a number of speakers chose to mention the Abbott government's program to spend $100 million to improve mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia. In that regard, I particularly want to acknowledge the presence in the chamber of the Assistant Minister for Employment, who, with his previous responsibilities, was instrumental in devising that policy which the government is now in the process of implementing. I congratulate him on the development of that policy which is proving to be one that is attracting great interest throughout regional and remote Australia.

The Abbott government came to power in 2013 with a very clear commitment to reduce red tape, to reduce the burden of regulation, to boost productivity, to increase competitiveness, to reduce unnecessary regulation and to lift regulatory performance. The deregulatory measures in this bill respond to this government commitment. This bill delivers significant reform in the communications portfolio through better regulation and lowering the cost burden on industry and consumers by an estimated $6.71 million a year. The measures in this bill strike a balance between maintaining appropriate protections for the community and the public interest on the one hand, while at the same time capturing opportunities to reduce unnecessary costs presently imposed on the industry or the broader community on the other hand.

The bill amends the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 by making the registration period of the Do Not Call Register indefinite. This will reduce the administrative burden on consumers and save $3.4 million a year over 10 years. The Do Not Call Register has proved itself to be a valued consumer protection measure in the Australian community. This measure ensures that consumers who are on the register can continue to have the benefit of this protection without needing to take any further action.

The bill also reduces the administrative burden on industry by relaxing the obligations on telecommunications companies to provide preselection. When telecommunications was first fully opened to competition in 1997, preselection was very important to enable competition in long distance and international services. A customer could have Telstra as his or her local access provider but select Optus or another competitor for long distance or international services. The preselection obligation imposed on Telstra and other local access providers was therefore an important regulatory tool.

The member for Greenway, who has considerable experience in this field, made some comments along the same lines, and I agree with what she had to say. However, technology has changed greatly, as has the nature of competition since 1997. Today, preselection is only a very minor part of the competitive picture—and, hence, it makes sense to very much wind back the nature of the preselection obligation. These amendments will increase flexibility in the delivery of telephony to Australian consumers and recognise the nature of the competitive telecommunications market in this country.

The government proposes to remove schedule 5 from the bill in an amendment I will shortly be moving. The rationale for the measures in schedule 5 was to remove an administratively burdensome set of record keeping and reporting obligations in the Telecommunications Act imposed on telecommunications companies on the grounds that they provided no real consumer benefit. This measure was supported by industry and consumer groups alike. However, some concerns have subsequently been expressed that this measure gave the appearance of reducing transparency and privacy. The government therefore undertook further consultation with a range of industry players. The outcome of that consultation was that the measures in schedule 5, while felt to be desirable from an industry perspective, were recognised to deliver only a modest regulatory saving. At the same time, there was recognition that removing schedule 5, if it would facilitate the passage of the bill and hence the implementation of other important measures contained in it, was a sensible step to take. The removal of schedule 5 will allow the government to consider the deregulation of part 13 of the Telecommunications Act in the broader context of privacy protections and consumer safeguards.

The telecommunications industry is a fast-moving and growing sector. It is also a heavily regulated sector. Over time, some of the regulation applicable to the sector has become outdated due to advances in technology, changes in consumer behaviour and evolution in the structure of the market. The bill before the House responds to many of these changes—including by removing regulation that is now clearly out of date. The bill repeals the provisions that regulate the supply of telephone sex services via a standard telephone service. These provisions have become out of date because of advances in technology and changes in the way that such services are provided and accessed. I want to emphasise that the removal of these provisions is not expected to impact on the risk of children accessing such services. The strong content rules enforced by the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 will remain in place.

The bill also removes the arrangements for the Australian Communications and Media Authority to register e-marketing codes under part 6 of the Telecommunications Act. These provisions have become unnecessary since the ACMA deregistered the eMarketing Code of Practice in June 2014 and it is unlikely that any future codes will be introduced. Importantly, consumers will still receive the necessary protection in this area because the Spam Act 2003 continues to provide appropriate protection measures to deal with e-marketing activities.

A key measure in the bill, which responds to the government's commitment to a smaller and more efficient government and which will result in savings for industry, is the winding up of the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency.    The bill will abolish TUSMA and transfer TUSMA's responsibilities to the Department of Communications. This will reduce administrative and governance costs and create greater certainty for industry. It will mean that there will be a single agency responsible for the policy and management of contracts for the delivery of public interest telecommunications services. This will enhance the lines of accountability, help the government focus on its core responsibilities and priorities and ensure that consumer safeguards are maintained.

The industry levy bill makes consequential amendments to existing industry levy arrangements, reflecting the proposed amendments in the bill which transition the assessment and collection of the industry levy from the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Act 2012 to the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999.

These bills are an important step in this government's ongoing commitment to reduce unnecessary regulatory burden and costs on industry and the broader community while maintaining significant consumer safeguards. I commend these bills to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.