Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following are matters of urgency:

(1)

Telstra’s secret plans to remove at least 5 000 payphones throughout Australia, including nearly 1 300 phones in rural and regional Australia;

(2)

The revelations that under the current regulatory regime Telstra would be able to remove around 25 000 of its 32 000 payphones;

(3)

The fact that the Minister was unaware of Telstra’s plans before they were reported in the media;

(4)

Telstra’s failure to reveal these plans under questioning on the issue during Senate Estimates; and

(5)

The fact that the Government’s privatisation agenda is already resulting in telecommunications services throughout Australia being slashed.

I rise today to discuss the disturbing revelations of Telstra’s plans for its 32,000 payphones throughout Australia. Last week we learned, not through the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts but through a leak to the Australian Financial Review, that Telstra has decided to dump 5,000 payphones across the country. These cuts amount to a 15 per cent reduction in the total number of payphones operated by Telstra in Australia. More disturbingly, the impact of these service cuts will be felt most keenly in rural and regional Australia, where many areas will experience a 50 per cent reduction in the number of payphones in their area.

The loss of these payphones may not seem like a dramatic issue to the chattering classes with their offices on Collins Street. However, these payphones are a lifeline to many people in Australian society. They are an essential service to the young and the elderly in our community. Payphones are a necessity for those Australians who are unable to make use of mobile phones for either financial or coverage reasons. They are often used by those in our community who are most in need. Kids Help Line has stated that 30 per cent of the calls it receives each year are from payphones—a point that makes sense when you consider that children who are in need of this service are often not in a family environment that would allow them to make such a call from home. Anyone with a young family will appreciate the importance of payphones to enable children who are too young to be given a mobile phone to call home and ask for a lift from soccer, the movies or an unsafe situation.

Payphones are also essential for allowing the marginalised and homeless in our community to stay in contact with society. Recent developments in voice mail services have enabled homeless people to be contactable by phone through payphones, allowing them to stay in touch with potential employers, service providers and landlords. Itinerant workers in outback Australia also rely on these payphones for staying in contact with their families and employers while working in isolated areas. Telstra’s plan for its payphones will leave these vulnerable people without any options for communications services.

While it might not be obvious to some, these payphones do provide an essential community service. Unfortunately, they are not profit drivers for Telstra and, as such, post privatisation, they will be on the chopping block. This is, of course, one of the many reasons why the Labor Party opposed the privatisation of Telstra. The current management of Telstra is pursuing exactly the strategy that one would expect of a private company—the maximisation of the bottom line. The provision of essential community services is coming a poor second to propping up the share price.

We all know what has been going on with the Telstra debate. We all know that this government has been engaged in a conspiracy with the previous board and management of Telstra to dividend-strip Telstra and take the profits it had earned over the last 10 long years of the Howard government. Instead of reinvesting its profits in its own network, it has been dividend-stripped by this government. All of the money has gone to the shareholders, including the government, to prop up the share price. Despite all of that, and despite flogging off Telstra 2—T2, as it is known—for $7.40, the price of Telstra shares languishes below $4 today. So all of the efforts of the government and the previous board and management of Telstra have failed miserably to deal with the fundamental lack of investment and lack of foresight by the Telstra management. It has been an ideological binge specifically designed to prop up the share price. That is all it has been.

So it is no surprise that unprofitable but essential community services like these payphones will be the first to go post privatisation. Do not say you were not warned. Do not come into the chamber and cry crocodile tears. Did we all see the photos in the newspapers last week of Senator Coonan slamming her fist on the desk and hear her demanding to know what was going on and saying, ‘I have called in Telstra today’? And what did Sol Trujillo have to say for himself at the interview he did after that? He said, ‘Senator Coonan has given me the green light to get rid of uneconomic phones.’ As usual, the minister talked tough one day and rolled over to Telstra the next, just as has been happening for the last six months since Telstra was taken over by Mr Trujillo.

The protestations of outrage from coalition members over the past weeks have been pathetic. We have seen Senator Barnaby ‘I won’t sell Telstra under any circumstances’ Joyce trying to cover for the fact that he talked tough but that in the end ‘Backdown Barnaby’ gave in and voted for the sale of Telstra. That is why he has to cry now. That is why Senator Fiona Nash has gone missing from today’s debate. I am pleased to see in the chamber some people who I know care about some of these issues: Senator Adams, welcome. But Senator Nash and Senator Joyce have run away. Senator Ronaldson, I am sure your mum will be watching, as usual, for your contribution. You do not need my help to publicise yourself; you have your mum on the job. But, having said that, you do have a genuine interest in trying to hold Telstra to account. It is just disappointing that you have failed so miserably.

What we need is a wake-up call, and last week’s leaked document should be that wake-up call. It should be a wake-up call to Senator Robertson, Senator Adams, Senator Joyce and Senator Nash because, as we saw at the Senate estimates, we were once again completely misled by the evidence given. I have read some of Senator Adams’s comments over the weekend where she was saying, ‘I did ask a question about this.’ Funnily enough, Senator Adams, they did not tell you the truth, did they? No. And what are you going to do about it? Nothing. You are going to sit here. You will talk a lot of pious words and express a lot of outrage but, in the end, just like Senator Ronaldson, you will do nothing. You will keep telling Senator Minchin and Senator Coonan to sell it. So do not cry crocodile tears in the chamber for the people of Western Australia who are going to lose their mobile phones, because you, Senator Ronaldson, Senator Joyce and Senator Nash, are the cause of it. Each and every one of you put up your hand to sell Telstra.

The sale of Telstra was always going to result in Telstra’s management slashing services in this way. That is what private companies do. Telstra’s payphone plans are just the first wave of service cuts that will occur as a result of the Telstra sale. Labor warned that a privatised Telstra would leave town faster than the banks and it is now doing so at a breakneck speed. It was inevitable that a fully privatised Telstra would cut back essential services in favour of fattening up the bottom line. Liberal and National MPs who voted for the privatisation of Telstra now have to accept the consequences of their votes with no crocodile tears. They should be honest with the electorate and accept responsibility for the inevitable results of what they voted for. Crocodile tears from the communications minister, Senator Coonan, will do nothing to lessen the impact of these service cuts on their communities. The only thing that will save services for those communities is for the government to abandon its extreme privatisation agenda. So, if you want to make a difference, Senator Ronaldson, to the communities that you or Senator Adams are going to cry for, stand up today and say, ‘It’s time the government had a rethink.’ That is the only thing that is going to save these phones—nothing else.

Unfortunately, Telstra’s secret plan to dump 5,000 payphones post privatisation is just the tip of the problem. The documents obtained by the Financial Review reveal that Telstra originally planned to dump 25,000 of its 30,000 payphones—that is 25,000 out of 30,000—and believe that the existing regulations do not stop them. That is the truly frightening part of this, and you all signed up to it. That is what Telstra believe, and the minister was given the opportunity in question time today to say, ‘No, that is wrong.’ Telstra believe the existing regulations will allow them to dump up to 25,000 payphones in Australia. When the minister had the chance to deny that, she went missing again. Senator Coonan today gave the green light to Telstra to slash and burn payphones in this country. Sol Trujillo has admitted it again. He is quite an honest man, Sol. He is not interested in the misleading attempts by some senators in this chamber to pretend that they care. Sol says it as he sees it. He repeats what he is told. Senator Coonan in question time today gave a green light to Telstra to slash and burn payphones in Australia. That is a fact. That is what Hansard will show.

The universal service obligation, a law that is supposed to guarantee a minimum level of basic service for Australians, currently allows the number of payphones in Australia to be reduced by more than 80 per cent. The universal service obligation that the government intends to enforce on Telstra is a plan that, as I said, allows payphones to be slashed by 80 per cent. Incredibly, the local presence plan, which the government claims ensures Telstra’s presence in the bush, does nothing to prevent the number of payphones in rural and regional Australia being cut by up to 50 per cent in many areas. That is right, believe it or not: Senator Coonan’s local presence plan does nothing to stop a 50 per cent cut of payphones in many regional and rural centres. In light of these revelations, the Howard government’s claim that the government would be able to ensure that a fully privatised Telstra maintained adequate services in the bush now lies in ruins. If the government has been unable to guarantee the provision of an essential service like payphones post privatisation, what other services can Australians expect to be slashed in the coming years?

Telstra executive Kate McKenzie belled the cat when she stated that the government’s new regulation to protect service levels in rural and regional Australia will ‘achieve very little except more words on paper’. So do not let us have any crocodile tears today, Senator Ronaldson and Senator Adams. Telstra is making it perfectly clear that it is nothing more than words on paper. The government’s local presence plan has been proven by this debacle to be completely useless. The plan does not include one single binding commitment from Telstra to maintain service levels and has not deterred Telstra from planning to slash these payphone services in the slightest. That is just the truth—not one single binding commitment from Telstra.

What has been the response of the Howard government to these cuts? It has not abandoned its extreme privatisation agenda that is driving the cuts. It has not acted to actually give teeth to Telstra’s local presence obligations and include some binding commitments from the company with respect to service levels. No! We do not want to bind Telstra to meet their obligations. Instead, the minister, Senator Helen Coonan, has asked Telstra to provide her with a list of the phone booths that it intends to remove. When we asked for it to be tabled, when we asked for the map, when we asked in question time today for the list of 5,000 phone booths to go, the minister joined the cover-up. The minister would not table the list or the map because she is engaged in rolling over to Telstra, and it would be too embarrassing. So, instead of acting to stop these service cuts, the minister is asking Telstra to tell her in advance the services that it is going to slash. Maybe this is just so that it can make sure that it is in as few marginal government seats as possible. I am a cynic. Come clean, Senator Coonan. Do not cover this up. Come clean with the Australian community. Let us have the map, let us have the list and bring on the debate. (Time expired)