Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

A fire sale, Senator Campbell. Before I answer that outrageous accusation—and Senator Conroy threw it across the chamber yet again—let me say to the opposition: do not come in here and talk about fire sales of government assets, because when you were in government everything was in a fire sale, from the Commonwealth Bank to Qantas. It was just outrageous how cheap and nasty your sale of those assets was.

Let us take the Commonwealth Bank—talk about needing to be locked up! Talk about misleading the market. Talk about a Treasurer who, had he been the director of a company, would have breached the Corporations Law. The then Treasurer went to the election saying that there would be no sale of the Commonwealth Bank, and of course there was. This was a false prospectus from the start. Talking about fire sales, what did you ever do with your asset sales, other than try to plug the hole of budget deficits? There is much to be said about that, and we have reiterated many times the falseness and the hypocrisy of the opposition when it comes to privatisation.

But in the limited time I have I would like to quickly address the part where they are accusing us of having a fire sale of the T3 shares of Telstra. Let us make it quite clear that the taxpayers and the market will make their own financial judgements. They are quite capable of that. Investors make their own judgements as they consult their financial advisers. But the government has consulted financial advisers with regard to putting some $8 billion of the Telstra shares on the market. Firstly, we believe from advice that this is what the market can digest and, secondly, we are told that now is as good a time as any to sell the shares. (Time expired)