Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

What is the complete nonsense, of course, is that there is no capacity to have discussions with providers of commercial proposals about any regulatory underpinnings they need. What I have ruled out is a complete roll-back of the specific provisions of the Telecommunications Act. I am sad to say that the Labor Party have not ruled that out. The Labor Party have left themselves hostage to whatever request the telecommunications providers might wish to make of this ditzy plan to try to roll out to 98 per cent of the population an $8 billion proposal, which would be lucky to go beyond the major cities.

What I have said about the regulatory regime—and I can take the senator to many public statements I have made—is that my door is open and I am willing to discuss the proposal with telecommunications providers who may want to speak to me about these arrangements. I had never ruled out any minor adjustments to the telecommunications regime. I have always been interested to see where the barriers are, if they exist in the regulatory regime, to have a look at what might provide incentives for companies to invest.

The last amendment to the Telecommunications Act was specifically to allow the kind of investment we are talking about to enable the regulator to take into account the costs and risks to the investor of a risky new commercial rollout, as indeed it is appropriate to do. This is risky. Because it is very expensive, the return on such an investment is not something that is always easy to predict, and that is why no-one has done it so far.

What I have done about the regulatory regime is to say that we continue to look at it and we continue to monitor the position. In fact, I think I can recall Senator Conroy accusing me of not talking to Telstra, being incapable of talking to Telstra and being incapable of speaking to telecommunications providers. When it transpires that not only do I talk to all of the people in my portfolio but I am interested in proposals which are capable of providing a commercial rollout to the population, then, goodness me, what is wrong with that? I think the senator really has posed her question on a false premise. In due course, of course, we will know whether or not these commercial proposals that appear on the face of it to be viable will be able to do something that the Labor Party can only countenance if they throw $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ hard-earned money at it. We think that a more efficient way of doing it is to make sure that the market can work properly, that the regulatory underpinnings work and that in those circumstances the taxpayer will get the same result but not at the expense of $4.7 billion.