Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

He said:

We are not going to let this go without a fight. We understand that it is in the interests of the people of this country that Telstra should not be sold and that it does its job properly in nation building. We will fight for that; we will fight for that until hell freezes over.

The opposition has interjected that it has already happened—absolutely. Of course it has. But it has been very suitable for those on the other side to say, ‘That’s okay, we’ll support the privatisation now because we can get our hands on a big bucket of money to try and win some votes.’

The opposition’s policy has been for years and years not to privatise Telstra and now apparently that was all okay to get their hands on a bucket of money. It is not good enough. On the Future Fund side of things it is also very interesting that now it is okay to apparently steal money out of the Future Fund for any projects that the ALP decide are a really good idea. This is in contrast to the member for Lilley, who said on 15 August 2005:

... we have no guarantee this will be a Future Fund which is a locked box. It will be another pork-barrelling institution. ... If you’re going to have a Future Fund it has to be a locked box.

I wonder what has happened in the last couple of years, because apparently now it does not have to be a locked box anymore. It is absolutely fine for the ALP to get their hands on it, spring the lock, get the money out and use it to buy votes for a plan that Senator Conroy put forward last year that nobody took any notice of. Apparently now, under a new leader, it is worthy of another look.

But what is really appalling about this plan from the ALP is the fact that rural and regional Australians are going to miss out. It would be very interesting to see some more digging around and to ask Senator Conroy: who has done the costings? Where have the costings come from? Who has put the price on how much this is actually going to cost to roll out? Because this is taxpayers’ money we are talking about; it is not coming from some box somewhere. Where has that costing come from? It is very important that we ask that question because again there is no credibility. If we do not know where the costings have come from, there is no credibility.

In terms of where it is going, Senator Conroy throws out 98 per cent of Australia. Once you have a look at maps, you can see how incredibly large that remaining two per cent is. I see that Senator Conroy has not provided us with a single map of where he believes that 98 per cent to be. So we have a plan where we have seen no costings, we have seen no map of where it is going to go to and at the same time it is ripping out $2 billion from the communications fund that this government set up to ensure that rural and regional Australian telecommunications services are up to standard in the future. That has gone.

There is going to be no money left for the bush; it is all going to the cities for a plan that competition will deliver. It will take away all the funding that has been set aside to make sure that rural and regional communities get the services in telecommunications that they deserve. It is not good enough and it is time that Senator Conroy came up with some figures for those costings and the maps so that people around this country, particularly in rural and regional communities, know where they are going to be missing out, because they will be missing out. (Time expired)