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

I, too, would like to register my condemnation of the Labor Party for dismantling the $2 billion Communications Fund established by the former coalition government under the T3 sale of Telstra for the purpose of improving rural and regional telecommunications. It was an agreement, as many of the speakers have mentioned tonight, with the rural and regional people, with their representatives at the time. Anyway who knows about T1, T2 and T3 knows that one of the hardest jobs we had in government was to sell any part of Telstra. We not only had the Labor Party standing against us at every level, but in the rural and regional areas, rightly, it was a tough sell. We established two independent inquiries, the Besley inquiry and the Estens inquiry—I do not know in what order; I have forgotten now—to advise the government on the state of telecommunications in rural and regional areas, and they both came up with inadequacies. There were gaps, there did need to be modernising and there did need to be specific funding. We took that recommendation of those two reports.

Under the sale of T3, we set up the $2 billion Communications Fund. Any rural and regional representative in this Senate and in the House knows just how hard it was—be it at branch meetings or community meetings—to convince the people that we should sell the final part of Telstra. It was one of the toughest sells in government, but people took us on trust because, firstly, it was the final down payment on Labor’s debt. It would bring the government debt to zero, which was an enormous achievement. We needed the final sale of Telstra to do that. Secondly, the safeguards would be in place—and strengthened, for that matter. For example, the universal service obligation would be strengthened. Many of the senators here tonight played a part in that. And, thirdly, of course, there would be a dedicated fund in perpetuity, the Communications Fund, to ensure and to future-proof the telecommunications of the rural and regional areas. That was, in parlance, a deal. A deal was done and for that reason the T3 sale went through. It was a sale that did, in fact, achieve every end that we sought, in particular reducing Labor’s debt to zero—quite an achievement in itself.

Tonight we see the dismantling of that fund and we see the dismantling of that deal. It reminds me very much of a former senator here, the legendary numbers man Senator Richardson, who blew the whistle on Labor—it was probably one of the more honest moments of his life—when he said, in his memoirs, Whatever it takes, that the Labor Party had long worked out long ago that only about one per cent of the farmers will ever vote for Labor and, therefore, their cabinet decisions were undertaken accordingly. That is exactly what we are seeing here tonight—that the rural and regional people are being cheated by Labor because they do not see any purpose or any use in the rural and regional people because they just do not vote for them. That analysis has been carried out by the Rudd government, because to date, within 12 months—and I will not take the time to list the achievements of bush bashing, of farmer hating—the Rudd government has outdone the Hawke-Keating government when it comes to running down the rural and regional areas. This is a prime example. Tonight I was pleased to hear the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Minchin, say that, on the re-election of a coalition government, this fund would be re-established. The rural and regional people will remember that.