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

I thank Senator Fisher for her question. None of the amendments that are being put forward are controversial. In fact, the first two groups of amendments were recommended by the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee in its report on the bills. They were actually recommended. So they were discussed by the Senate committee, which is the proper place for it to happen, and we have taken up some of the recommendations.

The first group of amendments will enable TUSMA, the new statutory authority set up by one of the bills, to disclose information to the Telecommunications Industry Ombuds­man, the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee and the secretary of the department; the second group of amendments provides that the TUSMA board must include a person with knowledge of consumer affairs; and the third group of amendments relates to the role of TUSMA in managing the migration of voice-only customers from the Telstra copper network to the NBN. The migration of these customers will be helped if the service pro­viders of those customers provide customer information to TUSMA. To do so at the moment, however, may breach the statutory privacy and confidentiality obligations. These amendments enable the provision of information and overcome those issues. A related set of amendments permit disclosure by service providers of information to TUSMA where this may assist TUSMA in carrying out any of its functions or exercising any of its powers. These are similar to arrangements that currently allow information to be disclosed to the ACMA, the ACCC and the TIO.

Once again there was a bit of colour and movement on that side of the chamber, with suggestions that it was not discussed or debated, yet two-thirds of these amendments were actually recommended by a Senate committee that examined this at some length—which I am sure you were involved in, Senator Fisher. Possibly you may not have been, so I may be doing you a disservice. I appreciate that you did have some time off, so you may not have participated all the way through that committee. But this was certainly canvassed by a Senate committee.

It is no surprise to see Senator Macdonald once again demonstrating the hypocrisy of the position of those opposite on the National Broadband Network and the legislation that surrounds it. What this legislation does, for the first time, is correct the mistakes of the previous Howard government when it privatised Telstra as a fully vertically integrated monopoly. You said to Telstra, 'It's your job to make sure the phone boxes stay out there in the broader community. It's your job to manage all of the infrastructure of emergency services on your copper network.' This legislation—