Additional Comments submitted
by Senator Scott Ludlam for the Australian Greens
The Australian Greens welcome the opportunity to begin
the process of reversing the worst consequences of the privatisation of
Telstra. The main aim of the bill is to address the horizontal and vertical
integration of Telstra, which has allowed the incumbent to unfairly exercise
market power, ultimately to the detriment of the public interest. While the
Telstra board will decide which form of separation the company will undergo,
the most likely outcome will be a return to public hands of key network infrastructure
which should never have been sold in the first place.
The amendments the Greens will propose to this bill are
intended to strengthen the rights of three distinct interest groups, namely:
-
The
end-users – 22 million Australians who will use the services carried over
telecommunications networks, but most particularly users in rural and regional
areas.
-
The
greatest diversity of market participants – to ensure that the playing field is
level
-
The
workforce of Telstra, protecting their interests during the transition period.
Principles with which the Greens have
approached this bill:
-
The
importance of telecommunications as an essential service, and the
responsibility of providers to uphold universal service obligations;
-
The
potential for low-cost, fast broadband to improve economic prosperity, the
delivery of education and medical services, strengthen social and professional
networks and increase Australia's integration and participation in the
international community;
-
The
need to bridge the digital divides in Australia based on wealth and geography;
-
The
importance of diversity in telecommunications markets, and the need to restrain
large players from abuse of market power;
-
Public
ownership and control of natural monopoly components of telecommunications
networks.
Greens position on the bill:
The
Greens seek Government agreement on the following amendments:
-
Protection of Telstra workforce
The bill is currently silent on the impacts of functional or structural
separation on the Telstra workforce. The Greens believe it is essential to
protect the rights and entitlements of Telstra's workforce to ensure no-one is
worse off after the adjustments to Telstra's structure.
-
Protection of the rights of end-users
The debate over the future of Telstra (and
the market structure of the proposed NBN) has tended to overlook the rights of
the people who will ultimately use the telecommunications services - the
end-users. For this reason the Greens will propose amendments which broaden the
definition of 'Standard Telephone Service' to cover the much larger array of
telecommunications services which now exist, and we will move to make
compensation payments liable under the Customer Service Guarantee (CSG)
automatic rather than relying on customers to apply.
In particular these amendments will strengthen services in regional areas where
services have traditionally been patchy or non-existent.
-
Access determinations to prevail over access
agreements, by application
As
suggested by the Competitive Carriers Coalition and others, access seekers with
prior commercial agreements should be able to fall back on later access
determinations made by the ACCC, creating in effect a 'no disadvantage test' in
access agreements.
-
Independent review of amendments to the TPA after 3
years to examine whether the access regime is functioning
appropriately. This bill grants very wide discretion to the ACCC, to the degree
that rights to procedural fairness and access to merits review by the
Australian Competition Tribunal have been removed. The Greens acknowledge the
reasoning behind these amendments but remain concerned that in solving one
problem (removing the ability of the incumbent to mire access determinations in
endless procedural delays) we will have removed two avenues of redress which
the industry may later regret. A formal review will allow the Government to
assess whether the new access regime is functioning well.
Senator Scott Ludlam
Senator for Western Australia
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