Turnbull lacks leadership on Telstra debate: Conroy

James Riley
Wednesday, 21 October 2009 10:12

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Senator Minchin responded in a statement saying if Government's clear desire was to separate Telstra, it should specifically legislate for that outcome in the legislation.

Although the Opposition plan to try to defer discussion on the reforms has been passed by the Coalition joint party room and by the Shadow Cabinet, Senator Conroy said Turnbull’s involvement in the early Australia ISP Ozemail – a company he helped found in the 1990s – demonstrated he knew better than to oppose regulatory change..

"If you have a look at Ozemail’s public comments when it existed as a separate entity, they were demanding separation (of Telstra)," Senator Conroy said.

"(Ozemail talked about) about the separation of Telstra and the structure of the market. So Malcolm Turnbull knows better. He is just so used to saying no to everything he’s trapped and locked inside a negative approach."

"Why doesn’t Senator Conroy have the courage to attempt to mandate it in his legislation?" Senator Minchin said.

"Instead it is resorting to the cowardly use of legislative blackmail in a bid to force Telstra to break itself up to prop up its dodgy $43 billion NBN proposal, in order to avoid having to pay billions of dollars in compensation.

"Senator Conroy has clearly stated that it 'is the Government's clear desire for Telstra to structurally separate'. If that’s the case why does his bill provide for mandated functional separation, but not structural separation?"

"He has no strength of leadership to lead the Liberal Party out of the 20 century cul de sac it’s in."

"We are determined to press ahead with the National Broadband Network and we are determined to press ahead with the regulatory shake-up, and Telstra is engaged in a constructive discussion with us about this."

"This is an opposition in crisis. It has no leadership on climate change. It has no leadership on a broadband plan. They had 18 … I can give you the names of 18 failed broadband plans that they had in 11 and a half years," he said.

The legislative debate was due to start in the House today, and could be put to the Senate as early as next week.