MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Mr GREGG (Deakin) (16:03): Like the member for Fowler, I'm not recommending we go back to the 1990s. I don't think the Commonwealth government should be in the market for a copper network for telecommunications, buying back Telstra of old. I'd like to see cheese TV back, but that's not coming back either.

Times have changed, and we must change with them. But we have learned from history, so the reacquisition of the NBN is a perfect lesson: we own a core piece of telecommunications infrastructure to ensure that there is access around the country and then allow a competitive market to operate where that is possible. That's because we know markets can't work everywhere either.

You need to have effective competition. You need to have real choice among those who are deciding which product or service to acquire. You need to ensure that barriers to entry are appropriate and that the rules are fair.

And you need to ensure the consumers aren't the ones who lose out at the end. We've always had a blend in Australia of a strong private sector and a public sector that is dedicated to providing the services that we know the market alone, in pursuit of a buck, cannot provide, because that doesn't work in every area. But we also believe, as, for example, through Medicare, that a blended approach is sometimes appropriate—that the state will fund an essential service but that there is a role for choice and differentiation as well so that people can choose a doctor of their own and then still pay for that service with their Medicare card.

That involves both private and public sectors working together. We can be the market steward, getting involved where the market isn't able to achieve the desired goal, but, where the market is able in other areas, it can be involved. Again, it is a blended approach, and that works.

We're not members of the Bavarian communist party; we're here to make sure that the right services are available and that we're delivering them in the fairest, most effective and most efficient way possible. That will involve the private and public sectors. But, more importantly, it will involve the community sector, which has not been mentioned enough in this debate.

Important legal and health services are provided by the not-for-profit sector, because they can use their place based services and apply local expertise and insights to deliver services that are right for those communities to deal with their specific needs, and I think proper credit needs to be given to them. Again, government can play a really important role as a partner, ensuring there is an appropriate service mix for those areas.

We know that competition alone won't do the trick. Having lived in the country for many years of my life, I can confirm that that is among the areas where we do need to have government heavily involved. At other times, we need to have universal access standards.

We do that with telecommunications to ensure they're made available. If there are circumstances where that is failing, then we have to look at what appropriate interventions can be brought in. But the idea that we can suddenly go back to the 1990s is a Greens fever dream.

It's not going to happen. It shouldn't happen. We learn from our mistakes.

Of course, this parliament didn't sell the state electricity commission. That was a state decision. In regard to Telstra's move, yes, we might look at history through a different lens now.

But, at the same time, you wouldn't buy back Telstra now either. That would be a completely foolish move. There are opportunity costs with making all of these decisions.

If we were to buy back every privatised asset in history—go back and get Qantas again; go and buy the Commonwealth Bank—we wouldn't be doing a lot more as a government, because that's going to cost a whole lot of the budget, plus more. We have to make sensible decisions in the world we actually live in, not the past that we reminisce about. We have to make sure that we make the most responsible decisions possible to ensure that Australians have the services they need and deserve.

Of course, on this side of the House, we realise the really important role of the Public Service. The nonsense economics that says you can just contract out and save money by adding the interested party from the shareholder or the partner is a dispelled myth. We know that having consultants do the job of APS employees is not a saving; it's a budget trick.

In the longer term it is more expensive, and there are services that we can and need to deliver to ensure they're delivered by people whose job it is to focus on the public interest. That is central when we're delivering essential services, including social services, defence and in all those essential areas. As my colleague before alluded to, even Adam Smith recognised that there is a role for government to deliver some services sometimes.

So we've always got to strike a balance, but we also want to make sure that we have a dynamic economy and a private sector that works in the interests of the Australian people and of workers, and that means we must write the right rules for the game and make sure the settings are in place to have a dynamic and successful competitive market economy while, at the same time, we deliver a great standard of living for the Australian people, because that's what we're here to do.

We're here to make life tomorrow better than it was yesterday, to constantly improve the lives of the Australian people and to make sure that the system is working for Australians so that they can raise a family, confident that their kids are going to have opportunities that they themselves did not have and that their parents could only dream of. That means making the tough calls sometimes and making sure that we strike that balance, and that will always change, depending on the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

So, no, we will not be going back and buying every single privatised asset, but we will always work in the interests of the Australian people.