I wish to make this submission to the above Committee concerning the proposal to fully privatise Telstra.

I have just returned from three weeks stay in America where I frequently used both public pay phones and private fixed line phones in various States in the US.

If the American fully privatised phone system is an indication of what we will have upon privatising all of Telstra - then we will live to regret it - for the following reasons:-

* Pay phones operated by the various phone companies are not compatible. The phone cards for one company do not work for the others. If you use coins - the cost is extraordinarily high. A call to the other side of Los Angeles for instance is interrupted every thirty seconds requesting another 50c.

* It is impossible to speak to a live operator - all the phone companies use robot speakers. If the robots do not understand what you want - there is nothing you can do about it. And you pay dearly for all of these so called "assistance calls".

* the phone books do not contain all subscriber's numbers - it seems that phone companies have their own directories - which means that you are forced to the trauma of using the robotic directory assistance facility.

* While the cost of mobile phone calls is low compared to Australia - the reverse is the case for fixed phone calls - most local calls are time charged.

* I do not believe that any future federal government would legislate to make phone companies lose money. Future proofing is an unrealistic concept. Governments here have demonstrated that they will not regulate even minor service deficiencies in the banking industry. They will not do it to phone companies either. Rather the reverse is true, the government can, and is, dictating improvement for regional and rural Australia now - only because the corporation is 51% publicly owned.

* It is untrue to say, as National Party Leader Anderson says, that the technical advances made in our telephone system in recent years are due to the partial privatisation of Telstra. When Telstra/Telecom was 100% publicly owned - that corporation possessed world class communication research facilities and led the field in the development of associated hardware and software.

* The continual income stream from a majority public owned Telstra will far exceed the tax revenue from a privatised Telstra - and that income stream will benefit all Australians, not just the shareholders.