In an interview with Anne Delaney on the ABC's local Riverina radio station's Local Riverina News program, Citizens against Selling Telstra (CAST) convenor, James Sinnamon urged rural Coalition MP's to vote against the Government's privatisation legislation as it now stands.

The interview was conducted in response to a media release in which CAST had urged independent MP Tony Windsor to move an amendment to the Government's privatisation legislation. This amendment would require the full privatisation of Telstra to be conditional on a majority of the Australian public voting for it in a plebiscite to be held concurrently with next Federal election.

When asked how CAST would respond if the majority of Australians were to vote for privatisation in the plebiscite, Mr Sinnamon responded, "of course, in a democracy we are bound to respect the wishes of the majority. Nevertheless, such a result would not change CAST's own opposition to privatisation."¹

However, he added that all opinion polls indicated strong public opposition to privatisation. During Communications Minister Senator Coonan's recent tour to sell privatisation to rural Australia, people in community after community had expressed dismay and frustration at the "disintegrating phone lines and woefully inadequate maintenance"². Whilst it was not reported if rural residents were asked directly if they favoured privatisation, he could find almost no evidence of support for privatisation being shown during the tour.

Mr Sinnamon pointed the silence of most Liberal and National candidates on the issue of privatisation during the previous year's election campaign, that is, except for a number of candidates who said they were opposed to privatisation. The Prime Minister, himself, only mentioned Telstra on two occasions of which Mr Sinnamon was aware and never mentioned the word Telstra in any of his major speeches.

So, there could be little reason to believe that the Coalition won the elections because of popular support for privatisation. Instead, it appeared that the Government parties had succeeded in focussing the attention of the electorate towards other issues including, for example, the threat of interest rate rises that they said would occur if Labor were to won.

He noted that the Government had got it wrong in late 2002 when, in trying to get its legislation passed by the Senate, it had argued that the standard of rural services were satisfactory, and clearly, those standards are not satisfactory, even today. Why not, then, allow rural Australians, themselves, and, indeed, all Australians, to be the final arbiters of whether or not services are 'up to scratch'?

At the conclusion of the interview, Mr Sinnamon suggested listeners contact their local members and urge them to oppose the privatisation legislation and to have the legislation amended to enable the plebiscite. He noted the very good stances taken, in the past, by members such as Kay Hull and Alby Schultz, but it was necessary for them to maintain those strong stances against privatisation.

Ann Delaney asked, whether Mr. Sinnamon was suggesting that these members cross the floor and vote with the Labor Party, Mr. Sinnamon replied, "yes, they should. They shouldn't worry about what the Labor Party has done in the past. They should just focus on doing the right thing by their constituents."