Senate delays to the Telstra separation legislation will not impact negotiations with the company, Communications minister Stephen Conroy said. With the contentious Competition and Consumer Safeguards Bill now off the legislative agenda until Parliament resumes in 2010, Conroy told CommsDay he was “disappointed” the bill would not be passed before the year’s end.

“I’m very disappointed,” Conroy said, but added the delays would not derail ongoing talks between Telstra and NBNCo. “The discussion with Telstra started before the legislation was tabled. They continue while we’re waiting for it to be passed.”

“They started before the legislation was tabled and they’ll go on after the legislation is passed,” he added. “We are, as we have said all along and as Telstra have said all along, engaged in constructive discussions and we look forward to passing the legislation early in the new year but this is a disappointing outcome for Australian consumers.”

Conroy said end users had been the biggest losers as a result of infighting within the federal opposition. “It’s consumers that have missed out after eleven and a half years of policy indolence, and the past two years of it being a policy-free zone opposition,” he said.

“What the opposition and Nick Minchin have achieved is to reduce choice for consumers, reduce consumer protections, and [reduce] the ACCC’s capacity to regulate this sector, which means less innovation, higher prices, and less choice for Australian consumers because Nick Minchin was engaged in his own personal war with Malcolm Turnbull. The opposition are a rabble – it’s been over two years, still no policies on any issue in the communications sector.”

Luke Coleman