22nd Oct 2009, 1:48 PM – Representatives Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 — Second Reading - Read a second time

The majority voted in favour of a motion to read the bill for a second time.(Read more about the stages that a bill must pass through to become law here. ) This means that the majority agree with the main idea of the bill and that they can now discuss it in more detail.

Background to the bill

The bill relates to the regulation of consumer protection, competition and licensing in telecommunications markets. According to the bills digest, significant changes made by the bill include:

• causing Telstra to be structurally or functionally separated in order to improve competition within the telecommunications markets
• reduce the susceptibility of the telecommunications access regime to deliberate delay and obstruction
• removing a technical impediment to the operation of the anti-competitive conduct regime applying to telecommunications markets
• making the universal service obligation (USO) and customer service guarantee (CSG) clearer and so more enforceable
• extending the obligation to provide priority assistance to those with life threatening conditions to service providers other than Telstra
• enabling breaches of civil penalty provisions - including some concerning the USO and the CSG - to be dealt with by the issue of infringement notices.(Read more about these changes in the bills digest (678 KB).)