Senator Alston, would it be possible to means test phone users. What criteria could be used?
SENATOR RICHARD ALSTON: Well Mark, I think the starting point is to understand that there’s a price cap regime in place at the present time which expires on the 1st July, and what we want to do is to review that to reflect a number of changes that have taken place in the market and at the same time allow some rebalancing and what that would involve is allowing line rentals to rise in a gradual process over a period of some years and then, at the same time, ensure that call prices fall. So for all users, whether they are high income or low income, a significant reduction in call charges should be pretty fair compensation for a gradual increase in line rentals. For low income users, I think what we need to do is to ensure that they’re protected from the effects of rebalancing and the composition of the packages that will be on offer is currently under consideration. We’ve had very encouraging discussions with a number of welfare organisations and I think we can strike a balance that will
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