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Compere & Reporter: Tony Jones

TONY JONES: Well, politicians from the major parties have been reluctant to comment on the spying allegations, not so the Democrats.

I spoke a short time ago to Senator Vicki Bourne, the Democrat spokesperson on communications.

Can I get your reaction first of all to the spying allegations aired last night on the implications if they are proven.

SENATOR VICKI BOURNE: If they're proven, it's fairly shocking, really.

I think the implications for the Australian public's view of Singapore and of our neighbours would be reasonably significant and it is something that I think we need to know about.

TONY JONES: You asked several questions about this in relation to SingTel's takeover bid for Optus in the Senate today.

Senator Kemp told you that SingTel has given undertakings to defence and is negotiating undertaking with Australian security agencies.

Are you satisfied with that?

SENATOR VICKI BOURNE: I think that we need to know a lot more about what sort of undertakings have been given.

We need to know a lot more about the basis on which the government and the Treasurer in particular are going to make this decision and that needs to be a lot more public.

I know that they can't tell us everything, but surely they can tell us an awful lot of that.

TONY JONES: Should there be a public investigation of these allegations before a decision is made?

SENATOR VICKI BOURNE: I think that is a bit of a difficult one because we're just not sure what sort of toes we would be treading on, but I think there should be some sort of explanation made and some sort of explanation of exactly what has happened in the past to look at this, to work out exactly whether this is happening and find out what they can about the whole thing.

It sounds from what was being said yesterday as if it has been going on for an awfully long time and that's pretty scary.

TONY JONES: Doesn't the fact that SingTel is so closely linked to the ruling oligarchy in Singapore and to the military mean that we should look at it differently than other corporations making takeover bids?

SENATOR VICKI BOURNE: I think that has to be taken into account.

Obviously in Singapore the government, the military and large corporations such as SingTel, which is virtually a government corporation and even the more private ones, are very closely intertwined and I think that does have to be taken into account.

TONY JONES: Particularly when a communications satellite is involved, as in the Optus takeover?

SENATOR VICKI BOURNE: The satellite is, it is a bit of a worry.

The C1 would hold half defence and half ordinary old telephone so your and my telephone conversations if we were on Optus and a bit if we were on Telstra because they actually do take some time from Optus off that satellite, would be going through that satellite.

I would hope that we would be able to have secure conversations and we would be able to do things by e-mail that were very secure.

But I would want to be assured of that.

I would want to know what the government believes makes that safe and makes that secure.

I want to be reassured and nobody's reassuring me on that.

TONY JONES: There is a lot at stake here though for there Treasurer, isn't there?

He's already knocked back the Woodside bid and now he's faced with another one.

He's going to be very concerned about what the markets think if they knock back this Singapore bid ?

SENATOR VICKI BOURNE: He will be and he will have to take that into consideration.

He'll also be very concerned about the public message because we all know we're coming up on an election and he'll have to take that into consideration as well.

I hope that the one thing that he really takes into consideration is whether this really is in the best interests of Australians.

TONY JONES: All right Vicki Bourne, we'll leave it there.

Thank you for joining us tonight on Lateline.

SENATOR VICKI BOURNE: Thanks Tony.