Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak in the House today in support of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. The bill protects the $2 billion Communications Fund that the government put aside from the proceeds of the full sale of Telstra. This legislation is very important, because we know there are bandits on the other side of the House who, if they ever came to this side of the House, would raid this fund and destroy it for future generations. So this legislation is extremely important. Anyone out there in the community who is listening to this debate today should understand that we are doing this to ensure that this fund cannot be raided by any future government.

This money was put aside when the government fully privatised Telstra. I would like to recap the history of the fund. It is well known by many across Australia that the National Party were very much opposed to the full sale of Telstra unless we could have agreement with the government on certain policy principles. They were very sound principles. They were about ensuring that, on the basis of parity of service and parity of price, all Australians could have access to high-quality communications and new technologies as they became available. One of those policy principles was not about picking technologies but about ensuring that money would be available should relevant technologies be developed in the future and the market failed to provide them. That is what the fund is about. It is about ensuring that an income stream is available from the $2 billion Communications Fund so that future communities are never left behind. I am reminded at this moment of the situation we confronted when we came to government. The previous Labor government had abolished by law in this place and in the Senate the very successful and usable analog mobile phone service. It was a particularly good technology in rural and regional areas because of the distance that it could cover. It was a very good service, but it was abolished by the Labor Party without there being any alternative to replace it.

I remind people living in rural and regional Australia of the Labor Party’s policy at that time. And the Labor Party do not provide solutions for the people of rural and regional Australia in their amendments to this legislation. What they propose in their policies is to raid the Future Fund completely, spend the money and leave nothing for future generations to ensure that, when markets fail in the future, they do not have to go back to Treasury to get the money. The money that we have put aside will provide that income stream, but the Labor policy is to just grab that money and spend it and not spend it in rural and remote parts of Australia. I think Labor’s policy will cover 75 per cent of the people of Australia, not 100 per cent.

There are market failures in Australia when it comes to a whole range of services, but nothing could be more important for people living in rural and remote Australia, or anywhere in Australia, than high-quality communications services now and into the future. Roads are important and access to a whole range of other infrastructure is important, but if there is one technology that breaks down the tyranny of distance it is high-quality communications networks. If you have them, you are only as far away from the best access to medicine, education, counselling services or any business activity you might like to conduct as the technology that connects you to the rest of the world.

One of the technologies that I believe is going to meet the communications needs of rural and remote Australians into the future is optic fibre cable. The copper network across Australia has been providing a conduit between people and businesses since the overland telegraph line went from Adelaide through to Darwin. Copper line was used then. Today it is optic fibre. I would like to think we will be able to build a national network once we are able to move forward and utilise the $400 million income stream that will come from the earnings of the Future Fund.

I mentioned market failure a moment ago. As you would know, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Haase, holding a very large rural electorate in Western Australia with very large mining communities—I have a similar electorate in many ways—there have been market failures since prior to Federation. I heard the member for Grey and, I think, the member for New England mention their experiences living on the land and having to repair their own party lines. We really have come a long way. Whereas once upon a time people in rural communities built their own telephone lines to the local exchange, today, thank heavens, the national network, through various technologies, goes right out to very remote homesteads and communities.

I have remote communities such as Birdsville and Bedourie out in the west of my electorate. Birdsville is a very small community in the Diamantina shire. I believe, and I am sure you do too, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, that people in these communities should be treated just the same as any other Australians in relation to access to and parity of service and price of technologies and communications in the future. But I often remind myself and my colleagues that until 1984 the people of Birdsville did not have any telecommunications access other than a two-way radio set through the Royal Flying Doctor Service. When they did get their first telephone service into the community, via satellite, they themselves raised half of the money to bring it to their community. This was back in 1984. It is not very long ago in history. But it demonstrates that, where markets fail in the future to provide communications services and new technologies, there is a need for government to step in and provide taxpayer funds to assist communities, to ensure that they are part of the Australian network.

I welcome the fact that, under the Australia Connected package, 99 per cent of Australia will get access to high-speed broadband. It will be through a variety of technologies. I have never been one to pick the technology. I always hope that the market will provide the solution. In this case, the Optus and Elders consortium was successful in its bid. It will receive some $930 million or $940 million from the government and will put forward a similar amount itself. But this demonstrated to me yet again that there are areas where the market fails. Some one per cent of Australians will not greatly benefit from that Australia Connected package. There are towns in my electorate that have ADSL. There are towns that only have dial-up access. They are part of that one per cent. Once again it shows that there is a market failure. It identifies that, even with 99 per cent of Australians gaining access to high-speed internet, which I welcome, one per cent are going to be left behind. I know it is very difficult to address those needs for those communities. I know there is a challenge in how we provide the technology to ensure that those communities are not left behind. I note in the minister’s releases that we will continue—and I welcome it—the $2,750 satellite subsidy to allow fast internet speed. It will not be massively fast by comparison with what fibre to the node could provide in cities, but we will continue to provide that subsidy to allow that service.

I think there will always be some remote homesteads for which satellite is going to be the only solution. But I am also sure that there are small communities that would greatly benefit from being connected by optic fibre to the main network. Telemedicine could be brought into those communities with a much improved quality of the signal through optic fibre. As I said a moment ago, just as the copper wire has served us well for more than 100 years, I believe for the next 100 years it is going to be optic fibre that will future proof the communications needs through the national network.

In order for the government to be able to spend the $400 million we need to, as per the act, conduct a review of communications needs similar to the Besley and Estens inquiries and come forward with recommendations of the identified need. That committee is going to have a huge challenge in front of it. I think it is important that on that committee we have people who understand the communities like the ones you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Haase, and I represent. I would hope that we would be able to announce it shortly, but I would want to make sure that on that committee we had people who actually live in those rural and remote parts of Australia and people who conduct their business there. It is terribly important that we have people with an understanding of the importance of communications to our rural and remote communities—that one per cent of Australians who are not greatly benefiting from the Australia Connected package. I look forward to the announcement, whenever it might be.

I know that the people who are chosen by the minister to conduct that review have an enormous challenge in front of them. They will have to look at a very large part of Australia, probably 98 per cent of the landmass, including the islands off the mainland of Australia and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. They will have a massive job in front of them, but I am confident that, if we have the right people there—people who have an understanding of those communities, who have lived and worked in rural and remote parts of Australia—they will come forward with recommendations that will address their needs and we will be able to see this $400 million spent wisely, ensuring that we deliver on one of the very core policy principles that the National Party put up before we were able to support the full sale of Telstra: a parity of service and a parity of price with urban Australia. I am sure you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Haase, would concur that that is one of the obligations that we as members of parliament have to ensure we deliver on.

I have looked at the amendment that the Labor Party wish to bring forward and I cannot support any of it. It is quite hypocritical of the Labor Party to suggest that what they want to do is invest money so that:

(e)

98% of Australians, including those in rural and regional areas, have access to future proof telecommunications technology;

That does not say much; it is mealy-mouthed, in my mind. Out in the bush in my electorate they would soon snap the head off any politician who used words like that. It continues:

(f)

the two per cent of people that the new fibre to node network will not reach have a standard of service ...

In the universal service obligation, a standard service is a telephone that works with access to local calls at a regulated price. That is what the Labor Party is offering that two per cent—a standard service. It goes on to say:

depending on the available technology ...

We all know what technology is available today. Perhaps they want to pick a technology, but we know what they are like when it comes to technology. They were the party that abolished the analog mobile telephone network without an adequate replacement. So I warn the people of rural and remote parts of Australia and many regional communities that, if the Labor Party were ever elected to govern this country, they would gut the Future Fund, spend it in one hit and some $2 billion would be gone. Future generations would then have to fund any upgrade they wanted for the communities outside of the metropolitan areas and certainly for the two per cent of Australians they suggest the new fibre-to-the-node network will not reach. They would be left behind forever under a Labor Party government.

Finally, in relation to Telstra and Telstra Country Wide, one of the other conditions that the National Party were insisting on was that, as part of those policy principles, Telstra, as the universal service provider, have a physical presence in rural and regional areas of Australia. We were concerned because, when the Labor Party was in government and they moved to corporatise Telecom—as it was called in those days—Telecom took the opportunity to withdraw their physical presence from rural areas of Australia and go to the big regional centres, the capital cities. When this government came to power, the National Party wanted to make sure, through the process of looking at the sale of Telstra bill, that Telstra, as a condition of their licence, maintained a physical presence in rural and regional areas of Australia. In my own electorate I have two such Telstra Country Wide offices, one in my home town of Roma and another one in Longreach. They are an invaluable conduit to the people, many of them, obviously, the ones that they have to service.

I have recently been travelling with Telstra Country Wide into many rural, regional and very remote parts of my electorate, testing out the CDMA network and the Next G network and comparing those two networks. In my electorate I have witnessed problems with handsets for the Next G network, which are not really suitable for operating in rural and remote parts of Australia. I have also seen that, unless you have a good aerial on your motor vehicle and a car kit, you are not going to get the same sort of signal that you would get in town or in a capital city. Just like the radio in our cars, if you put the aerial down and try to listen to the radio when you get out to the limits of the broadcast beam, you find that you are flat out hearing the radio. The same principle applies to the mobile phone network. When you are travelling in rural and remote parts of Australia, you need a good high-gain aerial and a car kit, and you find that many handsets are not necessarily suitable to our areas.

The Telstra Country Wide network is providing services out in rural and remote parts of Australia. I want to continue to work with Telstra, because of their physical presence in my electorate, to provide solutions to the Next G network problems. The Telstra Country Wide people working in my electorate are dedicated to providing that service and reliability in communications out in my part of the country.

I reject the amendment moved by the Labor Party. I commend the bill to the House because it will secure the Future Fund for generations, ensuring that the future communication needs of rural Australia will be met.

See this speech in context