Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Coming from an area of regional Queensland, I welcome the opportunity to speak today about the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. Those of us who grew up in regional or rural Australia, as I did, know the value of telecommunications and know about the advances that are being made in telecommunications every day. As I recall, my phone number when I first was married was Boondooma 7H. My father and mother and my wife and I shared a party line, with a phone that was connected to a manual exchange which operated on a 24-hour basis but was rarely used after 9 pm and was certainly not used before 7 am unless there was an emergency. Not only were those communications seen as essential at that time but we were grateful for what we had. When my parents moved to that property in 1953, they had no telephone at all. In fact, during the cyclone in 1953, to make a phone call my mother had to walk two kilometres pushing a pram with my elder brother in it and our two elder siblings at foot.

So in my lifetime I have seen telecommunications come a long way. In particular, I have seen their ability to allow businesses to communicate, to gain information and to communicate with their customer base. I have seen their ability to allow people to communicate across very long distances, and also across short distances, in an emergency very quickly. I remember the first major advance in communications in our district as being the introduction of UHF two-way radios. A great thing they were, because we then connected our tractor fleet to them and I was able to call my wife and ask her to bring down this or that particular spare part or even an extra biscuit for afternoon tea if I thought I was really on my luck that day.

We then saw telecommunications really move into the modern era: that being the introduction of mobile phones, followed very quickly by the internet. The advances of the internet and the ability of regional areas to access reasonable internet facilities are that this amendment bill could severely impact. The amendment proposed is yet another stark revelation of the attitude of the Rudd government towards the hardworking communities of rural and regional Australia, such as the community I am proud to have been born into, and that I am now proud to represent, and the communities I have got to know through a range of professions prior to and certainly since coming to this place. They are communities of men and women who know what it is to work very hard and, dare I say, also know what it is like to play very hard. They are men and women who endure a great deal of hardship with the belief that they will be able to earn a real income, a real living, based not only on their own skills but also on the use of whatever technology is available to them.

As a member of parliament whose electorate is based around one of Australia’s largest regional cities—in fact, Australia’s largest inland provincial city—and extends to one of Queensland’s real rural heartlands, I can say that the value of communications resources to the people of regional Australia cannot be overstated. They are resources that the previous coalition government acknowledged. That led to the establishment of the $2 billion Communications Fund, part of a package to ensure the ongoing adequacy of telecommunications services in rural and regional Australia.

We know that there will be further advances in technology that we cannot even imagine today. We know that technology will continue to develop and evolve. The great advances that I have just mentioned that have occurred in my short lifetime will be replicated many times over with technology that will not only continue to improve communications in the bush but, most importantly, continue to improve communications for all Australia. But we also know that, based on the density of population, many of those technologies will not be delivered to the bush unless there is a long-term, adequate funding mechanism to ensure that.

This amendment legislation attacks the very heart of what the previous government acknowledged through the establishment of the $2 billion Communications Fund, a package to ensure the ongoing adequacy of telecommunications in regional Australia. The interest from that fund, estimated to be up to $400 million every three years, was to be quarantined to be used to finance the government’s response to independent reviews of regional communications services.

In September 2007, the coalition government reinforced the Communications Fund’s position as a perpetual fund with the passage of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. Rural and remote communities welcomed the former coalition government’s commitment to ensuring that they would have access to modern telecommunications services with targeted assistance that would be available not just as a one-off initiative. Not only were they comfortable with this and very happy to see that fund established but they also felt secure that their future needs would be addressed.

If you live in a district like the one where I grew up, where the population now is probably a quarter of what it was when I was there, you can look forward to a situation where the density of population in regional Australia will, at best, hold, if not decline. In that situation, to expect that new technology will be installed on a commercial basis is unrealistic because there simply will not be enough people to pay for it. The spending of the resources from the Communications Fund was tied to the recommendations for a regular and independent review of the needs of regional and remote areas and then the addressing of those needs. The first review is currently underway, under the chairmanship of Dr Bill Glasson AO, and is looking at the progress of upgrades of telecommunications services and at delivering recommendations as to how the interest from the fund could be best spent.

Mr Deputy Speaker, do not be led to believe that there have not been significant advances in regional telecommunications; there have been. Under our government, access to the internet and to mobile phone telecommunications did increase, but it is far from perfect and there is much more to be done. This fund provided a way for that to happen. Now we see the Rudd Labor government looking to trash this forward-looking initiative by pilfering and siphoning off funds that were meant to safeguard services in all areas, for the sake of the Labor Party’s narrow, city focused broadband proposal. It is incumbent on the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, who is in the other place, to be held accountable to all Australians and explain to all of them, not just those who live in major metropolitan areas, how his and the Prime Minister’s plan to implement the review committee’s recommendations without the resources of the Communications Fund is going to be carried out. The deafening silence on this count betrays the truth.

The Prime Minister, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and federal Labor in general are showing their complete contempt for regional areas: cutting short this process and sending a strong message that the Labor Party simply do not care about how telecommunications services are delivered in regional areas. In seeking to repeal the safeguards so deliberately put in place to ensure no extension of the digital divide, the Rudd Labor government have shown their disdain for rural and regional Australians. I must say that that is an ironic twist, given the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, made such a big deal about how he had such great rural credentials. In fact, I think he claimed that he had been a dairy farmer in his time, although I think both you, Deputy Speaker Scott, and I would be happy to challenge him in a milking contest—perhaps we could also include Senator Joyce, who claims to be a gun milker. I have not milked for 30 years, but I am sure it is like riding a bicycle. We had the Prime Minister saying he was a person of rural stock, he understood rural issues and he knew what was important to rural people. If he understands what is important to them, he will not allow the passage of this amendment bill—but, of course, we know he will.

Over the past several months it has become all too clear that, as far as the members of the Labor Party are concerned, rural and regional Australia simply does not rate—which equates to an act of betrayal. As you would know, Deputy Speaker Scott, if you claim to be of rural stock then you are always of rural stock. You can take the boy out of the bush, but you cannot take the bush out of the boy. Perhaps it is just another example of the hollowness of the Prime Minister and the facade that he paints constantly. Actions do speak louder than words.

We have heard much rhetoric, supposedly hard-hitting, from the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation about the government’s desire to cut spending. The government has so little respect for the people of rural and regional Australia that it has, by executing those cuts, frozen the funds that are vital for rural community programs—well, nearly all the funds: we do have the worship of deadwood by the Labor Party and the spending of funds in that area. But, if we look across the vast array of programs that run in rural and regional Australia and the importance that they have in those communities, we can see that they have been slashed. I do not speak just of Regional Partnerships; I speak also of programs like the one I saw administered in the Jondaryan school, programs where funds were made available to small schools to purchase vital equipment. We have seen the Rudd Labor government stubbornly refuse to commit to vital roads infrastructure in regional areas, instead being content to pour more attention and cash towards the big cities. Like the carers bonus debacle, where Labor mercilessly left the most vulnerable in our society grappling with them for answers for days, we see that the government is once again upsetting and unsettling the foundations of another important group in our society.

The Communications Fund provides a vital safeguard to some of the most disadvantaged consumers in both rural and remote regions. Now the Labor Party and the Rudd Labor government are creating and nurturing conditions of uncertainty for people in those rural and regional areas. The smash-and-grab raiding of the Communications Fund will leave those people who choose to live outside metropolitan areas wondering, no doubt with a high level of trepidation, what the future and the future of their communications hold for them. Under Labor’s planned changes to the Communications Fund, these people will no longer have any indication of exactly what standard of telecommunications services they will be able to access. What Labor does not seem to realise is that there is more to telecommunications than just a broadband connection to every inner city high-rise apartment. Not only could Labor’s ill-conceived raid on the Communications Fund condemn the businesspeople, the mums and dads and the schoolchildren of regional Australia to a second-class standard of communications but, more importantly, taking away the guarantee of service could have a life-or-death consequence in regions that already pay a heavy price for the tyranny of distance.

Not content with leaving regional Australia out in the cold, the government now wants to further the digital divide. It plans to raid the future-proofing measures that were put in place by the coalition government so that regional and rural Australia could be certain of its future. This action by the Labor Party means that rural and regional Australians can only look forward to being left behind in an area of daily and rapid improvement. Why should the people of Toowoomba or Pittsworth be forced to live as second-class telecommunications citizens, compared to those who live in Brisbane, Sydney or, indeed, the Prime Minister’s electorate of Griffith and the Treasurer’s electorate of Lilley? There is a very real risk of the ill-thought-out plans of the Prime Minister and Labor, which declare open season on the Communications Fund, delivering just that uncertainty and just that second-class telecommunications system to the people in the bush. I have to wonder if this is not a sign of things to come, with Labor raiding funds to pay for half-baked policy. It has not taken them long, and it sure brings to mind the old slogan that you cannot trust Labor with money. You just cannot trust Labor with money.

The former coalition government outlined a clear plan to make sure that all Australians, especially those in regional areas, had access to high-speed broadband services, without the need to raid the Communications Fund. That plan was to provide 100 per cent of the country with broadband access at retail prices on par with the competitive prices in metropolitan areas, while keeping the Communications Fund and our commitment to rural and regional Australia completely intact. The Communications Fund was designed to help secure the future of rural and regional Australians. Now it is shaping up to be just another victim of Labor’s steamrolling budget committee. Why should the participation of my constituents in the information society be held to ransom by the Rudd Labor government? Why should the Rudd Labor government use money that has been set aside for projects for all regional Australians to the advantage of a city focussed electorate?

Communications will be an area which will advance Australia a long way over our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children. If anyone is left behind, or if we see a system or a scheme or a course of action that causes a vital part of our community—not the biggest part, but possibly the smallest part—to be left behind, we will be committing that section of the community to a lower standard of living and a lower standard of social justice. In this amendment bill we see Labor doing what we knew they would do—firstly, not be able to manage money and, secondly, abdicate the representation of rural and regional Australia. I ask them to consider that and I ask the minister to withdraw this amendment bill.

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