Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure, but also with some sorrow, that I speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. When I was first elected to this parliament 9½ years ago, one of the two biggest problems with telecommunications in rural areas—and I have the honour to represent a very rural seat, the seat of Barker in South Australia—was fax lines not working. At that time fax lines were very much in demand and sometimes, in some areas, they were not working properly. We fixed those problems. The second big problem was the mobile phone coverage and the spectre of losing the analog service. A deal done by the previous Labor government saw the phasing out of the analog service—a very good service for rural areas—without the provision of any replacement. So, when I was first elected, you could travel hundreds of kilometres where a digital mobile phone would not work. For example, you could go from Kingston to Meningie, about 150 kilometres, and not get any reception until you got to within a couple of kilometres of the Meningie township. Then, as soon as you left Meningie, you did not get anything more until you got to Tailem Bend. So in a large part of my electorate I could not use my phone and nor could my constituents. This was a result of the previous Labor government’s policy of getting rid of the analog service without providing any replacement.

We came up with CDMA, which was a pretty good service. It was a digital type of service and it worked well in rural areas. It was working much better than the old analog service, which did have some weaknesses in that it could cut in and out. At least with the CDMA service we had much better coverage all around the electorate. I could drive virtually anywhere in my electorate and pick up a CDMA service. We have had some problems with the introduction of the Next G service, and that is why we appointed Bill Glasson to inquire into it and ensure that we would not have the CDMA turned off until we had equivalent services or better. Some of the earlier handsets were not working as well as they could have been, which was a problem—if I remember rightly—that we had with some of the digital mobile phones when they first came in. It is important that we provide pretty close to as good a service as we have in city areas.

In September 2005 the Howard government created the Communications Fund to secure the future of telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote Australia. We did this because there were always going to be pretty good services in city areas where, when you had lots of people, businesses could afford to lay down broadband. We also had ADSL+, which provided pretty quick service. You could have different levels of that service in city areas but obviously for rural areas it was never going to be the case that companies would come in and make a profit without some help from the government. For decades in Australia, rural services were subsidised so that rural areas could get a reasonable amount of service. We opened the Communications Fund account with a $2 billion capital injection. As I said, it was a fund with the needs of people in rural and regional Australia in mind. The original Communications Fund act 2005 and the subsequent Communications Fund amending act 2007 provided that the fund must hold at least $2 billion. The purpose of that Communications Fund was to generate income to fund the government’s response to the recommendations of the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee.

The spending of the income stream from the fund was to be tied to independent and regular reviews of telecommunications in rural, regional and remote Australia. I want to reinforce this point because there is a significant difference between accessing the income stream generated from the fund, as was the original intention when the fund was established, and drawing down the capital—as is the Rudd government’s intent with this bill. They are basically stealing the $2 billion from this fund that was set up for people in rural and remote areas who do not have the same sorts of services as city people. If we are going to be fair to all Australians, that sort of fund is necessary. But the Rudd government are drawing down the capital from this fund and there will be nothing left. This Rudd government certainly have their hands in the cookie jar.

There is a very disturbing trend emerging from the Rudd Labor government—that is, taking funds away from rural and regional Australians. I remember on election night that the excited new Prime Minister of Australia said he would govern for all Australians. But so far we have seen nothing more than what we have seen already from the Labor state governments around Australia. They are very city-centric and they are taking away programs that are designed to deal with the problems of rural people—for example, they are taking $47 million away from rural scholarships. We talk about the skills crisis and they take $47 million away from rural scholarships, which are designed to provide skills in rural areas. In fact, I was part of an inquiry by the former House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry that presented a landmark report entitled Skills: rural Australia’s need. It is very important that we look at the differing skills needs around Australia—whether in the city or the country—and, as a government, we have to respond to those needs. But not this government. The biggest cuts that they have made so far have been in rural areas all around Australia—whether it be to drought funding, farm business or rural scholarships. And I have no doubt that, under this government, we will see more funding go to roads, for example, in city areas than we would have seen under a Howard government.

The Rudd government are even stripping away $10 million in drought research. They have stripped $50 million away from the national water plan and $50 million from farm apprenticeships, as I said. This is certainly a very strong indication of the modus operandi of this government. They are very city-centric and, frankly, quite prepared to take funding away from rural areas. In most cases, rural areas have a greater need for funding from governments. These actions show a lack of care for people who live in rural and regional areas. These people are the salt of the earth. They work hard and are certainly very community minded people. The Rudd government and, in particular, the Minister for Climate Change and Water have turned their backs on the people of the River Murray through inaction and their attitude of not caring. This bill is a further stripping away of funds earmarked for rural and regional Australians.

Just a couple of days ago in this place, the Treasurer said, ‘We are going to show some restraint.’ However, it seems that Labor has coined a new meaning for ‘restraint’, and that new meaning is to hit rural and regional Australians hard, hit them first and hit them where it will hurt them the most. In this case, Labor intends to shake every cent out of that $2 billion piggy bank, leaving absolutely nothing for the future, all the while spending it in some doubtful areas where it is not necessary. As I said earlier, the telco businesses are quite happy to spend the money on infrastructure in city areas because they will get a return for that money. The all too evident problem with this approach is that when the cookie jar is empty, or the last coin has been shaken from the piggy bank, there will be nothing left. The fund will be gone, used up in one fell swoop, with no guarantee of outcomes or returns. Rural and regional Australians will be left with no fund to address their unique and critical telecommunications requirements. There is nothing restraint-like in Labor’s robbing of the coffers.

The $2 billion Communications Fund and the $1.1 billion plan for direct capital investment under the Connect Australia initiative was to ensure the ongoing adequacy of telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia. This was not some special treatment for rural areas because, even with that spending, they were still not going to have services that were as good as those in city areas. Services would not be up to what one would expect if one lived in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide or Hobart, or some of the major cities around Australia, but it was at least going to bring them up to an adequate level of fast broadband. Our solution of using a mixture of some of that fibre to the node to the home, some of that WiMAX and some of that satellite was going to cover everyone in Australia. It is possible but it is not economically feasible to do fibre to the node to farms and to homes in rural areas. It is simply not physically or economically feasible to do so. So we came up with a solution that gave up to 20 megabytes a second, I think the figure was, for broadband using WiMAX and wireless services—which will often use the fibre with a main trunk, but from there you are able to use the WiMAX services.

As I understand, there will be 100 million people using that service before very long. In fact, in some ways it gives some extra advantages because of the mobility. You can pick up your computer, take it down to the shed and still get the service. You do not need to be plugged into a landline for it. So it did actually have some services. It is not quite as quick as super broadband but it is certainly up to 20 times quicker than a phone line, for example, with dial-up services. So it is certainly much quicker and able to give a pretty good service to rural areas. But we hear nothing of that from this government.

Just last year the Howard government reinforced the Communications Fund as a perpetual fund to protect its capital. Labor now wants to get rid of that protection so it can raid the fund. It flies in the face of economic sense to deplete the capital of the Communications Fund in this manner. Nor can Labor even begin to justify the expenditure. Its broadband network plan is ill principled, half-baked, totally city-centric and ineffective. There is more to telecommunications than broadband. I have people in my electorate of Barker who still cannot receive in some places a halfway decent mobile telephone service.

While in government, we varied Telstra’s licensing conditions so it could not switch off CDMA until the Next G service was up to par. It remains a fact that constituents in my electorate continue to experience dropouts, black spots and inability to reliably access Next G services. Barely a few days before the CDMA network was to be shut down by Labor at the end of January, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy reluctantly agreed to delay it because he was all too aware of the problems of the network. When the safety and security of rural constituents in the electorate continue to be compromised because of black spots and dropouts of the Next G service, it is no wonder that neither they nor I have any confidence in Labor’s thin-on-the-ground broadband proposal—whatever it may be, because I do not think we have seen anything concrete to hang our coats on. I am particularly concerned about the safety problems and the impaired ability of my constituents to do business in my electorate once Telstra shuts down the CDMA service. We managed to persuade it to delay the abolition of CDMA, but there is still a lot of evidence that problems and a lack of access in the Next G network remain.

There has been much blame shifting about handsets. Earlier this week the Australian Communications and Media Authority found six types of handsets to be inadequate during testing of the Next G network. But Minister Conroy says he cannot tell potential purchasers about the substandard handsets they should avoid purchasing because that information is commercial-in-confidence. How stupid is that? Indeed, ‘confidence’ is not the word that comes to mind for Labor’s mismanagement of telecommunications in general and this bill in particular.

On the one hand, last year Labor endorsed the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee, chaired by Dr Bill Glasson, and its task of reviewing the progress of the Australian government’s upgrades of telecommunications services in rural Australia. Specifically, that committee wants to determine how the interest earned from the $2 billion Communications Fund, around $400 million, will be spent. On the other hand, Labor has hijacked the very funding set aside to action that review committee’s finding. Labor might claim, as the member for Ballarat did in this place on Wednesday, that it is about keeping families connected. The member offered the example of older Australians communicating with family overseas via the internet. I can only assume that the member was referring to city based older Australians, because there is certainly no guarantee that rural and regional Australians will enjoy the same ease of broadband connection and communication.

Minister Conroy struggled on ABC radio last week, where he was at a loss to say what Telstra’s announcement would mean for the OPEL joint regional broadband venture between Optus and Elders which was announced last year. In the same interview Minister Conroy said that taking fibre to the home was on the agenda—wacky do!—but later contradicted himself to say that it was really up to the proponents to put forward proposals. Specifications were not available. Rather, Labor said it was keeping an open mind. ‘Thin on the ground’ does not begin to describe this proposal. I would have categorised it as up in the air, with the fairies, and completely lacking in specifications and substance. But on the strength of a nebulous broadband proposal—possibly fibre to the home, possibly not; could reach the bush, perhaps not—it is all very uncertain and non-specific. Yet we are expected to raid the Future Fund for $2 billion of its capital to fund it.

The very fund that was earmarked to protect people in the bush and to assure them parity of telecommunications services is being denuded for who knows what. We established this Communications Fund to provide a guaranteed income stream to fund hard infrastructure and services for regional communities, such as additional mobile phone towers, broadband provision and even backhaul fibre capabilities. It was our brief to the Glasson committee that they place particular emphasis on the underserved areas of remote and rural Australia. But instead of waiting for the committee’s conclusions and recommendations to ensure adequate service for people in the bush we have Labor raiding the very fund that was set up to help those people. This will inevitably mean that the recommendations of the committee for rural and regional Australians will not be able to be acted upon because the funding has been taken away.

The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government said in this place that the Rudd government’s plan to expend the contents of the fund is consistent with the Communications Fund. I reject that statement entirely. This is another con job on rural, regional and remote Australians. Alarmingly, this bill allows the Rudd government not only to raid the fund but to then spend it all on anything it chooses. It could expend the fund on shares or interests in companies, make unconditional grants to telecommunications companies or even directly purchase assets and equipment connected to the broadband network. There is nothing in this bill that will give rural and regional Australians any guarantee of access to a first-class broadband network.

(Quorum formed)

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