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

That is what it will allow the government to do. If the parliamentary secretary does not understand that, he ought to get a hold of the bill, read it and understand what this legislation will allow the government to do.

My electorate spans some 546,000 square kilometres. In the electorate of Maranoa, the last manual exchange was shut down during my time here in this place. Eighty-odd years after automatic telephones were introduced into Australia, the last manual service was abolished. That is an example of how, through successive governments over decades and decades, rural Australia was always last on the line when it came to upgrades of communications.

If the Communications Fund is abolished, rural Australia will be left in the sort of time warp that we inherited when we came to government. When we came to government—and you may remember this, Mr Deputy Speaker Washer; I certainly do—we had to deal with a situation where a perfectly adequate technology, the analog mobile telephone service, was abolished by an act of parliament, by law, without a replacement for rural Australia. That was under the minister, the then member for Dobell, under the Keating administration. They abolished it without a replacement. It was the coalition government that had to bring forward money to make sure we could replace that analog service with the CDMA network, which was a technology for rural Australia.

My electorate takes in some of the most remote towns and places in Australia, perhaps in the world, yet because of what we did in government, and our actions in committing to delivering internet to rural and remote Australia, these communities and pastoralists and very remote communities in my electorate can now get the internet. It was because of the actions of the coalition government and the funding that it put in place that the towns of Windorah, Birdsville and Bedourie can access the internet without dialling up through a very antiquated technology system. It was not done by Labor in its 13 prior years in government; it was the coalition government that did that. We not only brought the internet to these people in remote parts of Australia, such as Birdsville, Bedourie and Windorah, but also abolished the timed local call that these communities had to pay for just to ring their neighbour across the street or to ring the police station from a hotel. Those sorts of calls were timed local call in these communities. The coalition government pursued funding through expenditure review committees to upgrade the communications in these communities in remote parts of Australia.

Up until 1983 in the town of Birdsville, in the Diamantina shire in the west of my electorate, there were no telephone systems connecting the people of Birdsville to the outside world. The only way to communicate with the outside world was through the Royal Flying Doctor Service’s two-way radio network. The people in the Diamantina shire were frustrated by many decades of failures of government to act for the people of Birdsville and the Diamantina shire, so they raised half the money themselves to put in a satellite based connection to the main trunk routes across Australia—notwith-standing that at the time there was Telstra or Telecom or their predecessors—because those communities had been left without any telephone service whatsoever. Today the people of Birdsville, Bedourie, Windorah and remote pastoral properties can access internet services via the satellite. This has brought an enormous improvement to these communities. As a result of what we put in place, through funding that we had to get through the expenditure review process, they are now connected to the outside world.

This satellite connection has also been important for telemedicine and for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. And it has been important for those children who must study, because of the tyranny of distance, through the schools of distance education. Some of these children live 500, 600 or 700 kilometres, as the crow flies, from their school. Previously they had to access their teachers through an HF radio network, which would often fail when climatic conditions, being variable, would not allow for a clear voice to be transmitted. But today, as a result of the funding that the previous coalition government put in place, these remote communities, these children studying through schools of distance education, can actually talk to their teachers via the telephone for the cost of a local call—and get a clear voice signal. At the same time they can have a direct connection, via the satellite internet, with their teachers. That is bringing new, modern technologies into these communities in remote parts of Australia.

But I remain very concerned, and I will be opposing this bill with every ounce of energy that I can, because this $2 billion Communications Fund was established as a result of the insistence of the coalition and, I must say, the National Party, when we negotiated the third tranche of Telstra’s sale. We wanted to make sure that there would be a fund held in perpetuity, because we understand that parity of service and parity of price for people living in rural and remote Australia is not a privilege but a right. If, as the Prime Minister talks about, he is governing for all Australians, he will make sure that this bill does not proceed beyond this House. I am concerned that, if this bill passes, future treasurers and future prime ministers will say, through the expenditure review process, ‘Well, they’re just the people of the outback. There are not many of them.’ We can draw on the experience of the past and a few of the examples I have given in the time that I have had available here. We know those people will be left behind in the future if this fund is taken away and pilfered by this Labor government.

I just want to say a couple of things about Telstra Country Wide, because that was another requirement of the coalition government when we negotiated the third tranche of the Telstra sale. Telstra Country Wide was a requirement by law, and it was a condition of their licence that they must provide a physical presence in rural and remote Australia. If they did not provide that physical presence, their licence could be revoked. I have to say that Telstra Country Wide do a magnificent job. I have three points in my electorate that they service. People can ring, for the cost of a local call, and talk to Telstra Country Wide, and they can get information about communications, service faults and other things like that. I am sure that everyone in this House has had the experience of having to ring a call centre. You wait on the line and then you press a button and the hash key, and then you wait a little longer, and you know that your call is very important to the company that you are trying to contact, and you then advance in the queue—and all that sort of thing. Telstra Country Wide are out there in the community, and it was because of the insistence of the previous coalition government, through the laws that we made as we negotiated the full sale of Telstra, that we have seen Telstra Country Wide established and providing that face-to-face service in our rural communities. I just want to say to the Telstra Country Wide staff in my electorate that I commend the work they do. They have been absolutely fantastic in the transition from CDMA to Next G. They have been dealing daily with concerns, and maybe difficulties with handsets and coverage, but they have provided that service and, more importantly, they have provided it on a face-to-face basis.

I know that my time is limited, and I would like a great deal more time to talk on this bill, but I just want to say to the Labor Party: when the Glasson report is handed to the minister, I hope that they will listen to the recommendations of that report. Dr Bill Glasson is a western Queenslander, an ophthalmologist, who is living in Brisbane now. He understands that telemedicine, e-learning and other new technologies, as they come on in the future, will be vital to keeping rural Australia up to date. One of the other people on that committee is another person called Bruce Scott. That is not me; it is in fact the mayor of the remote community of Barcoo Shire, who lives out there in remote Australia—near Windorah and Jundah. He knows about the importance of communications and what they need out there, and I am sure that a recommendation in the Glasson report will be the need to deal with the extension of optic fibre cable connection and building the nation’s infrastructure to these remote communities rather than having them rely on satellites and the proposed OPEL solution out there. I have got to say that a WiMAX satellite based system is not the solution. I would recommend to the minister that he not proceed on that element of the OPEL decision out in that remote part of Australia, because that will not work for those people. Optic fibre cable extension is the way to build the nation’s network.

I want to thank the people who are on the Glasson committee. They will bring important recommendations forward. There is $400 million that does not have to come out of Treasury, the Treasurer, the finance minister or the expenditure review committee. It is there because we put the money aside as part of this process of ensuring that the bush would not be left behind. I say to the member for Flynn and the member for Leichhardt, both Labor members, that if they truly represent rural Australia for the Labor Party, they—

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