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

I will just touch on the issue of those many small rural communities. Where there is a community of 1,000 or fewer people—and the member for Flynn would have a number of these in his electorate—it is actually the council that pays for the rebroadcast of television into those small communities, not the commercial television provider. Who is going to pay those councils to convert those transponders? In those communities of 1,000 or fewer people, they will have to pay. They do not have free-to-air TV; they have pay TV, and the government are going to ask them to pay more with the passage of this legislation. They say: ‘Listen to us. We’ll find some money in next year’s federal budget.’

This is legislation that has been rushed through. The government have lost control of the economy, they have mismanaged the economy and they have mismanaged the legislative program that they put forward. They have had 12 months and more to deal with this—we are into the 13th month. It just demonstrates that we have an arrogant, out-of-touch Labor government in control of the House. (Time expired)

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