Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful parts of my electorate, the iconic Flinders Ranges. The primary reason was to attend a community meeting at Blinman, which was called to discuss the possibilities of installing a mobile phone service in the area. The meeting was attended by John Tonkin from Telstra Countrywide.

The Flinders is growing in popularity as a tourist destination, offering a unique experience, with hundreds of individual attractions clustered in this spectacular and ancient mountain range. While part of the attraction is the remote experience, tourists are a demanding lot and, while some crave the outback experience, others expect to have first-class service in accommodation, catering and packaging. Gone are the days when the majority of tourists came to the area with a trailer and a tent and were prepared to rough it in the ‘outback’. Local operators have driven the shift from a rural pastoral economy to one where tourism is by far the biggest industry.

Supplying a first-class service comes at a significant cost. Apart from a few properties in the south, most electricity is generated locally by diesel, costing many times what urban Australia pays. Water supplies are difficult, predominantly coming from limited underground aquifers. The advent of a bitumen road from Blinman south has made a huge difference to accessing this beautiful region and is helping to drive the industry growth, but the links to the northern Flinders and back to the main highway at Parachilna and Leigh Creek are tough for tourists in standard cars. Phone services are provided by the Telstra radio phone links—state-of-the-art 30 years ago but inadequate in today’s world.

The power of the product, the Flinders Ranges, has enormous potential but progress will always be slowed until these issues are addressed because, for all of the market demand for a unique experience, customers demand that the product be price competitive, and the Flinders tourism operators deal with a very high cost of delivery. The growth in the market has and will continue to come from urban tourists who often have little remote area experience. For many, it comes as a rude shock to find their mobile phones do not work in the area, and there are no emails and no ability to keep an eye on business. An unfortunate by-product of the tourism industry is lost and injured bushwalkers. Mobiles would provide a safety net.

Internet access is limited to satellite. As a user of satellite broadband, I am well aware of its limitations. Local residents using School of the Air to educate their children are continually frustrated by cost, speed and reliability of the service. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, you would be familiar with all these issues.

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