Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to speak about the member for Hunter's motion this afternoon, the premise of which is that the budget is apparently inflicting pain, we are told, on rural and regional areas. I thought to myself: 'Communications? Telecommunications serving rural and regional areas is a very important issue of priority.' And I thought to myself, 'Well if this budget is inflicting pain, for example when it comes to the $100 million that the Abbott government has committed to spending on improved mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia, then how does that compare to the amounts of money that the previous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government spent in its budget each year on regional and rural mobile communications'? I went back and looked at the 2008 budget and there was not one dollar spent on mobile communications by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government in regional Australia in 2009. So then I turned to the 2010 budget, not one dollar there; 2011, not one dollar there either; 2012-13, not one dollar spent by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government on improving mobile telecommunications in rural and regional Australia—despite the fact that there is a clear sense when you speak to people in rural and regional Australia that they want to see better mobile communications.

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