Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to address this important question from the member for Forrest, who has been a very strong advocate for the needs of her community when it comes to improved mobile coverage. I very much enjoyed my visit to the member's electorate last year, where we had some very productive meetings with the community in relation to the need for improved mobile coverage. Of course the Mobile Black Spot Program, under the careful guidance of the then Minister for Communications and his then parliamentary secretary, now in the very capable hands of the Minister for Communications in the other place, has delivered a very substantial outcome for Australians in regional and remote Australia after six years in which Labor spent not one dollar of public money on improving mobile communications networks in regional and remote Australia.

After six years of inaction by Labor, the coalition came to government with a commitment to spend $100 million improving mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia and by working with the state governments and the mobile network operators—I particularly acknowledge Telstra and Vodafone, who were successful under the program—we succeeded in securing total funding of $385 million and there will be 499 new or upgraded mobile base stations built all around Australia. There will be new and upgraded handheld coverage for 68,000 square kilometres of regional Australia and more than 150,000 square kilometres of regional Australia will receive new external antenna coverage. This is a very significant development in improving mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia—something that the previous Labor government spent six years during absolutely nothing about. In addition, there is a commitment from Telstra that there will be an additional 200 4G mini base stations to be built in towns around Australia offering a coverage radius of 200 to 300 metres from the base station and offering 4G. This is in addition to the main commitment, and there is more because the coalition has committed to a further $60 million of public money being invested in the next phase of the Mobile Black Spot Program. Again, we aim to leverage further spending from state governments and from the private sector. The Turnbull government is delivering improved mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia because we are committed to regional and remote Australia.

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