Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Notwithstanding the issue of the division bells—and they are going off, on and off—in presenting this petition I would just say: this is a very important issue for my electorate.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11:10 to 11:34

It gives me great pleasure to return to the subject of the Pinery bushfires, which devastated my local community out there in the Adelaide plains in the mid-north. Many of the people I grew up experienced loss in this fire. They were farm lads back in the day but now they are farm owners out at Freeling and places like that.

Before the suspension I was talking about mobile phone communications on the day. Messages arrived late, and often those messages were about evacuation points and where to evacuate to. Obviously that is a very serious issue. This petition calls for new towers at Wasleys, Hamley Bridge and Roseworthy to ensure mobile phone communications in this area. This area, which is not that far from Adelaide, deserves modern telecommunications. This fire certainly highlighted that need, and I have been writing to the Prime Minister and also to the Premier and the state Treasurer about properly funding mobile phone communications out in this region. In the wake of these terrible fires—we are now five months on from them—the need is still there and the communities look to their governments for a sign that we are listening to them and that we are prepared to commit to local infrastructure which will improve their communities.

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