Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, I want to turn to the remarks from the member for Whitlam. The fundamental fact about government programs to support increased mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia is that in six years Labor did absolutely nothing. They did zero because they just do not care about regional Australia. Then the shadow minister had the temerity to put out a media release which contained this laughable statement:

Labor's policy on mobile black spots is to place a far greater emphasis on a fair distribution of funds across a fairer spread of electorates.

I will tell you what Labor's policy on mobile black spots is. It is to do nothing. The only honest statement of Labor's policy on mobile black spots would be: Labor's policy on mobile black spots is to spend six years doing absolutely nothing. The best the shadow minister can come up with is a few selective quotations from an ANAO report. Here is the bit that he forgot to quote:

The department established the key elements that would be expected to form part of a competitive, merit-based grants programme …

It was very selective quotation. That is all he is good at.

I say to the member for Whitlam: when you go to regional towns all around Australia, as I have had the privilege of doing, and meet with people, they are desperate to have mobile coverage for all of the safety benefits it provides and for all of the convenience benefits it provides—because, as they rightly say, increasingly in modern society people assume that you have a mobile phone. When you deal with your bank, your insurance company or a government department, they just expect that you will have mobile coverage.

The critical thing is to take the money that is available and leverage it to the maximum extent possible and deliver as much as you can further dollars, and that is precisely what we have done. For $100 million of taxpayers' money in round 1, we delivered 499 base stations. The Mobile Black Spots Program is rolling out all around the country. We are seeing, under both round 1 and round 2, an extensive rollout of mobile phone base stations. This is a program which the coalition is very proud of because it is changing lives every day. It is an extensive rollout of mobile base stations that would not be there but for this public policy program initiated by the coalition after Labor did nothing. For six years, Labor did nothing.

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