Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I would like to talk about Australia Post. It is charging more for services such as delivering letters but it is slowing its time for delivery. It has also just recently changed the clearance time for street boxes in regional areas. I note that one of these regional areas is where my electorate office is in Mount Barker. I will say that that area is considered rural and regional for health purposes but is no longer considered regional when we are talking about the Building Better Regions Fund, despite it being one of the fastest-growing inland regional areas in Australia. However, I digress. How will this affect delivery times for regional and rural areas, which are already at a disadvantage for the delivery of mail, when compared to metropolitan areas?

Minister, in relation to the Mobile Black Spot Program, round 2 closed early last year, as you are aware, and successful applicants were announced late last year. There is a significant inequity in the allocation of funding under the Black Spot Program across the electorates. Mayo only had two successful bids, whereas the electorate of Grey received 13 and the electorate of Barker was allocated just five. Can the minister please explain the reasons behind the inequitable allocation of funding? Will the program be extended to address all priority sites? Surely, the minister does not think that mobile phone coverage in regional Australia is complete. If he does, I will advise that on a drive from the north of my electorate to the south, on the mainland part of my electorate, I drop out at least 10 times on the main arterial routes.

Mobile battery backup on our mobile towers during outages and emergencies is an area of immediate concern for my electorate. During the summer storms over the Christmas period we suffered lengthy power cuts. What be realised was that those of us who were on NBN fibre to the node no longer had a landline. After four hours, the mobile phone tower batteries died. This meant that people in my community had absolutely no way of communicating with authorities or with each other. In areas of high risk for bushfire, in which category is the majority of my electorate, we need to have some sort of surety that we can at least use our mobile phone towers. Power is cut deliberately in a high-risk bushfire areas on days of catastrophic risk. We need the minister to address this essential service, because without the internet, without a landline and without mobile phone towers, we are beyond vulnerable. I would like the minister to address that this evening, please.

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