Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Forrest for bringing this very important motion to the parliament. And it's not all rainbows and butterflies, as the government would like to say. In my electorate, I have 110 identified black spots, and the government has only funded 12. Some of those towers have taken three years or longer, since they were announced by this government, to actually start any construction, and communities are waiting and waiting and waiting. Each day mobile phone coverage is becoming more important to regional communities, and each day this government's really doing nothing about it. It's important to emergency service providers, residents and many businesses. I have businesses in my electorate that cannot even use their EFTPOS machines because of their lack of mobile phone reception.

I know from my discussions with dairy processors, such as Fonterra and Lion, that improved connectivity is becoming critical for local dairy farmers. We've got so many dairy farmers who can't even pay their bills online until they get up at 3 am, when there is hardly anyone on the system. I know residents and visitors to King Island are frustrated at the lack of coverage, and I know those on the west coast of Tasmania are equally frustrated with the lack of coverage. I note the self-congratulations of those opposite on this program, but, by any objective measure, the coalition's delivery of the Mobile Black Spot Program has been unsatisfactory.

When I say less than satisfactory, that's not the conclusion of those on this side of the House; that was the independent finding of the Australian National Audit Office, which made that assessment of round 1. Let me remind the chamber what the Audit Office found. It found that the program had been blatantly politicised, with more than 80 per cent of the locations for new mobile phone towers announced in coalition electorates. For example, in round 1, the fire-prone Labor-held seat of area of McEwen received funding for one new tower and the reinstatement of another—just one. Compare that to New England, the former Deputy Prime Minister's seat, which, by some miracle, received 28 mobile base stations. But, putting the politicisation aside, the most damning audit finding of that round was that 25 per cent of the new mobile phone towers funded in round 1 provided no new or extended coverage. Clearly the No. 1 criterion for selection was politics, not community need.

It seems this government has learnt absolutely nothing from the Audit Office report. The coalition's latest round of funding—which, by the way, is recycled money, unspent in the previous round—now requires people to contact the local MP to report blackouts. But we don't really know how that's all going to work, do we? The government is still to release the details of this new scheme to assist people like us here in this parliament as to what to do when we get calls from our community. It does smell very much like another political stitch up, where the end process will be sandbagging marginal coalition seats in the lead up to the next election.

In my electorate of Braddon, the Mobile Black Spots Program has been marked by overpromising and underdelivering. In May 2016 my predecessor announced funding for towers at Yolla, Gunns Plains, Sulphur Creek and Devonport. The former member infamously said:

A re-elected Coalition government will immediately invite mobile network operators to bid for this new funding to provide coverage in the identified locations at the earliest opportunity.

The people of Sulphur Creek were that sick and tired of waiting that they launched their own community campaign to have a tower installed, and I was very proud to help them with that—and thank you to the people of Sulphur Creek. I got a lovely nine, 10 per cent swing from them at the by-election. Independent of this government, the community and Telstra were able to work together, and the service came online last month. That's nearly three years later. The people of Gunns Plains are also still waiting, with many businesses impacted. During the Braddon by-election, the coalition announced they expected Gunns Plains would be operational by the middle of next year—again, a three-year wait from announcement to delivery, and that is totally unacceptable.

In government, Labor invested $250 million towards the Regional Backbone Blackspots Program to support backhaul infrastructure in priority regional locations. Backhaul is an essential link in the mobile transmission network, and, without this investment, which those opposite like to ignore, the coalition's mobile base stations would not have been able to connect to the network. Labor will improve mobile communications for regional communities by allocating $25 million for a Better Mobile Services for Regional Australia policy. From this policy, in my electorate, Labor has announced we will work with the community, local and state governments and emergency service providers to build towers in the West Coast and Circular Head regions and King Island. We're going to build them from the bottom up, not from the top down. It's about the community telling us what they need, not us telling them. This side of the Chamber is committed to removing politics from the program and genuinely working with the community to improve mobile phone coverage. Labor's policy will be evidence based, not politics based, and I look forward to working with my local electorate to ensure that they receive the mobile phone coverage they deserve.

See this speech in context