Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion. Whilst I appreciate that the government put the National Relay Service, the NRS, out to competitive tender in order to curtail significant budget overruns, I am concerned that this attempt to rein in costs will have a profound impact on older Australians with a hearing impairment. The government's tender process has reduced operational spending on the NRS by 20 per cent to $20 million at a time when the number of older Australians—those aged over 65—with a hearing impairment has increased by around 20 per cent, to more than 1.2 million.

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace and we as a society are the beneficiaries of these advances. However, there are some within our community, including older Australians, who do not benefit from technological changes, either through access, capacity or choice. That's not to say that all seniors are not tech-savvy, because, of course, many are. But when I consider the feedback from my community regarding changes in technology, whether that's the rollout of the NBN or the pressure to do online banking due to bank branches closing, it is usually the elderly who express their anger and confusion at being forced to migrate to a technology they don't want to use.

CapTel is a telephone service that provides live captioning on a special handset and, until 1 February, it was provided under the NRS. This motion says that there were 4,000 CapTel users in Australia according to the Department of Communications figures. The minister says there were 1,722 active users as of October 2019. I've been unable to ascertain exactly how many CapTel users live in my community. But I have been contacted by some of those affected by this decision, including Dr Alex Harrison of Flagstaff Hill, a veterinarian, for whom CapTel was a game changer in dealing with clients after he signed up in 2017. Dr Harrison says that CapTel provides him with a level of independence and freedom not offered by alternatives, such as the Internet Relay function and web-browser Captioned Relay, that require pre-planning to make and receive telephone calls. Dr Harrison is Australia's first profoundly deaf veterinarian and, as a person with a hearing impairment, he says he's tired of fighting for every little thing.

The average age of a CapTel user is actually 82 years. Mrs Smith-Beale, who lives in the Adelaide Hills, is 83. She doesn't own a computer and she's worried that, without CapTel, her world will pass her by. CapTel is the preferred medium for communication by older Australians with hearing impairments, with around 70 per cent of CapTel clients aged over 70. My electorate of Mayo has the highest median age of any federal seat in South Australia, currently standing at 46 years of age, and nearly 23 per cent of my community is aged over 65. There are some parts of my community, such as Goolwa and Victor Harbour, where around 40 per cent of the population are aged over 65. I'm concerned that older Australians will be disproportionately affected by the new NRS arrangements, which, in the main, are delivered online. Some older people in my community are comfortable with using internet devices, but many older people are not. If you are an older person familiar with using the CapTel telephone service, it is unreasonable to then require them to keep their computer connected to the internet at all times—that's assuming that older people have a computer—in case they need to make an emergency medical call. I'm concerned that the removal of CapTel from the National Relay Service will not adequately serve the needs of the growing number of older Australians with hearing impairments.

I appreciate that governments have to work to budget and that this government wasn't happy about the cost blowouts with CapTel through the company that had the exclusive rights to use the technology in Australia—I understand that. I note that the owners of CapTel and Ultratec are continuing to support CapTel handsets independently of the NRS. Ultratec has not indicated how long this arrangement will last. But, as this motion states, I want to acknowledge the distress caused by the discontinuation of CapTel, and I call on the government to continue to work constructively with Ultratec and the current NRS provider to strike a suitable financial agreement. We can't leave so many people with hearing impairments in Australia without a voice.

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