Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Keilira is a very small community in the south-east of South Australia in my electorate. It has been visited by bushfires no fewer than three times in the last six years, and it's a mobile phone black spot. In the wake of the most recent Keilira bushfire, I spoke about the desperate need for a phone tower—particularly as I heard sobering stories of triple 0 calls that just failed at critical times. So I was incredibly relieved, to be truthful, that, in round 5 of the mobile Black Spot Program, Keilira was allocated a tower, to be built in partnership with Optus.

My relief turned to confusion when I heard subsequently that, in a completely separate process, the South Australian state government was going to partner with Telstra to build a Telstra tower right alongside the Optus tower. So we'd gone from no mobile reception to, effectively, twin towers at Keilira. I'm here to say that, after a deal of discussion and negotiation, the two telcos have—and I congratulated them for this—got their heads together, and, as a result, we won't see the wanton waste of taxpayer funds on creating two towers at Keilira. We'll have one tower, but that one tower will have co-located services of Telstra and Optus. It's a great outcome and a win for common sense.

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