Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (3) as circulated in my name together:

(1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 7), after paragraph 3(1)(b), insert:

; (c) to ensure that NBN Co has a universal service obligation to provide the national broadband network in a way that is reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, wherever they reside or carry on business.

(2) Schedule 1, item 12, page 4 (after line 22), after the paragraph beginning "Under provisions" in section 43, insert:

NBN Co has a universal service obligation to provide the national broadband network in a way that is reasonably accessible and equitable to all people in Australia.

(3) Schedule 1, item 13, page 5 (line 7), at the end of section 43A, add:

; and (c) NBN Co has a universal service obligation to provide the national broadband network in a way that is reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, wherever they reside or carry on business.

The previous speaker was talking about whether we should own government assets or whether the incompetent Public Service should own and run assets. A more streamlined, foreign ownership is what he is advocating. That's his line, but you'd see it differently if you were sitting in a car that was dry-bogged to the eyeballs and you were praying with rosary beads for your survival when the ground temperature was about 200 degrees Fahrenheit and your father had third-degree burns and was suffering heat stroke and had nearly died. You'd probably see communications a bit differently than you city blokes see it. You have absolutely no concern for anything outside the cities.

To their enormous disgrace, the founders of the Country Party would turn in their graves if they saw all those banks that they set up being sold off by the Country Party, which now call themselves the National Party. They would see, in the deregulation, the protection that all of our farming industries had being removed. They would be horrified.

But you don't care how many of us die in the bush. You couldn't give a damn. There's a person dying once a fortnight in the greater Cairns region simply because of the collapse of the roads system there. The Liberals would say that it's Labor's fault. Well, the Liberals are now in there. Will anything happen?

We're talking about communications. Our honourable member here is from Tasmania. All of Tasmania, really, is a rural and regional area. They will suffer the same as the rest of us. I would say that probably every week in Australia there's an accident where they desperately need a telephone to get an ambulance there to save somebody's life. It might even be that every day that occurs in Australia.

There are 60,000 or 70,000 people living on the Atherton tableland, 30 kilometre from Cairns, and there are three highways on which it will take you about an hour and a half to get there. In spite it being only 30 kilometre, it will take you an hour and a half. Those roads are not covered by the current communication system, so if you have an accident on those roads, too bad, so sad. You just hope someone comes along and can get to a telephone somewhere or get somewhere to use his mobile and rescue you. I can go into the details of how many accidents are occurring, but we've had one death a fortnight there, I think, for the last two or three months. I use that as an example.

I asked two people about this, and I think I've made reference to this before. I asked the wife of the very famous and illustrious mayor of Burketown—where a very tiny number of people live in a very big area of Australia—whose from a fourth-, fifth- or sixth-generation family in Australia, 'What do you need most?' and she said, 'Speed with my internet'. John Nelson is maybe one of the top 20 or 30 cattle owners in Australia. He owns a huge swag of country in north-west Queensland. I asked him, 'What do you want most?' and he said, 'Faster internet access. It just drives me off my head, the amount of work that you have to do and the time you have to wait for something to happen.'

This is, seriously, life and death for us, and I bring the attention of the House to my own family as an example. The Tyranny of Distance is a wonderful book by the historian Geoffrey Blainey. My family are a good example. There were three Katter brothers. Grandad had gone there in the 1870s in a stagecoach, and there were three boys, two of whom died as a result of the tyranny of distance. My father—and all of us—nearly died in that example I gave previously, but this is a separate issue.

You say that you're looking at putting in a universal service obligation. It's good you're looking at it! It would be nice if you did it. Ben Chifley, John Curtin and 'Red Ted' Theodore would turn in their grave if they saw a government making this service available without a universal service obligation attached to it. The mob on the other side want it to be saleable. Sell-off the most essential service in the country outside of water! (Time expired)

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