Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I must admit my knuckles are a little bit white.

No, Assistant Minister Thistlethwaite, I am not driving! I will be in the back with a very experienced driver, doing this for charity. It is a wonderful charity—the Gillin Boys Foundation. They do wonderful work. I am happy to support them, but I'm already getting a little bit nervous about it.

Back to the point, I'd be a little less nervous if I knew that we had proper mobile phone coverage at the Simpson Speedway. I'm going to continue to work with Telstra to make sure that that becomes a reality, but the fact that we don't have the mobile black spot funding continuing beyond 2027-28 is a great shame because that program has really delivered for regional and rural Victoria.

I'll give you another example. There is a wonderful country town in my electorate—Hawkesdale. It's got a wonderful P-12 school. It's a hub for the surrounding farmers. We need to make sure that it has proper mobile phone coverage because it wasn't so long ago that there were devastating fires that threatened that town. One of the key things about fires—as we saw with the fires in the Grampians that threatened Pomonal, Halls Gap, Willaura,Glenthompson and other communities over Christmas and the new year—is that we need to make sure that we've got proper mobile phone coverage. We need to make sure that we can get that for Hawkesdale, and the Mobile Black Spot Program will help deliver it.

We will ensure that black spot funding continues because we understand how important it is for places like the Simpson Speedway and Hawkesdale. There are many other examples of where we need to keep rolling out that black spot funding right across the electorate of Wannon. We want to make sure that, ultimately, we've got the mobile telecommunications services that the cities enjoy at the moment. That's why the coalition put in place that mobile black spot funding. It's funny that others take credit for how many mobile phone towers they put in their electorates, but none of it would have happened if it weren't for a coalition government.

The Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill creates a register of carriage service providers, enables the direct enforcement of an industry development code, increases the maximum penalty amount from $250,000 to $10 million and amends the existing two-step process for the application of penalty amounts for infringement notices. It's a bill which enjoys support across the parliament. Obviously, doing more to increase transparency to make sure that, where there are abuses, we can act upon them is something that everyone wants to see in this place. Anything which enhances consumer safeguards and does so in a way that is sensible and doesn't put a huge red-tape burden in place is obviously something that we would support.

One thing we don't support—I'll end on this note—is a cut to the Mobile Black Spot Program. I say to those opposite, seriously, for regional and rural Victoria, especially with the debacle of the 3G network being turned off in the way that it was: we need that program, and we need it back. It's sad that it wasn't in the budget.

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