Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025. This bill really does build on our commitment to enhancing connectivity and the experience of all Australians by placing them at the centre of the telecommunications industry, recognising that these are essential services that providers deliver. We want a telco industry that works for Australians, ensuring that we have the best consumer safeguards in place to protect our interests. It's why we're introducing a universal outdoor mobile obligation, requiring telcos to provide access to mobile, voice and SMS almost everywhere across the country, and this will have huge benefits for regional and remote communities, particularly during emergencies and disasters.

I note the former speaker spoke about mobile phone towers in black spot areas, but it would be great if those opposite came on board and supported a universal outdoor mobile obligation. It doesn't cure all our problems, but it absolutely means that telcos have to get serious about the technologies they provide across our country.

We want to ensure that there is a strong, clear recourse if telcos do the wrong thing as well. There have been a number of high-profile incidents in the telco sector in recent years. I'm sure everyone remembers the 14-hour Optus outage, which impacted 10 million Optus customers and prevented more than 2,100 calls to 000 being connected with emergency services. Further, the latest data from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman shows that the number of complaints increased by 13 per cent between October and December last year compared to the previous quarter. And that is why earlier this year the Minister for Communications introduced this legislation to parliament—to further improve protections for the majority of us: we, the telco consumers. It recognises how critical telco services are for everyone—in particular, for those in vulnerable circumstances, people living in our regions, First Nations Australians, those who rely upon connectivity to work from home or to run a small business.

This bill will boost the enforcement powers and penalties available to ACMA so that it is an empowered and effective regulator. It will also ensure that appropriate incentive structures are in place to drive better behaviour by telcos. These proposed changes will simplify the current two-step process and enable ACMA to take direct and immediate enforcement action against telecommunications providers that have breached their obligations to customers under industry codes.

The bill also provides for strong determent to telcos, which increases penalties for providers who are in breach from $250,000 to around $10 million. The value will be different depending on the offending conduct. But this penalty framework will bring the telecommunications sector in line with energy, banking and the Australian consumer law and create greater incentives to abide by those industry codes. Nobody wants an industry that sees penalties as simply the cost of doing business.

This bill will increase the transparency of providers operating in the market, especially telecommunications retailers, through the establishment of a carrier service provider registration scheme. In all, the legislation will provide ACMA with the tools it needs to protect consumers and hold companies to account if they do the wrong thing. It is another way that the Albanese government is putting consumers at the centre of the telco industry, recognising the importance of quality telecommunications services for all Australians, and it builds on other work that we have done to improve connectivity and reliability across our network.

Since coming to government, we have focused on improving connectivity for all Australians, regardless of postcode, because we know that connectivity is no longer a nice-to-have; it is an absolute necessity in the day and age in which we live. Programs like the Mobile Black Spot Program and the Mobile Network Hardening Program are seeing expanding mobile coverage, more resilience and better capacity across our network.

In Eden-Monaro, we are investing more than $8½ million towards 13 mobile base stations, delivering improved coverage across our region. And this is in addition to 27 projects being supported across Eden-Monaro under rounds 2 and 3 of the Mobile Network Hardening Program to keep telecommunications online for longer during disasters. In our term, we've invested an initial $2.4 billion and we committed an additional $3 billion earlier this year to expand access to full-fibre NBN for 2.1 million premises across the nation, which includes almost a million in our regions. In my own electorate of Eden-Monaro, this investment has meant that 37,500 premises and businesses can now access full fibre capable of delivering faster, more reliable speeds, with an extra 3,000 premises set to receive upgrades thanks to this additional $3 billion investment.

When we came to government, entire postcodes were still stuck on the former government's copper network, impacting the ability to run small businesses, to work from home and to access essential online services. Fibre can deliver speeds 18 times faster than the average copper connection and it is less likely to drop out or to degrade. With the completion of the Albanese government's $480 million upgrade to NBN Co's fixed wireless and satellite services, over 14,500 households and businesses in Eden-Monaro are benefiting from faster internet and increased data. The fixed wireless upgrades have already delivered increased download speeds to households from around 48 megabytes per second in 2022 to over 100 megabytes per second today. Regional communities like my own deserve affordable and reliable services just like you'd expect anywhere else in the country. This is exactly what our investments are supporting.

In addition to fixed wireless upgrades, our investments have also improved NBN's Sky Muster satellite service, which provides much-needed connectivity options for more than 200,000 households and businesses in regional and remote Australia. Thanks to the Albanese government, customers now have unlimited data through NBN Co's Sky Muster Plus premium package, providing download speeds of up to 100 megabytes per second.

We know how important NBN is to drive productivity, particularly for regional Australians who work from home, for our small businesses and to access telehealth and so much more. It's for this reason that, under the Albanese government, the NBN is not for sale. But those opposite might sell it off to the highest bidder. Labor built the NBN, just like we built Medicare, superannuation and the NDIS, and it is only Labor that you can trust to deliver better connectivity for all Australians. It's an essential part of keeping connected—having reliable affordable services for all of our telcos. You need reliable connectivity to run small businesses, to work from home or, when you are at a point of crisis and need to arrange support. When things go wrong, telcos have an obligation to support you and, if they don't, we are ensuring that there are consequences for them. This is what this bill will support, and this is why I'm so incredibly happy to support this fabulous bill.

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