Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

No, they were not just in our seats. They were spread around the country. If you want me to go to the priority picks that your minister made in the round before the last one, I can do that if you like. But the reality is this gap has broadened. Most recently, a fundamental chasm has been established. The member for Bradfield, when he was the minister, was astute enough to stand up to the telcos and say: 'No. I know you want to switch off the 3G network. I know you want to sell that bandwidth, because it's very valuable real estate. But I'm going to extend the period before you're entitled to do that, because I need to be assured that those living in regional areas serviced by the 3G network are not going to be disadvantaged by the switch-off.'

There was a change of government, change of minister, change of attitude to this issue or perhaps just a minister who was more easily hoodwinked, because what we have seen during the term of this Labor government is the switch-off of the 3G network. Telcos came to the minister and said, 'Hand on our heart, Minister, nobody will be worse off.' The minister repeated those assurances, assuring Australians living in rural, regional and remote Australia serviced by the 3G network that they would not notice the difference when the 3G network was switched off. And so the 3G switch-off proceeded. It proceeded at pace, of course, because the telcos are very motivated to sell the bandwidth. Literally the day it occurred in my electorate, we were inundated with people saying, 'I don't know what's happened, but I can't make a phone call.' 'I don't know what's happened, but my technology doesn't work anymore.' 'I don't know what's happened, but can you help me diagnose and understand this?' We collected all these stories and we presented them to both the minister and the telcos, who had assured us nobody would be worse off. That's where the story becomes interesting. It's indicative of what you have to guard against in this place all the time.

The response we got initially from the telcos—which, by the way, have now been mugged by reality because there are literally so many people who have lost reception that they cannot continue to prosecute this fallacy—was that 'those people that have lost service because we switched off 3G service were fortuitously receiving service and therefore are no worse off'. Despite having been around communications policy debate in this place for a decade, I'd never heard of the concept of 'fortuitous service', but, if I'm going to accept that as a concept, what the telcos were staying was that the people who were getting mobile phone reception via the 3G service—who no longer do, because it's been switched off—were just getting lucky and so were not worse off. I have to tell you, if you're a farmer in the Mallee, you don't care much whether a telco determines whether or not it's fortuitous service. If you're at the scene of a farm incident, where you've got that golden hour to get people to medical assistance, you don't much care about whether it's fortuitous or not. I'll tell you what you care about: whether it works or not.

I'm telling the Minister for Communications, as we have in a number of engagements since the switch-off, that it don't work anymore. It don't work, and that's a problem. It's a massive problem because the telcos promised you it would. Minister, either the telcos misled you—and, if that's the case, come in here and get into them—or you knew that this would be the outcome and, like other elements of public policy that your government is focused on, you were ultimately making the decision to act in the interests of people that live in metropolitan centres against those that live in regional centres. I've seen more pictures of pandas in the advertisement in the last two days than I care to mention, but that's because those opposite allocated $15,000 a week to feed bamboo to pandas in the Adelaide Zoo at a time when rural South Australians in drought are facing the driest conditions in a hundred years and are not getting a dollar. There is not one dollar to help those farmers deal with that circumstance. So I'm perhaps a little surprised that the Minister for Communications isn't that concerned about the impact of the 3G shutdown in the bush.

I have asked people in my electorate to rate their reception. I have written to every single constituent living in a regional area of my electorate outside of the metropolitan districts, the country towns, and I've asked them to rate their reception. Normally, when you do these things, you get a few responses. You know what it is like, Mr Deputy Speaker. But we have been inundated—2,500 people have taken the time to go to my website and fill in a form indicating what level of reception they receive and whether it has improved in recent years or whether it has declined and in particular whether it was impacted by the closure of 3G.

I have written to the telcos providing them with that data. I have asked them to investigate each and every case. It wasn't me that made the undertaking. I didn't make the promise. The telcos made the promise. The telcos promised the Australian people and the minister in particular that when they turned off the 3G network they wouldn't suffer loss. But that's exactly what's happened. And so, in my view, it's incumbent on the telecommunications companies to investigate each and every single one of those allegations of loss to determine whether in fact people living in regional communities who are paying for a service are receiving that service. If they don't undertake those investigations then, in my view, we'll know that they knew full well what the outcome of the 3G switch-off would be. The minister should demand they undertake those investigations.

We know this is an issue because our friends on the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee have undertaken an inquiry. That inquiry predictably highlighted that the 3G switch-off could have 'been handled better'. These Senate committee reports aren't known for their colourful language. They are ultimately fairly dry documents. But—goodness!—it should stand as a real marker to the minister and her actions in relation to the 3G switch-off that her peers in the Senate have indicated it could have been handled better. I have to tell you, where I come from, they use different language if they are on the side of the road, desperate for medical attention, or have had a medical episode at home. It doesn't even need to be on the farm or on the road; it can be at home. Many of these incidents involve people not being able to make a phone call from their own house. For the person who might be on the side of the road or at home, in a paddock or at the yard seeking medical attention, their language is a little bit more colourful. They don't say, 'Oh, well, the minister could have handled it better.' They are filthy and they know who to blame.

I sit through question time a bit further away nowadays, but I listen to the Prime Minister and, whenever he's under pressure, it's someone else's fault—the Treasurer or the economic crisis we are living through. The cost-of-living challenges that we are all experiencing have apparently blown in on the north wind from overseas and have nothing to do with the decisions that are made in this place. Rubbish! Real leaders stand up, real leaders take responsibility and real leaders act. The Prime Minister assured the Australian people that that was the kind of prime minister he was going to be. He's been anything but. He's ducked, he's dived, he's slipped, he's slid and he's obfuscated. And on Tuesday night we saw an attempt, in a budget that didn't make it to late-night news, to hoodwink the Australian people into returning this government, which is guided by all the wrong priorities, for another term. Well, here's a newsflash for those opposite: the people of Australia always get it right; they're incredibly intelligent and they've seen straight through your Prime Minister, your Treasurer and your government.

There are rumours swirling around this building today that the Prime Minister will call an election on Friday. I hope he does, because the people of Australia are desperate to pass judgement on this Prime Minister and this term of government. They know that we need to get Australia back on track, that we need to get mobile reception back on track, and they're looking forward to the next election delivering an outcome which puts Australia back on the right course, where we start listening to the people in rural, regional and remote Australia, taking their concerns seriously and addressing falling living standards in this country.

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