Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I to rise to speak on the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025. I know that this government is committed to putting the Australian consumer at the heart of the telecommunications industry. We have just heard from the member for Blair how important it is to protect the consumer as our entire lives today depend on our connectivity through our telcos and the different businesses that run telcos. They keep us connected. If you think of the industry and where it was 20 to 25 years ago and where it is today, there is a vast difference. It's completely different. Therefore, we need protection laws to keep up with the rapid changes that are being made with telecommunications.

I remember as a child growing up my father wanting to talk to his mother, who was on the other side of the world. This was in the early sixties. I can recall him booking a call at the GPO, the general post office, a day before Christmas or a day after Christmas to go up and talk to his mother once a year, if that was possible. Sometimes it was once every two years. When you think of today and you see these mobile phone devices that we have and which carry our entire lives on them, we are connected not just to our local communities but to the entire world. You can see the rapid changes that have been made in the last 20 to 25 years, and it's only going to change even more rapidly. Therefore, we need telecommunication laws to be enhanced continuously to keep up with that pace and to ensure that the consumer is protected. When you think of telecommunications and you go back a number of years to the general post office, then Telstra and then the privatisation of Telstra and the opening up of the market for all sorts of telcos to come in, we started off in a period where you had a landline in your house. Some did and some didn't. If it was an emergency, you would run next door or to the red telephone box and call the emergency number that you needed. Today, it's very different. Our 000 numbers across the nation are connected up to Telstra, for example, which runs this part of the service.

The fact is that our entire workloads, files and everything for all of us in this place and many other industries are on these devices. So you can see how important it is to ensure that we remain connected and that we receive calls, text messages, emails and all the things that we do on these phones. As I said, that is whether it is for someone to just say a quick hello and be connected to another human being once or twice a week or whether it is someone who uses their phone continuously for their business, for their work, for their wellbeing, for their health or for a whole range of things, like upcoming appointments. Our access to telecommunications connects us and keeps us informed in a way that would be almost impossible to even imagine in our grandparents' time and for previous generations of Australians. I gave you an example of my father wanting to make a call overseas and booking that call at the GPO to go and do it. That was in the 1960s. It was once a year at Christmas if he was lucky and got in early enough. You would have to make your booking quite early.

As a consequence, it is incumbent on us in this place to make sure that the telco communications regulations and consumer protection frameworks keep up with the rapidly advancing technology. The reforms proposed in this bill go to the compliance and enforcement regime for consumer safeguards and constitute this comprehensive package of improvements for those arrangements.

Telecommunications should enrich people's lives, and they have. When you think about it, they have from the days that I spoke about, the sixties, to where we are today. But, at the same time, they shouldn't cause inconvenience, frustration or detriment. However, all of us in this place have had constituents who have contacted us to talk about some form of inconvenience through their telcos or telecommunications. They come into our electorate offices on a regular basis. I have seen hundreds of people over the years wanting to know why they were cut off when they had paid their bills and why they couldn't get connectivity when they had actually been paying for their monthly account and a whole range of things.

This is where I have to give praise to ACMA. Many people have been referred to them to resolve their issues and, I have to say, nine out of 10 times they are resolved. They do a great job. I think this bill will enhance their work and make their work much easier for them.

As an example, just last week my office received a call from a very distressed gentleman, who I won't identify out of respect for his privacy. His landline service and account had suddenly been disconnected, and this had occurred without any consultation and obviously without his permission. What made matters worse is that this particular person is vision impaired and, as a consequence, extremely reliant on his landline service. Fortunately, his telecommunication provider is one of the big players—and I'll name them: Telstra—in the communication sector, so my office, like most offices, had a contact to call. We were able to call the government relations section and have the matter resolved.

But, of course, it's not the case with many of the smaller telcos. There are a lot of them out there who are not as easy to get in touch with. You can only get in touch with them via the internet or a robotic system that they have. It is critical that ACMA has the necessary powers to protect consumers and the ability to issue penalties appropriately to send a strong message to those telcos that do the wrong thing. And it's critical for the consumer to be able to contact that telco as well when an issue does arise.

Just last December, Telstra paid a penalty of more than $3 million for failing to comply with emergency call rules during a technical disruption at its 000 emergency call centre. An ACMA investigation found 473 breaches of the rules relating to an incident on 1 March 2024, during which Telstra's 000 call centre was hampered in transferring calls to emergency services for 90 minutes. You can imagine the number of emergency calls that were taking place in those 90 minutes. Some could have been life-threatening—a whole range of things. The investigation found that Telstra initiated a contingency process to transfer calls received during the disruption using a list of backup phone numbers. However, several of the phone numbers on the list were incorrect, resulting in 127 calls not being transferred to emergency services for those 90 minutes. It was a fairly serious issues, when you think about it now.

Telstra managed those calls by providing callers' details to the relevant emergency service organisations via emails and phone calls. While Telstra, at the end, successfully managed to transfer the remaining 346 calls using the backup phone list, they could not provide the callers' digital location information to the emergency service organisations due to that particular disruption. ACMA noted that Telstra has historically had a strong record on complaints in its role as the national 000 operator and made considerable efforts to keep the public informed during this outage and subsequently updated its backup phone number list and appointed an independent consultant to conduct the incident review.

This just goes to show how important the role of regulating the telecommunication industry sector is. It can literally be a matter of life or death. Indeed, staying connected is an essential part of everyday life, especially in our remote communities and regional areas. This bill wants to ensure that Australians are protected, have access to reliable high-quality and affordable telco services and are supported by good, strong regulatory consumer safeguards, such as ACMA. We want to ensure the telco industry is working for all Australians, whether you're in the regions, remote areas, regional areas, country areas or in the cities' outer suburbs or inner suburbs. We need the best safeguards in place to protect people's telco interests, and there is a strong, clear recourse if telcos do the wrong thing.

Many Australians are experiencing significant cost-of-living pressures, and this includes being able to afford critical communications. As I said, it's no longer just that landline; it is a critical connection to everything from work to education to health—your entire life on this device. But the latest data from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the TIO, shows that complaints progressed to the TIO—and many of us in this place have used the TIO or referred people to the TIO, and again I want to pay credit to the TIO for the incredible that they do—were up 13 per cent between October and December 2024 compared to the previous quarter. It increased by 13 per cent in the last 2024 quarter. There was also a 12.8 per cent rise in small-business complaints. Think of the small businesses and how reliant they are on connectivity for their income. They are absolutely reliant, so that 12.8 per cent rise for small businesses is a worrying trend as well. That's following four consecutive quarters of decline and a spike in the 3G shutdown complaints in October and November.

There have been regular high-profile incidents, and we've read about them in the newspapers. We've seen them, including service outages such as the one I mentioned earlier and claims of irresponsible selling practices. This is an area that I've been going on about for a long time. We need to come down on irresponsible selling practices. Some examples are where different telcos—mainly the smaller ones—have salespeople going door-to-door, knocking on people's doors, asking that if they wish to swap from one service to another. One of the most outrageous once I've seen was during the NBN, when the rollout was taking place in metropolitan Adelaide. The member for Sturt is here as well and would remember that period throughout our suburbs where this rollout was taking place. At the same time, there were different notifications being put out to different residences. One of the smaller telcos picked up on this and went doorknocking in the area, claiming that they were from the NBN and that a particular service will be better enhanced by the NBN.

I just happened to be home when one of them knocked on my door. I'd picked up on this and had heard from constituents that this was taking place. When I pressed and asked further questions, it was revealed that they weren't from the NBN; they were from a smaller telco and were actually going door to door. Many people get caught up in these schemes and in these particular scams—I don't want to call them scams, but I suppose they are if you don't know what you're signing up for and they haven't explained it to you. Many people have contacted our office when they've been with one of the providers only to find that the bill the next month or the next quarter is coming from someone completely different. When they come into the office, wanting to know what it was or why they are getting this bill from someone they are unaware of, we sit down, go through it and discover that at some point they signed a form saying, yes, the wanted to be with this provider. Then they explain to me that it wasn't properly explained to them so they could have a period of time to think it through. We need to crack down on those irresponsible selling practices. The reality is that most of the victims are elderly people and people with intellectual disabilities. We've seen plenty of them in my electorate office over the years. It should be wiped out. ACMA and the TIO should be given all the powers possible to ensure that it is wiped out and that these smaller—or any—telcos that are taking part in irresponsible selling practices have the book thrown at them.

The reforms proposed in this bill go to the compliance and enforcement regime for consumer safeguards that constitute this comprehensive package of improved arrangements. This is about equipping the watchdogs with the powers that they require. More importantly, we need to do our job and inform the consumers about what rights they have when it comes to signing up with new telcos or when things do go wrong and they cannot find a way through it. We need this bill, and that's what this bill is doing.

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