Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to voice my strong support for the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011 and cognate bills. Before I do that, I would like to pass on my thoughts and prayers to the people of my hometown of St George, who are having a tough time with the flood. To quote a bit of poetry:

It pelted, pelted all day long, A-singing at its work,

till every heart took up the song way-out to Back o'-Bourke ...

And now all those rains are flowing into the Balonne river and through the township of St George and on to New South Wales. To quote Adam Lindsay Gordon:

And floods, freed by storm,

From broken up fountain heads, dash on ...

I know it is causing a lot of heartache to my friends and cousins in St George. I grew up in St George and experienced a lot of floods, but nothing like the one they are experiencing now.

It is interesting to think back to my time in St George. I left St George in 1985 when accessing information was a completely different experience. Now I can look on Facebook and see photos and videos posted almost instantaneously. I can see what is happening in my street and what is happening along the riverbank. Back then I would ride my bike down to the local library to flick through the library cards or ask for a book to be sent from Dalby or somewhere like that. A week or so later I would get notice of the book arriving and go in and have a look. Accessing information is now a completely different process. When I was making plans to go on a round-the-world trip I would go and talk to my travel agent and go through the information. I would get a quote and they would type up the information. I would then go down to the bank and line up in the bank queue to get some money out, then go back and pay the travel agent for the tickets they had typed up, and they would post them out to you a few weeks later. I would go to the airport, normally with luggage filled with books because I would be travelling for such a long time, and then I would check in.

When I was travelling I would have to find local money to put into payphones so that I could let my family know what I was up to. When I was backpacking around the world, I would occasionally find some old Australian newspapers that were a few months out of date so that I could find out what was happening back in Australia. I would come back from holidays, I would take my film down to the chemist, leave it at the chemist and wait a few days for my Kodak photos to come back. I would then post them off months and months later to share with my friends from overseas.

It is amazing how much things have changed since my time growing up in St George. Kodak has now filed for bankruptcy—you can take photos and share them with your friends around the world instantaneously on Facebook. You can use Skype to communicate instantaneously with people around the world. Whilst there are still travel agents, people can now book their own tickets and pay for them online. You can do your banking online. You can do your research on the internet. Education has changed significantly since I left St George to go to teachers college. Now the digital world and the digital revolution have completely changed education. In the holidays, I took my two young boys to the Dubbo zoo on a bit of a road trip. I went with my brother, who unfortunately is currently single, so I got an insight into the world of online dating through RSVP. I heard about how much things have changed since, for example, the member for Corio—who is on duty in the chamber at the moment—was out dating, a long time ago admittedly, with all respect to his wife. Now the internet has completely changed even something as simple as finding a new partner. I think there might be a certain wisdom in, rather than going out drunk to a pub, making a sober decision while looking at RSVP. Perhaps it will bring some benefit to society.

I am here to talk about the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011, but I think that discussion of how rapidly things have changed illustrates how important it is to focus on the NBN and the benefits that will flow from it. I particularly commend the speech of the member for Hinkler where he stepped out from behind the 'No' placard that most people opposite hide behind. He talked about some of the benefits. Coming from Bundaberg and representing a regional area, he appreciates more than most how important the NBN will be for people in the bush and for people in regional Australia.

The Gillard Labor government is delivering the most significant infrastructure project in our nation's history, and I am proud to be able to say that. The National Broadband Network is a major once-in-a-generation nation-building piece of infrastructure. The NBN will ensure that all Australians can access a world-class high-speed broadband network.

For the benefit of the opposition leader, I need to explain that the NBN is not only about faster YouTube downloads; it is about changing the way Australians live, work and play—and I particularly focus on the word 'work'. You do not need to be a tech-head to know that. Most people under 20 would know that and most people who grapple with new technology know that. It is a revolution that will deliver affordable, high-speed broadband for hospitals, innovations in health; for households, innovations in how work can be done at home and in terms of entertainment; and for businesses and schools, no matter where they are in Australia. It will revolutionise education, health care and business. There is no escaping the fact that it is a major, once-in-a-generation infrastructure project, and that is why I am so excited about it. Why? Because of what it will do for Australian productivity.

Let's have a look at productivity. You can look at it from quarter to quarter but it is more instructive to look at how productivity has changed over time—over five years, over 10 years, over those longer times. When the Rudd Labor government came to office, productivity growth was at zero, and that reflected the fact that basically the former government, the Howard government, had not made the tough calls. When the Howard government came to office in 1996, they were able to reap the benefits of the tough reforms of the Hawke and Keating governments, and that is acknowledged by those opposite. It is especially so now in 2012. But rust never sleeps; you need to keep making changes. You need to keep investing in infrastructure, especially critical infrastructure, and that did not happen. Whether you are flying over Dalrymple Bay or Newcastle and seeing all those boats waiting out to sea or looking at railroads and roads, you know that there were not the long-term investments in productivity-enhancing reforms. It was basically a decade of neglect.

If we look at productivity, the 3,000 flagpoles were an important contribution to Australia and gave a few people jobs. We invested in 3,000 libraries—big investments in education, training and skills. You look at roads, rails and ports: we doubled the investment in these things, and they will all eventually increase productivity. That $455 billion pipeline of investments will eventually increase the productivity of this nation. Obviously, if you are building a pipeline or a road or a railway or a gas processing plant now, it is not producing right now, but in the long run they will increase the productivity of this nation.

Training, skills, education—these are the things we need to focus on as a nation. The tough decisions are the decisions we need to make, and I am proud to be part of a government that is making these reforms. Future governments and future parliaments will see those benefits, but I would rather do the hard yards and suffer the political consequences than shirk the responsibilities that come with leadership.

These bills before the House will ensure a smooth transition to the National Broadband Network and create a more competitive and open telecommunications market. They do so firstly by establishing a statutory authority, the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency. The agency will be responsible for the implementation and administration of service agreements.

The government has entered into an agreement with Telstra to provide universal service outcomes for standard telephone services and payphone services. The bills define the agency's corporate governance structure, reporting and accountability requirements. It also imposes an industry levy to contribute to the agency's operating costs. The Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency will enter contracts or provide grants to deliver universal service obligations, emergency call services and the National Relay Services.

The bills will ensure that all Australians have reasonable access to a standard telephone service and to payphones. Triple-0 calls will continue to be transferred to the relevant emergency services, and those with hearing or speech impairment will be able to access the National Relay Service voice-equivalent services, a service that will be increasingly important to an ageing Australia. These bills are required in order to minimise the disruption for consumers and industry as the NBN fibre network replaces the old copper network. We need to use the right tools. The old tools were fine a long time ago but the new tools are what we need now.

Under the financial heads of agreement with NBN Co., Telstra agreed to maintain its copper network to deliver voice services outside NBN fibre areas. Telstra is also required under the agreement to provide voice-only services as a retailer of last resort. That is the Labor Party understanding of markets, in that we do not just let it rip and let people suffer. This is about ensuring that all Australians are able to access basic telecommunications services.

This legislation puts in place appropriate accountability measures. As well as the usual reporting measures such as annual reports and corporate plans, the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency will be required to maintain a public register of key terms and services provided under contracts and grants it makes. The bills also allow for the universal service obligations to be removed by the minister after the transition period. This would allow these services to go to the market. Universal service obligations can be removed only if the minister is satisfied within two years that there are satisfactory contractual arrangements in place.

Against muted criticism from those opposite—although I do not think this is something that regional Liberal and National Party members are against—the Gillard Labor government have continued to forge ahead with the National Broadband Network. We have continued to negotiate with industry and the communications sector to ensure we have the right system in place to deliver an effective national broadband network. It is not easy, but game-changing infrastructure of this magnitude never is. I am particularly wary of people who are muted or neutral about this, because I think that in years to come they will reap the benefits of it. I am wary of what you might call 'policy leeches'. They do not actually do the hard yards. If you go bushwalking and you collect a leech and take it to the top of the mountain, while you are doing the hard yards walking up the mountain the leech is feeding off your blood, sweat and hard work. Then, when you get to the top of the mountain, the leech falls off. You have done all the hard work to get there but it reaps the benefits of it. I am wary of that sort of approach to this great nation building policy. I commend the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy for his commitment in this regard, because I know that it will increase the nation's productivity in the years to come.

The Labor approach is quite sensible. Some of those opposite have the approach to productivity that you just need to work harder, work longer and, obviously, cut the penalty rates. That is not the way forward. That is a simplistic approach to productivity. Productivity is a much more complicated beast. The Labor approach is much more compassionate. You work smarter and you support the community with an investment in skills and resources, and that is what this NBN legislation will do for the nation. I commend the bills to the House.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is important that we consider the bills before us today in context. We would not be debating these measures if the Gillard government were not embarking on the shambolic waste of money that is NBN Co. The whole Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency system was created as part of the government's backroom deal with Telstra to prop up NBN Co. It is yet another flawed component of the entire fiasco that is NBN Co.

There are three bills before the House today. The first of these, the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011, provides the framework for the new USO system. The bill will create a new statutory agency called the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency, to be known as TUSMA. TUSMA will be responsible for entering into contracts on behalf of the Commonwealth for the delivery of public interest telecommunications services. These include standard telephone services, payphones, the emergency call system, and the National Relay Service. TUSMA will also be responsible for ensuring that voice-only customers are migrated onto the NBN fibre network before Telstra's copper network is decommissioned. TUSMA will also be required to support research and development aimed at ensuring that public interest services such as traffic lights and public alarm systems can migrate onto the National Broadband Network with minimal disruption.

Part 2 of the bill sets out the scope of grants and contracts to be administered by TUSMA and provides for the minister, subject to the scrutiny of parliament, to set the standards and benchmarks that will apply to contracts and grants managed by TUSMA. The agency will monitor the performance and compliance of contractors and grant recipients and will maintain a register of all contracts and grants. Part 3 sets out TUSMA's corporate structure, accountability, and reporting requirements.

The structure of TUSMA will be a statutory agency under the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997. The minister will appoint a chairman and four to six members. In appointing TUSMA members, the minister is required to select candidates with a diverse range of skills and expertise, and TUSMA will also have a CEO and staff, who will be employed under the Public Service Act—even more bureaucracy and swelling of the Public Service.

The government has chosen to introduce yet another duplication of services as an attempted solution. At present, ACMA oversees the USO and collects the USO levy. This system has worked reasonably well for a number of years, yet instead of utilising the existing capacity within an existing agency, the government has seen fit to create a new bureaucracy with a new platoon of public servants. This new agency will have little incentive to keep expenses down, particularly as government funding for TUSMA is fixed, and any increase in costs will be borne by the telecommunications industry. Further, I have concerns about the associated costs of TUSMA. Under the new arrangements, TUSMA will receive government funding, with residual funding requirements to be met by a consolidated industry levy, which combines the current USO and NRS levies. The government has agreed to pay Telstra $230 million per year to provide standard telephone services and $40 million per year for payphones. Telstra will also be paid up to $20 million per year for the emergency call service.

As part of the government's agreement with Telstra, the emergency call service will be put to tender within five years, but if no tenders are received, or none of the tenders are acceptable to TUSMA, Telstra will continue to be the emergency call service provider. On top of this, the National Relay Service contracts currently cost about $17 million per year. The government estimates that TUSMA will also spend about $15 million per year on migrating voice-only customers to the NBN and $20 million over two years on developing solutions for the migration of public interest services to the National Broadband Network.

The government expects TUSMA's annual administrative costs to be approximately $5 million. This takes a total expected liability for TUSMA to about $340 million per year, reducing to $330 million after two years, including a component to cover the agency's administrative expenses. This is a significant increase in the cost of delivering the USO. By way of comparison, Telstra received a subsidy of about $145 million to deliver standard telephone services and payphones in 2010-11.

This increase in the subsidy provided to Telstra and the government's policy decision to expand the scope of services to be funded by the industry levy mean that telecommunications carriers will be asked to pay a significantly increased levy which, in turn, will be passed on to the consumer. After the initial two-year period, the government has committed to provide $100 million per year towards TUSMA's operations, with residual funding needs to be met entirely from the industry levy. Any increase in TUSMA's costs will flow through to the industry levy and ultimately to telecommunications consumers. Given this government's track record of poor and reckless financial management, there is little hope that costs will be contained.

The coalition has concerns over TUSMA, particularly for regional access. We are also committed to ensuring that Australians in regional areas will continue to have reliable access to standard telephone services. To that end, the shadow minister will move an amendment to require the minister to obtain a favourable independent review of the quality of standard telephone services before being permitted to roll back USO regulations. This provision will ensure that an independent expert certifies that standard telephone services are of sufficient quality to justify rolling back USO regulations.

This amendment will add an additional safety net within the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 to ensure that the USO regulations are not rolled back too soon. The coalition also has concerns about the scope for TUSMA's responsibilities to expand without reasonable basis. The government has indicated that TUSMA's budget funding will be set at $100 million per year. The residual requirement will be funded by the industry levy. This creates an incentive for the government to shift further responsibilities onto TUSMA under the guise of public interest telecommunications services, while shifting the cost from the government's budget onto the industry and ultimately the long-suffering consumers.

They say that a week is a long time in politics—in the CIT industry we talk about nanoseconds. The rate of change and advances in technology and communication is breathtaking. We probably cannot imagine what innovations will be introduced in five years time, yet this agreement has a term of 20 years. In 20 years time there is a good chance that payphones will be obsolete, yet this government is committing us to a 20-year agreement. Given this government's track record across the board, the cost of TUSMA has the potential to be yet another financial nightmare, with the real losers being ordinary Australians.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the three bills before the House, the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Service Reform) Bill 2011 and the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Bill 2011. These are designed to ensure a smooth transition to the National Broadband Network with respect to the universal service obligation.

The first of these bills, the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011, creates the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency, TUSMA—so eloquently put by the member for Ryan—which will be a statutory agency responsible for organising and delivering the universal service provision policy outcome in the telecommunications industry. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Service Reform ) Bill 2011 allows the minister to progressively roll back the current universal service obligation, USO, set-up as it becomes obsolete. The third bill in this package is the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Bill 2011, which provides for a levy on the telecommunications industry to contribute to the costs of TUSMA.

In a country as big and sparse as Australia, having some form of universal service obligation is vital to ensure that those living in the remote parts of our country are not punished for it with telecommunication services that are not up to scratch. Coming from a regional part of Queensland—although from a fantastic city, Townsville—I fully support measures that make sure this is not the case.

At the moment, these provisions have been more than adequately provided by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA. While I recognise that the rollout of the NBN may require tweaking of this set-up, it is typical of this government that its knee-jerk reaction is to create a brand new bureaucracy to manage these provisions, which means brand new expenses for the taxpayer. The coalition is concerned about this expense, both the increased government spending in this area and the flow-on costs in the industry levy and the need for efficiency to keep this down. To deal with this, the shadow minister for regional communications will be moving an amendment to this bill that will require ACMA's annual budget to be cut by the amount of the new TUSMA administrative budget. This will not only avoid the duplication of costs that the new agency represents but also will provide the incentive for these costs to be minimised.

With these bills providing for the roll-back of current USO provisions, the shadow minister will also be moving an amendment requiring the minister to have an independent review of telecommunications services before this roll-back is allowed to go ahead. It is vital that this amendment be included to ensure that regional Australia is not left to suffer in the transition to the new USO framework.

I cannot consider these bills outside of the context in which they are required, the transition to the National Broadband Network. As one of the first trials and rollouts of the NBN has been in Townsville, any bill that provides for this transitional period is extremely relevant to my electorate. To ensure that the NBN roll-out has been dealt with properly, and because of the lack of information we have been able to get from the NBN people, I sent out a survey to residents in Townsville who have been offered the service. I asked for feedback on whether or not they had chosen to connect to the NBN and why.

I would like to take the opportunity throughout this speech to share with you some of the feedback that I have received from those people who have been so good as to return their forms. Overall, the responses have been quite mixed despite the fact that you might expect at least a broadly positive response from an infrastructure project carrying a $43 billion price tag. Of the roughly one third of positive responses, the biggest comment is of course the access to faster internet—it is what we all want—which has expanded the possibilities for internet phone services, movie downloads, and everyone in the family being able to make use of the internet at the same time. In particular, people have told me of how useful this has been for business and study.

James Cook University have brought to my attention in the past the benefits that the NBN offers their staff and students. I had one letter from a lady who was very effusive. She said that it is the greatest thing that has ever happened to her family. She emailed me her response and she said that while she was doing this her son was downloading a movie, her daughter was supposed to be doing her homework on the internet while simultaneously being on Facebook—fancy that!—and her other son was downloading music on iTunes. These are things that she said could never possibly have happened previously. She was most effusive in her support.

The NBN roll-out has certainly not been without bumps, though. One problem that has been frequently mentioned is the difficulty connecting to unit complexes or blocks of flats. While taking into consideration that this was a trial and that they must have rules it still beggars belief that you would not want people living in a unit complex to have the same service as the people living next door. The guys—the people installing these things—are right next door putting it into a house but they will not put it into a unit. That was just one of those things that we thought could have been done better. The lack of information on this coming back from NBN Co. to the residents in those units has left a lot of people disappointed. Body corporates have had issues; they often do not live in the complex.

There was also a consistent problem with a lack of information about how to connect to the NBN and what service and internet plans are available through it. Although a lot of these plans are from the providers and not the NBN Co. there has to be coordination of the two and a flow of information. A consistent problem all the way through has been that information was not all that great. Even many of those who want to connect just do not know where to begin. They are being given form responses and access to pages on the internet but those are very difficult for a lot of people follow.

While many people have appreciated the fast internet access provided by NBN others have pointed out that their internet speeds have not been any faster than what they experienced with their previous set-ups. The taxpayer is left paying for this huge infrastructure project to provide a standard of broadband already available through the private sector in most parts of the country.

One gentleman actually took the time to come in and sit down and speak to me. He does CAD designs for buildings. He has to send 10 meg, 12 meg or 15 meg files of CAD drawings throughout the country. He is quite the tech-head—is that a term you can use in the chamber?—and he said that the best speed he could ever get on NBN, and he had signed up for the full thing, at any time of day was 62 megabits per second. And most of the time it was running at around 30 to 32 megabits per second. He also knew of people in Douglas, another suburb in Townsville, who are on ADSL2. They are consistently getting 30 megabits per second. Whilst he signed up for the trial he did not continue afterwards because the cost differential between the two services was just too extreme.

If the NBN is supposed to be so great and you have so few people using it, surely there is something that they have to look at here. It seems to me that they are not listening to any of the feedback from the customers. Despite this government's insistence that the NBN will not be more expensive to consumers many people have come to me telling me that the prices are far more expensive than their current plans, or are just way out of their price range. This has particularly been a problem for pensioners living in the area in which it is being rolled out.

One of the people who responded to the survey said that when they had signed up for the trial they had to sign a two-year contract with one of the internet providers. But two months in, the internet provider more than doubled the price of the access for the rest of the trial. Even though they had a signed contract for two years the internet provider said, 'No, that is not right.' The Telecommunications Ombudsman sided with the internet provider, sho said that it was not a contract. That is the sort of thing we have to watch out for. Those are the sorts of problems we are having.

One of the major pieces of feedback we have received has been about the decision by NBN Co to string cable overhead. This is occurring within 12 months of Cyclone Yasi. We have had the Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister in Tully. We have had the Premier up there. We have had all these things going on in relation to Cyclone Yasi and yet the NBN is being strung up from telephone poles.

We have also had a larger number of people than would be expected complaining that rats and mice have eaten through the fibre optic cable, disconnecting them from the NBN. They have said that NBN Co. have come back and fixed it at no cost to the consumer but it is happening an awful lot.

A number of residents have complained to me about the fact that the government apparently overlooked the risk of cyclones. They have expressed the concern that on top of the enormous expense of this project, all it will take is a cyclone smaller than Yasi and not only will they be without internet and telephone services, but the taxpayer will have to foot the repair bill.

I liken the way the government is marketing the NBN to the way a new car is marketed. It is all shiny and new and it should be fantastic. That is not my experience out there. If the government are to be serious about this national broadband network I think that they have to pull their collective fingers out, do some serious thinking on this and knuckle down to the job.

The NBN say that it is about bringing people from the outside in yet they are running the optic cable past Julia Creek but not allowing anyone in Julia Creek to log on. It is a sin and they should be brought to book on that.

This whole thing is marketed as if it were a brand new car but it turns out that it might be the Lada Niva, the Mahindra or the Ford Edsel. It speaks a good game but just does not deliver. Across this survey you would expect that in a trial area you would have a great, positive response about how wonderful this thing is but we are just not getting it. For the amount of money we are spending on this thing, the amount of effort going into it and the amount of credibility the government is investing in it, you would think that they would be able to deliver 100 megabits per second to 1,000 people in Townsville. But they cannot deliver it. To use an analogy, if this were a car, there would be warranty claims on this vehicle forever, and they would not be accepted. They would have to get an extended warranty from another provider and try to get it fixed up by some bloke down the street.

As a part of the coalition, I support the principles of the universal service obligation that these bills provide for. But the NBN rollout is proving to involve expense after expense. While many Townsville residents appreciate access to fast broadband, our experience has continued to leave me sceptical that taxpayers, even those who already have the NBN, are getting anything that remotely resembles value for money.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011 and associated bills. This package concerns Labor's National Broadband Network. Specifically, it establishes a new government agency to ensure that universal service obligations are being met. If passed, the legislation will take effect from 1 July this year. The universal service obligation ensures that all Australians will have reasonable access to telephone services, payphones and, of course, 000 emergency calls. It is vitally important, especially in regional and rural areas, where mobile phone coverage is not always readily accessible or reliable.

Eventually, the provision of these services will be open to tender, which will be good news for customers, as competition often leads to reduced prices. However, a long-term plan has already been signed by this government to have Telstra provide the service, and we the public do not have access to the price details—or any of the submission details, for that matter. This Labor government talks of transparency and then goes out of its way to hide the detail. Note that from the outset the coalition will move amendments to ensure that our rural and regional areas get a fair go here. We already know that Labor does not plan to deliver fibre-to-the-premises broadband to every home under its NBN. We need to be absolutely sure that people will not lose phone services under the switch, and before the USO is scaled back.

In order to ensure quality, we believe an independent review should be undertaken when more than 10,000 voice-only telephone services are being delivered via the NBN. The review would need to consider price, quality of voice reproduction, reliability, repair time and convenience for customers. It would also need to guarantee that services were at least equivalent to that currently being delivered by Telstra over its copper network. In this way, the NBN would have some accountability on its services. People in rural areas rely on their telephones for communication, whether that be for safety, household services, work or simply entertainment. Taxpayers cannot be funding reduced services.

Of course, it could be a fair while before 10,000 connections are actually made in this country. At the moment, we are five years into Labor's federal leadership and yet we only have a handful of internet customers under the NBN. The then Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, went to the 2007 election promising superfast broadband for the nation, to be paid for by taxpayers. Yet, despite millions of dollars having been spent, no such upgrades exist for anyone in my local area or indeed the Hunter as a whole.

I remember reading a news article on 19 October in the Newcastle Herald, just after it was announced that Newcastle would not be among the first to get the NBN. The member for Charlton, Greg Combet, was quoted as saying:

"Given that this was a joint Hunter and Central Coast submission, and the highly competitive efforts to secure the NBN roll out, this is a good outcome for the region generally …

So here is Greg Combet, member for Charlton, telling the people of the Hunter to be glad the Central Coast was getting the NBN. After all, the Labor MPs from around the Newcastle region campaigned for better internet services for local homes and businesses. We then had the member for Newcastle, Sharon Grierson, urging local businesses to work hard to make a good case to bring the NBN to Newcastle. In a meeting back on 1 September last year, she told business leaders that the NBN was vital for the region and that it was up to stakeholders to put together a coordinated tender that would convince the government to make the Hunter a priority.

So all of a sudden the government has gone from, 'Elect us and we will deliver superfast broadband to your area,' to saying, 'If you convince us you need superfast broadband then we will consider rolling it out to you; otherwise, you will get services eventually—sometime over the next 10 years or so.' I would have thought fighting for the local area was the member for Newcastle's job as their elected MP. In truth, I would be lying if I said I was surprised. After all, the Gillard Labor government had a choice between the Hunter, where it holds four very safe Labor seats, and the Central Coast, where it is trying desperately to save face thanks to the scandal surrounding the member for Dobell, Craig Thompson, who is accused of misusing union funds for personal purchases and procuring the services of prostitutes.

What we know for sure about this Labor government is that we cannot trust the Prime Minister. After all, it was Julia Gillard, our Prime Minister, who said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' What we can be absolutely sure of is that this government will do whatever it can to stay in power. As Labor stalwart Graham Richardson so famously once said: 'whatever it takes'. That has become the Labor mantra This government's focus is firmly rested on its own political ambition, not the true good of our country. That is why Labor's marginally held seats, and those crucial to its political survival, will be the first to get connected to the NBN.

Back home in the Hunter region, where the average local Labor MP has a winning margin of around 16 per cent, there is simply no need for Labor to buy votes with an early installation of the NBN. I wish the member for Newcastle, Sharon Grierson, good luck on convincing her Labor colleagues to install the network in her electorate. But I know she has already given up, because she has been convincing local businesses to have a go instead.

I keep listening to Labor spout about how the NBN will improve internet access for every Australian. But it is not every Australian—it is only 93 per cent. For many people in my electorate of Paterson, no fibre upgrades will ever arrive. Towns with fewer than 1,000 people, such as Coomba Park, Boat Harbour, Pacific Palms, Gresford, Vacy and Stroud, just to name a few—in fact, most of the electorate of Paterson—will not get fibre-optic cable under the NBN. They have been promised satellite. But, instead of rolling that out now, Labor has said, 'You can wait until everyone else has it.' In other words, they are saying to the people, 'We in the Labor government don't really care about the other seven percent.' Well, the coalition does, and we will fight tooth and nail to ensure phone services do not fall into the same category. If Labor is determined to push ahead with its over-priced, under-delivered network, it has to benefit everyone who is paying for it. That is why the coalition has been arguing for a mix of technologies—cable, wireless, whatever is cost-effective and quick to deliver—so that everyone has a chance to improve their services as soon as possible. Our plan would have been delivered at a fraction of the cost of this massive white elephant that will kill competition. Labor would have you believe we did not have an internet policy at the last election and that we had not taken any action while we were in government. But that is simply not true. ADSL2 was not even available until 2005, and as the technology took off we developed a policy to upgrade internet access for everyone as quickly as possible through a mix of technologies that would be affordable for the consumer.

The coalition's OPEL plan would have been delivered by now, had the ALP not interfered. That plan would have cost the taxpayer just $958 million, not $50 billion, and residents in Paterson would have been among those to benefit from metropolitan-equivalent broadband services. The coalition would have delivered 25 new WiMAX base stations and eight telephone exchanges upgraded to ADSL2 in my electorate alone. One of the beauties of our plan, which included a mix of technologies, was that people would have been able to access the internet while on the go in the electorate. With most people now owning an iPad or iPhone or an Android equivalent, they do not necessarily want to be tied to a fixed line in their home.

While the rest of the world is going wireless, our government completely ignores wireless needs with its NBN. Affordability is also key here. Our own government studies show that it is the low-income earners who are least likely to have the internet connected at home. That means we should be trying to make it cheaper. But people are starting to realise that the NBN is not going to mean a cheaper service. It is going to be expensive for the taxpayer at a cost of $50 billion or more, and plenty of that has already been spent without much to actually show for it. For example, from June 2010 to June 2011 the number of NBN employees grew by 648, with each person's pay and entitlements costing the taxpayer almost $224,000.

The NBN is also going to be expensive for the consumer. The government will be keen to recoup its costs, and since it has banned Telstra and Optus from providing voice and broadband services on their copper and cable networks respectively, it has cut out competition and will be able to charge high prices. A paper by telecommunications analyst Ian Martin has already shown that the NBN will have to boost its revenue, per customer, by 5.7 per cent every year, just to meet its corporate plan.

I have not even mentioned that, despite promises by Labor that every major project undertaken would include a cost-benefit analysis, this, the biggest project undertaken by a federal government in Australia's history, has conveniently not been subject to such an analysis. Worse yet, all this spending does not necessarily mean that services are going to be better for everyone. When it comes to voice services, as soon as you start providing them with a fibre line, you cut off people's home phones every time there is a blackout. If your phone or internet goes offline, under the NBN, we also have no guarantee that it will be fixed in a timely manner, which can cost safety and productivity for regional and rural people.

A number of my constituents in Dungog and Gresford could tell you what a big problem it is when you cannot rely on a fixed-line phone service or the internet. Janelle from Dungog contacted me last week about her phone and internet service, which still has not been fixed to this day. She has been told to wait anywhere between seven and 10 days for a reconnection. Meanwhile, other business owners in the area say they are losing customers because they operate their businesses online. That is typical of the many businesses in regional and rural areas, which have been able to use their internet and phone to bridge the distance gap. Yet, ironically, it is these same people who will not get any foreseeable upgrades because their towns are under 1,000 and they are covered by this government's plan. It simply is not good enough.

The year 2007 was the year that former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promised fast, reliable internet and phone services for Australians. Here we are in 2012, millions of dollars later, and nothing has been delivered. We are all sitting here waiting for fibre cables to be laid when we could have reliable services already delivered through a mix of technologies. I have a message for the government benches: people do not really care how they get quality services, as long as they get them.

These bills would not be before the House if Labor were not still pushing ahead with its over-priced white elephant, the NBN. While those on the other side of this House spruik the benefits of faster download speeds, most people have not seen any improvement in their internet services and will not get the NBN for another 10 years—and certainly no-one in the Hunter region has access, despite their taxes going towards hefty salaries for NBN employees.

As Australia and the world move towards a more connected society built around advances in telecommunications, it is important that we continue to upgrade services. However, with speed of delivery being a crucial factor for businesses and homes that need better internet speeds now, having to wait for cable to be laid some time during the next decade simply is not good enough. By upgrading internet through a mix of technologies, the coalition would have been able to deliver upgrades now. Yes, some people want and need speeds of 100 megabits per second, but some people, including many of my constituents in the Dungog area, Port Stephens, Great Lakes and East Maitland, just want an internet connection that does not drop out right when they are about to make a purchase, download a file or see the end of that movie.

Through Labor's NBN plan, everyone will be forced to pay for a service that many do not want or need. I have spoken to people in Dungog this week and they are pleading with me to get an internet service that actually works—not an internet service with a 100 megabits per second download rate. The government needs to allow people to walk, not keep them locked up with the promise that one day—one day in the distant future—they may be able to run. A universal service obligation is important, but so is honesty and transparency in the timely delivery of services.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to join the debate on the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011 and related bills and, in doing so, I intend to focus on the need for further investment in telecommunications in regional areas to ensure that all Australians benefit from the rollout of new technology—and I hasten to add, old technology, because we still face the situation in many parts of regional Australia, including numerous locations throughout the Gippsland electorate, where relatively old technology, in the form of mobile phones, do not provide coverage to locals and visitors to the region.

I have noticed that many regional MPs have taken the opportunity to speak in relation to the bills before the House, and I can understand why. It is because in regional communities we understand that the opportunities in terms of social growth and economic opportunities that are linked in to making sure that our communities have good access to telecommunications technology make it such an important issue for us. And I congratulate the regional members who have taken the opportunity to participate in this debate.

The Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011, which is before the House, provides a framework for the new universal service obligation, or USO, system. The bill, as others have said, will create a new statutory agency called the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency, to be known as TUSMA, with a review into the USO arrangements before 1 January 2018. I will not go into the full details of TUSMA's responsibilities because many other members have covered them, but I note that, in all, the total expected liability is in the order of $340 million per annum for the government to pay in subsidies to Telstra, which is a significant increase in the cost in delivering the USO. By way of comparison, Telstra received a subsidy of about $145 million per annum to deliver standard telephone services and payphones in 2010-11. As other speakers have indicated, the coalition strongly supports the USO. We recognise that the USO system is critical in ensuring that regional Australians remain connected and that subsidy is provided to assist in ensuring services such as payphones can still be provided, particularly in regional areas which lack mobile phone coverage, which I will get to in just a moment.

I have spoken before in the House on the need to keep investing in telecommunications services in regional areas. I note that the previous speaker made some very strong comments on the fact that, with the rollout of the NBN, there is absolutely no guarantee that many parts of regional Australia will enjoy the benefits but they will certainly wear their share of the cost of that expensive program. Many parts of my electorate do not enjoy anything like the level of service enjoyed by metropolitan areas.

The second bill before the House is the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Service Reform) Bill. The purpose of this bill is to make consequential amendments to telecommunication and other legislation related to the introduction of the TUSMA Bill. This bill contains amendments to the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act which would allow the minister to progressively move the current USO regulations for standard telephone services and payphones if the specified conditions are met and appropriate contractual arrangements are in place.

The final bill we are considering is the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Bill 2011. This bill is a procedural mechanism by which the levy is imposed on telecommunications carriers to support the operations of TUSMA.

As I indicated at the outset, I want to focus my contribution on the need to ensure that regional Australians benefit from government investment in new technology. Given the level of subsidy to Telstra in the future to provide services such as basic phone services and accessibility to payphones, I intend to keep lobbying within the coalition and the current federal government for further investment in mobile phone coverage improvements throughout regional Australia. There are still significant black spots in my community. I want to refer to the most recent announcement made by the federal government and the state government in Victoria in relation to a location based solution for emergency warnings. That system allows the authorities to send text messages to people based on the location of their mobile phone at the time of an emergency, whether it be bushfire, a major traffic accident or a flood event. Text messages give the authorities the opportunity to warn people of impending dangers but there are some very significant obstacles to overcome. Most significantly, I believe, some of the most bushfire prone and flood prone areas of Australia are also the areas which have patchy, poor or non-existent mobile phone coverage. In my electorate that is the biggest challenge we are going to face.

To be fair to governments of both persuasions, mobile phone coverage has improved significantly in the Gippsland electorate over the past 10 years. As I travel the region I am still aware of black spots which exist even on the main highway throughout the electorate. The development of the location based solution, which will be very important in emergency situations, is not going to assist local residents or visitors to my region if they do not have mobile phone coverage. I believe we should be rolling out a mobile phone black spots program to accompany the rollout of this emergency warning system so that residents and visitors to our regional communities have access to that technology.

I hasten to add that I support the location based solution. It is very worthwhile technology and I understand why state and federal governments are investing money in it, in partnership with Telstra. We need to make sure that, in the rollout of this new technology, regional areas do not miss out.

There is another aspect to this which I do not think has been recognised by the minister concerned. When we have such an increasingly connected community and an expectation that you will always be able to receive some level of coverage on your mobile phone or other technological devices, people start demanding this level of service wherever they are. We need to make sure that we do not oversell this particular technology to the community to make them think we can give them 100 per cent coverage, because we really do not want people to rely on receiving a text message or a warning for relevant authorities in times of a disaster.

Nothing will ever take the place of people being prepared particularly in bushfire prone areas and making sure bushfire plans are in place. When you have people making decisions about where to take a holiday with their family, every regional area needs to have access to the technology which people expect. It is a significant issue, certainly in terms of the social benefits and community health and safety. There are also some important economic considerations to take into account when talking about these types of systems and regional communities' access to them.

I have a fear that when metropolitan based people, tourists, are looking to visit a regional location to take a holiday, they will become increasingly conscious of the technology provided there. Issues such as mobile phone coverage and accessibility to the emergency warning system will be a part of the decision making process and communities without access to technology may be disadvantaged. It is so important that governments—the current Labor government or any future coalition government—are in a position to improve coverage in regional communities from social and economic perspectives.

It has been three years now since the Black Saturday disasters. Images of the Black Saturday disasters portrayed very vividly in the media the damage and devastation, creating a great sense of fear among some people who perhaps do not understand the regional environment as well as others. With such an enormous tragedy—173 people lost their lives and thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged—we need to ensure that people in metropolitan areas are not scared away from visiting our communities. Part of our challenge is to reassure them that it is safe to visit regional communities. One of the tools at our disposal in coming years will be the location based solution for the early warning system but it will work only if you can access technology right throughout regional Australia.

The extent of the black spots across Gippsland is alarming and I would suggest in many other regional areas, including my neighbouring electorate of Eden-Monaro, where the topography is very similar with heavily forested areas. There are many popular camping and holiday destinations in remote locations where people will not be able to access mobile phone coverage or take the benefit of the early warning system if and when it comes online. I have invited residents in my electorate to tell me about black spots in their area. I am passing those on to the relevant ministers. I can give a sense of the concerns people are raising, and these concerns are very similar to mine. Sally and Craig in Devon North wrote to me:

Our home was heavily impacted by the Black Saturday Bushfires. After the fires we had no landlines for well over a week and with such poor mobile phone service it was the cause of a great deal of stress, with a lot of family and friends having difficulty contacting us with such poor phone service.

We would hate to have to rely on our mobile phones for emergency warnings etc.

Graham in Bete Belong said:

Mobile reception is non-existent at this address rendering the mobile early warning system proposed by the Victorian Government inoperable in our area which has a population of approx. 20 people and holdings of farm land.

Many other locations in my electorate, some of them very close to major population centres in the Latrobe Valley such as Sale and Bairnsdale and others in more remote parts of East Gippsland or coastal locations, have similar problems. While many of them do not have large resident populations, they tend to be areas along the coast, often camping areas, which have quite significant holiday populations. I have urged the federal Minister for Emergency Management to undertake an audit right throughout Australia of some of these locations to get an understanding of exactly how many people are in these areas in the peak holiday periods and what we can do to allow them to access this emergency warning system, this location-based solution that has been promoted. I have urged the minister to get a better sense of the gaps in the current coverage.

Finally, I refer to the contribution of the shadow minister for regional communications and associate myself with the concerns he raised about the bureaucratic, complicated and expensive model chosen by this government as it sets about building the National Broadband Network. I have just referred to the lack of rollout of mobile phone coverage to regional communities. Quite frankly, regional people have no reason to trust this government when it says they will benefit from the NBN, because they have seen throughout history how they have fallen behind in service provision, whether it be mobile phones or in this case the rollout of the NBN.

I support the amendment circulated in an attempt to reduce the cost to the industry and also to ensure that TUSMA offers value for money to taxpayers. The government has failed to grapple with this concept of value for money. We have seen the home insulation debacle and the school halls program, but the Australian people expect us to spend their dollars like we would spend our own personal dollars. What they are seeing from this government just does not stack up. That is one of the biggest concerns about the NBN—people in regional Australia are concerned that they are not going to benefit much, if at all, and that may still be 10 years down the track, but their taxes are going to pay for it anyway. Some of them would be happy just getting a basic and reliable internet service and not the 100 megabits per second service being promised under the you-beaut NBN scheme.

The government and the minister responsible misunderstand the level of angst in the community about this issue. Regional Australians are going to miss out on all the bells and whistles associated with the NBN but they are still going to pay their share of taxes to fund it. They have no reason to trust this government when it comes to value for money. That sums up the concerns throughout the Gippsland electorate. People believe the NBN is looming as an enormous economic white elephant and they fear that they are not going to share in the benefits but will fall further behind. It is not a question of getting up here and being anti-NBN or anti new technology investment; it is a matter of making sure that regional Australians get a fair share and a fair go. That is all they ask for.

As I have said, regional Australians have no reason to trust this government with their money or to accept reassurances about value for money from the minister involved. I believe all Australians deserve a good phone service and all Australians deserve access to high-speed broadband but I fear that will not be the case under the NBN. Every day it is becoming more apparent to me, as I travel throughout my electorate and as I receive letters back from the minister's office in response to concerns I have raised, that there will be a significant number of haves and have-nots when it comes to accessing the NBN. I fear that regional Australia will be at the back of the queue.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Service Reform) Bill 2011 and the Telecommunications (Industry Levy Bill) 2011. The Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011 provides a framework for the new universal service obligation. We have to make sure the service is adequately funded and that it will meet the needs of people.

The notion that it is only rural and remote Australia that requires universal service provision is wrong. For instance, the payphones in some of the shopping centres in city areas are there to provide a service for those who do not have other means of communication. Quite often they do not pay, they are not viable—so these services are not just provided in rural and remote Australia; we often see them in our very big cities. Just like railway stations and bus stops are essential, payphones are an essential means of communication for those who do not have access to other communications technologies such as a mobile phone.

The bill will create a new statutory agency called the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency—to be known as TUSMA—that will be responsible for entering into contracts on behalf the Commonwealth for the delivery of public interest telecommunications services. This includes the standard telephone service, payphones, the emergency call system and the National Relay Service. Communications for people in Australia should not be considered a privilege but a right. Affordable communications should not be a privilege but a right. Access to basic communications technologies is a right, such as a clear voice signal on a telephone. I think increasingly we are going to have to look at how the USO will cover access to other technologies as they rapidly emerge. The universal service obligation is a vital aspect of our Australian telecommunications markets and every Australian deserves access not just to a basic clear voice signal on a telephone, so I believe we are going to have to look at the new emerging technologies, many of which are with us now such as iPads and mobile phones, and try to keep pace with the new developments, being technologies that universally people are going to want to access wherever they live in this vast land of Australia.

Certainly the USO is primarily of great benefit to regional, rural and remote Australia. But, as I said earlier, it is not just about regional, rural and remote Australia but about many of our capital cities. The coalition strongly supports the need for the USO. We need very strong legislation, we need to make sure that Telstra, which will be delivering this USO, are able to be funded adequately and also that they do deliver on the expectations of government and those on both sides of this House. The USO also provides for funding to ensure that payphones continue to be available. I know that in many areas of Australia payphones are diminishing especially, as I mentioned before, at bus stops, railway stations, street corners and other areas. But in many parts of my electorate, as you would be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker Livermore, if people do not have a phone at home—and some do not—they will use a payphone as they are of modest means and have opted to use just the public telephone when they need a phone, particularly as in so many of these communities there is not a mobile phone option. So the payphone is the only other telecommunication available to these communities.

We have had pretty good arguments with Telstra from time to time about the removal from my electorate of some payphones, particularly from some of the smaller communities in the remote parts of my electorate, and they have said, 'Well, they're just not paying.' 'Well, that's what the USO is about,' I have said to Telstra. Telstra know they have got to maintain them—and that is fine—but I think this is important to some of those smaller communities where they have two payphones. What if they come in and take one out? What happens if that remaining one becomes inoperable? It might have been vandalised, although we do not see much vandalism out in the western parts of my electorate. But what if it is inoperable? Where would someone go? What if the mechanism has failed? That is why you need the back-up of a second payphone, which should be considered part of the USO—and it is. So it should not always be that it has to pay its way, as Telstra sometimes tell me. It should be considered as insurance against the failure of the system, the other payphone.

There are two more things. I want to give Telstra a bouquet and a brickbat as well. Let us start at the moment with the floods in my electorate, and this underpins the importance of good communications. My home town of Roma has had 300 houses and businesses inundated. In Mitchell, 80-odd kilometres to the west of my home town of Roma, 80 per cent of the homes and businesses have been inundated. The clean-up has started but the important point that I want to make is about Telstra CountryWide. This goes to one of the provisions which we as a coalition put in place to make sure that we had a face-to-face service with Telstra, which is the universal service provider, available in our country areas to be used rather than having to ring a 1800 number for a call centre somewhere in Australia or offshore to be able to access information when you have got a critical issue or you might want information about repairs and maintenance times as to communications networks in your area.

The people in the Telstra CountryWide office in Roma are part of natural disaster relief and have attended meetings every morning or twice a day. I have to say this is one of the other benefits of having a Telstra CountryWide, a physical Telstra presence in these communities, not just throughout the year other than flood times or times of natural disasters but even more so in times of natural disasters. It is about that physical presence and of being able to have someone available within minutes to be able to talk to them and see what Telstra could do to make sure that communications networks remain up and running, because that is what is critical when it comes to saving property and also people's lives, and in some cases it could be the difference between life and death. So I thank Telstra CountryWide and I thank Telstra for the way that they have operated during our natural disaster this year, just as they did last year, in 2011, and the year before. My home town of Roma has had three such years in a row. Mitchell is similar.

The other thing that I want to say is that Telstra CountryWide or Telstra generally have provided free, prepaid mobile phones to people who have lost connections. What a wonderful thing it is that they have provided those to those people who do not have a phone because it has been inundated with water or those people have had to be relocated to emergency evacuation centres. I congratulate and thank Telstra for that. I think they have also offered to waive any reconnection fees after people's homes have been cleaned up and to do any checks that are necessary. So once again this is about the importance of having Telstra maintenance staff on hand, so located geographically right across this nation, so people do not have to rely on perhaps a repair company or a subcontractor to come from a place remote from these communities. I thank Telstra for that. It is very much appreciated. I also thank the staff of Telstra Countrywide in Roma, Longreach and other parts of my electorate and all the maintenance staff who work beyond the call of duty during these times, and beyond. I often see them preparing lines that have gone down long after the five o'clock bell has rung, sometimes into the night. I thank those maintenance staff. It is about keeping the communication networks up and running in times of emergency. Last Friday morning, at 3 am, when houses were about to be inundated with water within four to five hours, the telephone was absolutely vital to making emergency calls to all of those farms in the predicted area of the flood zone. People could then start preparing to leave their homes or prepare their homes for what was expected to be a flood of 7.1 metres—within four hours it was revised upwards to over eight metres. Of course, that caused further devastation.

As I said, I had a bouquet, but I also have a brickbat. The brickbat is that people in the town of Eulo in the far west of my electorate, on the Paroo River, rang me during the flood and said, 'Do you know that the connecting cable from one end of town to the other,'—which had been running along the footpath as a result of a fire in the town last July—'is still running along the footpath and exposed above ground?' No, I did not know that. I rang Telstra Countrywide and they are going to get onto it as quickly as possible. But it flagged something that really concerns me. Why was the cable still on top of the ground? Telstra said a new store was going to be built and they would repair it then when the new installation was done. It really worries me that perhaps Telstra is not funded adequately or, through some of the cuts in its administration at the very senior levels, that maintenance is being compromised.

The cables were burnt in July. Telstra had to run a temporary cable along the top of the ground in the street at Eulo. Now, in early February, with floods in the area the cable is still on top of the ground. It is not good enough. We are also working—and I am lobbying very hard—to see if we can get mobile phone coverage in that area. If that cable had been cut or vandalised there would be no telephones in the community because it is the main connector from one end of town to the other. The only other communication medium would have been mobile phone coverage.

I will touch on one other issue: the government's announcement today of some $650 million to put two satellites into the sky by 2015 for high speed internet in relation to the NBN being rolled out to all Australians, including those in remote Australia. I am yet to see all the details of the speed that will be offered and I certainly look forward to seeing whether it really will live up to expectations. I only hope it does.

The western Queensland communities in the Diamantina, Barcoo, Quilpie and the Longreach regional council have all been lobbying for funding to run optic fibre cable to build the backbone of the infrastructure into those remote communities. They had a quote recently from Telstra of $20 million to roll this out. They already have a partnership agreement from the state government to put in $2 million. The councils themselves will put in $2 million. I call on this government and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, to spend some of the money that was put aside for the Future Fund by the previous coalition government under John Howard, when $300 million was going to be earned every three years from the Telecommunications Future Fund to fund infrastructure, when the market fails to provide it. We have seen about $100 million of that spent. There is still $200 million to be committed. I call on the minister to put that money up now to assist those councils out in Far West Queensland, who are going to put up their own money as well as the state government's, so that we can build infrastructure and replace microwave links and single channel radio systems with optic fibre cable connections. It is all very well to give them satellite connections by 2015—they have already had satellite coverage for internet access and maybe this will be faster—but I call on the government now to put that money from that fund towards that optic fibre network. (Time expired)

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011 and related bills come in the context of a great national debate about economic responsibility and how we prepare for the future in telecommunications. We have on the table today from the government a system that does not represent the future. The future is the hand-held device. The future is the mobile phone, the iPad, the tablet and all of the successors with which we are each increasingly familiar. For political reasons, a hard wire system was conjured and imposed upon the Australian public at a cost that will be somewhere in the vicinity of $50 billion once all is said and done. It will be based upon money borrowed from future generations and it will rely upon the destruction of hard existing assets—the Telstra copper network as a functioning enterprise—and it will rely upon the destruction of competition through the most extraordinary effective renationalisation and removal of competition in the telecommunications sector in the developed world since the Second World War. It is a retrograde step in economic efficiency, competition and, above all else, in the planning of the right services for the future.

This bill in part responds to one element of what the government has proposed for telecommunications and the National Broadband Network. We are not opposed to the elements here because they maintain the universal service obligation by essentially transferring it from a regulatory arrangement to a contractual arrangement. What is fundamental here is that for the interim, until the Australian people have decided, there will be the preservation and maintenance of the universal service obligation. If we are successful it will remain there under us for the next hundred years and beyond, I imagine, to the point where we cannot even imagine the telecommunications and communication devices and networks that will be with us. This is simply reaffirming but transforming the means of delivery of the universal service obligation. That is a given, a foundation, a recognition of something that is fundamental to equity and to the prosperity of rural and regional Australia in the 21st century. Those points we accept. I want to put that on the record, as one of a number of opposition members who are speaking and representing either rural or regional electorates—mine includes the Mornington Peninsula, Western Port and Bass Coast as the constituent parts of Flinders, which is officially recognised by the Australian Electoral Commission as a regional electorate.

Having said that, I now move to the real delivery of services in the electorate of Flinders. Against that background, in 2007, when the OPEL network was being prepared, we set out a map of all those changes that would extend the service within the coming two to three years to those areas beyond the regional full broadband services within the electorate of Flinders. Essentially, almost overwhelmingly, we would have had coverage for those who missed out. I will not make a universal pledge, but it would have been extraordinarily close to universal within the electorate. Nothing has happened since. The OPEL contract was destroyed. The promised mobile services and the mobile broadband were crushed and there has been no replacement.

Let me give a simple example. Only in the last week we received a letter back from Senator Conroy, the relevant minister for communications, about a desperate need in Rosebud for extra broadband communications for those premises beyond the reach of the local exchange. No date, no time, no pledge, no commitment, no hope and no imminent prospect for the future was given. So we are looking at it being more than a decade on from the period in which they otherwise would have received services before there is an imminent and reasonable prospect of the outer lying areas of Rosebud, through Waterfall Gully and the areas out towards Boneo and out past the Rosebud Country Club estate receiving adequate and appropriate services.

Peninsula Sands in Rosebud South has poor internet access. It has poor mobile phone coverage. Four hundred residents have to date signed a petition calling for the situation to be remedied. It should have already been resolved, not recently but two or three years ago, and it would have been under the system proposed, pledged, committed to and contracted for by the previous government. That system was abolished and destroyed and the services are yet to arrive. Rosebud South, Waterfall Gully, Peninsula Sands, the areas out towards Boneo, parts of Red Hill, parts of Main Ridge and parts of the Korumburra Hills, so many different areas within the electorate of Flinders, are living testimony to the fact that they will receive the appropriate services—under the National Broadband Network, if they ever get it—more than a decade later than would otherwise have been the case. That is a failure of public policy. It is a failure of a practical system. That is before you even get to the massive cost of the NBN, the massive cost to consumers and the massive cost for the public debt, which will have so many other implications in terms of public borrowing and pressure on interest rates and will therefore impact on other elements of mainstream life in Australia.

There is, of course, a better way. The better way is a plan that does not try to create a system that would have been an advance in the 20th century but has missed the telecommunications leaps of the 21st century. We should be working towards the world's best wireless network using the existing urban cabling systems of Telstra and Optus and the wireless communications systems with which the United States and so many other parts of the world are leaping ahead. Whether it is through microwaves, wireless or satellite, these are the systems of the future, when combined with a fibre-to-the node concept.

I am fortunate to have worked in this space during my time with McKinsey. A decade ago it was obvious which way the world was trending. A decade ago it was obvious we were moving towards a wireless world. That was before the iPad and the tablet were imagined. These trends will only accelerate and it will be the compaction of data through wireless systems that represents the real future. That is the future and it is being completely and utterly ignored in the essential role of government and what it should and should not be doing.

Having said that, I want to finish with the notion that the same problem is replicated in Botanic Ridge in my electorate. They have ongoing issues to do with their lack of ADSL capacity. We have made representations on behalf of residents. I am pleased that Telstra recently confirmed that homes in the southern portion of Botanic Ridge will get upgraded ADSL this year. It will not be the National Broadband Network, to the best of my knowledge, but they will get ADSL. We will continue to push until homes in the northern part of Botanic Ridge also have access to ADSL.

In short, we should have solved this problem. We could have solved this problem. Instead, we are going to be wasting an enormous amount of money on a system that fails to imagine the future and provide flexibility for one of the fastest moving sectors in all of industrial and civilised history. This is the moment when the government should step back and recognise that what should be proposed is a flexible system focused on the world's best wireless rather than a system from last century that fails to recognise that we live in the world of the iPhone, the iPad and the tablet.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to address the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011 and associated bills. Universal access is of course an essential plank of the delivery of telecommunications services in Australia. By any standards, the National Broadband Network has been a troubled child for this government. While it assures us that it is a raging success, it was born out of the 2007 election commitment of $4.7 billion of taxpayers' money to build a network. When that proved impossible, it morphed very quickly into what is now expected to be a $50 billion project. There are already reported cost blow-outs and a reported lack of customers. To reflect on the words of the member for Flinders, who has just left the chamber, it seems that almost once a month we hear news from around the world of some breakthrough heralding a new wireless technology. The technology in this area is moving the quickest and it seems as though we are in the process of locking ourselves into something that is inflexible. One of the great criticisms of the NBN is its inflexible approach and the stubborn resistance from Minister Conroy to the delivery of the last mile of service by alternative means, because that is after all where the bulk of the enormous cost of the NBN rollout is to be found.

This legislation is about the universal service obligations which, in large part, target the isolated and the disadvantaged in our community. I represent a fair proportion of those people in the electorate of Grey, particularly the isolated. Telecommunications in the modern world has become an essential service like education or health services, and that is as it should be. The universal service obligations are non-negotiable. This legislation is about fulfilling those commitments and its premise is well based. What I am unconvinced about is whether the government understand the challenges and whether or not they are truly committed to comparable services for all.

Much of my electorate, in area at least—probably around 90 per cent of its 904,000 square kilometres—will be left to rely on the old copper networks. Unfortunately, its residents are part of the seven per cent of Australia that will be bypassed by the biggest single civilian budget item in our history. They will not miss the account though: their share of the $50 billion that the government is putting on the slate for their children to pay. They will be responsible for the more than $6,000 a family. This seven per cent of Australia will miss out on the network. Instead, they will receive little improvement on current arrangements. I have grave concerns for those who will not be picked up in the fibre rollout.

Previously in this place, I raised a number of these communities, but they are by no means a definitive list of those in the electorate of Grey who will receive a lesser service. Streaky Bay springs to mind. It is a community with over 1,000 residents, but it appears the government has no intention of running the fibre into Streaky Bay. I could sort of live with that if they would run the fibre as far as the outskirts of Streaky Bay, but they are not going to do that either. The residents of Streaky Bay will not receive a wireless service either; they will connect by satellite. For me, this is a very poor replacement for a good wireless network. Not very far away is Wudinna, which is straddling not one but two fibre optic cables that go to Perth, but they will not be offered the service either. Many other smaller communities, and by no means a definitive list, include towns like Elliston, Tickera, Marion Bay on the Yorke Peninsula, Point Turton and Booleroo all have mobile phone reception of some sort or other at the moment, and could possibly get onto broadband services with an aerial on their roofs.

The monopolistic nature of the NBN prohibits mobile suppliers from marketing wireless services against the established NBN, whatever that might be, even though in many cases this will be the substandard satellite service. It is far from clear how the limitations on competition are likely to impact the delivery of services into these country areas, particularly as we realise mobile phone companies will be progressively rolling out a 4G service across the nation that will be capable of carrying much higher speeds and greater batches of information than the existing 3G. We do not know whether they will be allowed to roll out those networks, or even advertise those networks and tout for business, against satellite services.

Others communities in my electorate have absolutely no mobile phone service—places like Oodnadatta; Blinman; Robertstown, which has a very patchy service; Marree; and any number of farm properties, including my own where I have no mobile service. Those communities and outlying farms will be left to rely on satellite services. Large parts of my electorate rely on the old Telstra radio telephone network, which is a string of microwave towers across station properties. It is 45 to 50 years old. It has no caller ID capacity. It is virtually useless when it comes to delivering broadband services. It was not a bad service in 1975, but the world has moved on and to my knowledge there is no plan to upgrade any of these services. So the question remains: what happens to these communities? The government said in the case of the NBN that satellite would be the answer, but what of voice services? That after all is the universal service commitment. I have had a little bit to do with using satellites over my time. I had a satellite broadband service for some time. In fact, my television is currently delivered by satellite. It works pretty well for television, I have to say, because, while the speeds are not massive, it is a one-way service—the information comes directly in a stream down from the satellite and you can, theoretically at least, run a movie on it. But, when it comes to two-way conversations, there is always a gap. Any of you who have used a satellite phone or watched late-night television when an interview is beamed in from around the world will have noticed that delay. That happens because the satellites are orbiting at 37,000 kilometres above the Earth's surface and it takes around 0.8 of a second for the signal to go up and 0.8 of a second for the signal to come back down again—a 1.6-second delay. That means it is a very scratchy voice service. If the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has plans in the future to deliver voice services on satellite, I think we have got a real problem.

The answer to this—it would never have gone to all of Australia, though—is to invest more in mobile phone networks. The previous Howard government put aside $2 billion for a telecommunications fund which was to address the shortfalls within regional areas. Unfortunately the government has usurped that money and put it into the NBN process. At this stage, I do not see that the government is committed to increasing those voice services which would be delivered by mobile networks, which would then be capable of delivering better broadband services.

The legislation is supposed to be about delivering a competitive environment for the delivery of these services, but in fact we find that the government has upfront awarded a 20-year contract to Telstra to maintain the copper network. It makes you wonder what kind of competitive environment this provides. It seems more like just part of the bigger deal, part of the arrangements to get Telstra to decommission the bulk of its network so that the government can build a new monopoly—the very opposite of what is happening in every other comparable country in the world.

This arrangement to leave Telstra with a remnant of its former network has all the hallmarks of a nondecision, where the minister realised he had very little idea of what to do with regional and remote Australia, so it has been put into the too-hard basket and the government and the minister just hope that eventually all those consumers may just go away. But it is simply not good enough for us to be pushed to one side. What is needed for regional and remote Australia is a comprehensive, flexible plan which includes providing mobile phone services into towns like Blinman, Robertstown and Ungarra and encourages the operators to provide broadband services in that manner rather than restricting their ability to do so.

The universal service obligations, under this legislation to be administered by a new statutory authority but provided by Telstra, in my mind fit very uncomfortably under the umbrella of the NBN, which was supposed to provide service for all Australians. Telstra, who will no longer own or operate a major network, will have the responsibility for maintaining a museum piece. One has to ask the question: who will have the expertise and equipment to maintain that network once Telstra have moved on to a completely different business focus? There seems to be no planned alternative—or will the government force consumers onto the satellite platform?

I have said on a number of occasions that country consumers get very little out of the NBN. It will be basically the same as what they already have. It is a fast-moving world, and I have businesses come to me daily and say, 'We need to get onto this network.' They are upset that they will be given the opportunity to pay for the network but are going to miss out on what is to be the most expensive, overcapitalised, most anticompetitive broadband project in the world.

This legislation in itself is not bad—the idea that the government remains committed to the universal service obligation is good—but I just wonder whether the government really have their heads around the issues, the difficulties, the challenges, of meeting that obligation in rural and regional Australia.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise today to speak on the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency Bill 2011. Despite whatever else is happening in this country at the moment, telecommunications is still the biggest issue that my constituents deal with. Only the week before last, I was speaking with the mayor and the general manager of a very large council in the middle of my electorate and asking them what their priorities were, where they needed the most help. I expected they might have said something about roads or health services, but they said, 'No. 1 for us, without any doubt, is telecommunications.'

What is happening with telecommunications and the way that this country is now going, with this very clumsy National Broadband Network, is that we are ending up with two classes of Australians. A large proportion of my electorate still do not have the basic service of mobile phone coverage. They have no hope of that changing in the near future. If you do not have mobile phone coverage, the National Broadband Network is not going to help you, because most of the data now that is received—by those that have phone coverage—is coming to hands-free devices: BlackBerrys, iPads, iPhones and the like. But if you do not have that basic signal then you are left out of the loop. One of the problems is that a lot of people own a phone but it does not work where they live or where their business is. So customers or acquaintances will ring a mobile number, leave a message and think that they have made contact with these people. Quite often people tell me that when they go to town they will go over the hill where the phone coverage picks up and there will be 20 messages. I spoke to a small plant hire contractor in Coonabarabran a couple of weeks ago who was losing business to another town because his phone was not reliable. A customer had left a message on his phone requesting a quote for the hire of a certain piece of equipment and when the message finally came through, some three or four days later, the customer said, 'Well, you didn't get back to me so I went to Dubbo and hired the same piece of equipment there.'

It is having a real effect on the way people do business, and it is not just isolated properties. Two kilometres from the middle of the town of Coonabarabran, where there is a large number of small rural holdings, there is no mobile coverage. In the village of Goolma, which is quite a small productive farming community, they have absolutely no mobile coverage. There is quite a busy road there that connects a couple of regional centres. There is a lot of traffic and there is concern about road accidents. We are desperately trying to find the funds to build a phone tower for the village of Goolma. I have organised meetings with the local stakeholders—the volunteer SU Association, the Rural Fire Service, the State Emergency Service, councils, the neighbouring coalmine and anyone else I can think of—who might want to contribute to this tower, because Telstra are saying that it is not viable and they will not pay for the tower. If someone puts up the tower they will fund the hardware on it. Can you imagine any one of my colleagues in a capital city electorate or a regional city electorate having to tell their constituents that they had to find some way of funding their own phone tower? It is absolutely appalling that in 2012 citizens of Australia are expected to fund basic infrastructure like telephone towers. Most of the issues with telecommunications I see on the television are people complaining because there is a mobile tower going up in their suburb and while they want perfect coverage they do not want to have the unsightly tower. I tell you, anyone here that has got that problem with a tower that is not wanted can send it to the Parkes electorate because I have got 100 places where that infrastructure could go.

This hole that has been left behind will not be filled by the NBN. One of the great frustrations, and I could not believe it was happening in 2008 as a newly elected member to this place, was to watch this House vote to remove the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund—$2.7 billion that was set aside to fund towers exactly like the one I just spoke about. It is not as if the government does not know about this. To his credit, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, came to Hilmer and I think everyone who lived within 100 miles was at the town hall to greet the minister, and it was not to give him a pat on the back—I can say that. But I give him credit for coming along. It is not as if the minister is not aware of this being a problem but he seems to be completely unwilling or unable to act upon it.

With the NBN, most of the towns in my electorate will not get the fibre-optic cables; some will. The smaller towns are going to be delivered by wireless and while that is all right, it is not wireless that is going to your mobile device. It is wireless that is going to a fixed point in the home where you can then use a router to get it around to mobile devices. It not going to help the tradesman or the farmer who relies on mobile internet connections. Because we do not have the mobile service, they are going to miss out. I do not know whether people realise that when a technician comes to repair a tractor or a grain harvester the first thing they get out is a laptop, plug it into the machine and take a reading of what is wrong. The methods of repairing the machine are then downloaded to that mobile device. So we have a real case of haves and have-nots—of people who have the service and those who have not. That impacts on people who want to undertake education by remote means—people who might want to do a university degree. If they do not have adequate telecommunications coverage they are left out of the system. It impacts on a whole range of things like that.

The other thing that hopefully this USO will do is hang on to phone boxes. They might seen to be antique pieces—and I did see a humorous bit written in a Sydney paper where a young journalist had to learn how to use a payphone to make a phone call because his battery went flat—but the reality is that in towns like Goodooga, Boggabilla and a lot of other towns in my electorate where there is a low socio-economic level with a large number of the citizens, many people do not own a mobile phone. Most of them do not have the coverage, but if they do have the coverage they cannot afford the mobile phone. So they rely on the phone box to communicate. Travellers coming through who have a mobile phone that does not work in a regional area rely on the phone box for basic communication if they need to call for roadside assistance or something like that. While the focus of this place and this country seems to have been on ultrafast broadband and communication going forward, which is very important and very important to the people in my electorate, the great frustration for me and the people I represent is that they are largely being left behind. They have been pushed aside and they have not been included in this vision for connecting Australia to the 21st century. I find that to be a disgrace and a scandal. As someone who represents over 30 per cent of New South Wales, I find that completely unacceptable.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.