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

I would like to speak today on telecommunications. It has been interesting to watch the debate on the NBN this morning as members of the opposition tried to rewrite history about their ill-fated back-of-the-coaster NBN plan. We are now starting to see real progress with the NBN in the electorate of Parkes. The city of Dubbo will by the middle of this year be the first western city in New South Wales to be fully connected. The satellite that was launched last October has had very promising trials, and we hopefully will see commercial connections to that satellite from remote parts of Australia from May onwards. Indeed, my own home will be connected to the NBN satellite.

But the real issue is phone coverage, something that the Labor Party completely ignored for six years. We have seen with the Mobile Black Spot Program round 1 499 spots around Australia, but there are great expectations for the announcement of round 2, because from the recommendations of other members and me there is a greater focus on more remote locations. I can talk about the Yellow Mountain spot at Condobolin, where there are millions of dollars of agricultural produce from farmers on cutting-edge technology that is languishing because of the lack of phone coverage. We need to fix that problem up.