Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. In regional areas when we have a bushfire, our power is often cut. No power in a few hours means no mobile phone network. There is no legislative requirement for telcos to provide extended battery backup in mobile towers. Does the Prime Minister agree that high-risk bushfire areas need such protection? And if so, what will the government do to help keep our regional communities' telecommunications safe?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. The issue of providing battery backup to mobile phone base stations is one that is well understood. Batteries are generally provided for all of that type of mobile equipment. The issue is, how long can the batteries run? And there are obviously limitations on the scale there. But I will ask the minister representing the Minister for Communications—who managed the mobile phone blackspots program in the last parliament, when he was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications. He managed that and did an outstanding job of it.

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And I might say—and the honourable member might reflect on this—that in the six years of Labor government, not one cent was spent on addressing mobile phone blackspots, whereas we are addressing hundreds and hundreds of them across Australia.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mayo for her question; she is absolutely right to make the point that it is very important that we have—to the maximum extent possible—redundancy in reliability in telecommunications networks, both fixed and mobile. And that includes robustness in the face of emergencies such as bushfires, which can, obviously, have an impact on the network and can also have an impact on individuals in their homes. So there are a number of principles that underpin the approach that the government is taking. One of those is to get the maximum degree of redundancy between fixed and mobile networks. If you are in a location which only has one network, you are more vulnerable than if you are in a location which has both a fixed network and a mobile network. That is the reason why the Turnbull government is committed to the Mobile Black Spot Program, with some 499 base stations to be delivered just under round 1 of that program—

Mr Rob Mitchell interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for McEwen, that is your final interjection.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and that is bringing mobile coverage to areas which did not have it previously. Now we on this side of the House regard that as a priority. We are strongly committed to improving mobile communications in rural and regional Australia. Labor is indifferent. Labor committed not one dollar in six years to improving mobile communications in regional and remote Australia, and that is because they are much more concerned about the inner city than they are about rural and regional and remote Australia. I make one other important point: that we are also rolling out the National Broadband Network, and we are getting it delivered—

Opposition members interjecting—

Compared to this incompetent rabble—barely 300,000 premises in 2013—over four million premises are now delivered, mobile and fixed. We are delivering and that means better resilience. (Time expired)