Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is currently doing an inquiry into domestic mobile phone roaming. I have farmers in my patch who are carrying two phones: an Optus phone and a mobile phone, and they take one phone at one end of the farm and another phone at the other end of the farm.

Can I say that the rhetoric I hear from Telstra is that the competitive advantage they have by having a large footprint affords them the profitability so that they can build mobile phone towers in the region. This is contrary to my experience as a member who represents a third of the state of Victoria; I note that Telstra has not built a mobile phone tower in the electorate of Mallee, except for the ones that were subsidised by the government under the mobile phone black spot program.

I believe that the ACCC should—and I will not pre-empt their ruling—regulate national roaming. It stands to reason that a greater utilisation of a mobile phone tower should increase the profitability of the tower, thus ensuring the viability of expanding the network.

We must address disadvantage as to telecommunications for regional Australia, and this is part of ripping off the band-aid. And it just makes sense. Across the electorate of Mallee—a third of the state of Victoria—we have 105 Optus towers and 108 mobile phone towers from Telstra, and we still have black spots. Wouldn't it make sense if we could build for the future and make them work together, rather than duplicating the system right across the country?