Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Imagine you're facing a heatwave and your city has just experienced the worst air quality in the world. Now imagine you're facing those threats while living alone. Now imagine that your only way of communicating is about to be cut off. That was the situation that Canberra woman Jenelle Outhwaite faced last month when she learned the CapTel service that she relies on was going to be axed by the Morrison government. Like thousands of Australians, Ms Outhwaite has hearing difficulties and relies on this vital service for everyday communications. I visited her in her Florey home with the shadow assistant minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, and Senator Anne Urquhart. Ms Outhwaite showed us how easy it was for her to use her CapTel machine to make calls and receive calls. She said she was devastated to learn that the Prime Minister and his government were going to cut access to this vital service without even consulting users like her. Ms Outhwaite said, 'I am dependent on it.' She added that without the service she wouldn't be able to call anyone, saying, 'I think I'd be down and out.'

Janelle Outhwaite is not the only CapTel user affected in my electorate. An aged pensioner in Fenner recently wrote to me about his CapTel phone. He called it a lifesaver. He said it's far superior to the government's proposed replacement system. He said that that was 'very much slower, difficult to use, significantly more complicated and discriminatory'. He described it as a '40-year-old system which is confusing and significantly slower to operate than the CapTel system it's supposed to replace'.

These are just two of the 3,500 people across Australia who use the CapTel service—3,500 people who use that technology to work and to stay in touch with friends and family. They rely on it to have a sense of safety and security. Were they consulted by the Morrison government? No, they weren't. They asked the minister to change his mind, but he wouldn't. In the end, it was the CapTel founder, Ultratec CEO Robert Engelke, who had to step in and provide an interim service to users. He said:

I believe that access to the telephone is a right, not a privilege.

Mr Engelke went on:

I have been genuinely moved by the outpouring of heartfelt messages from Australians who are clearly distressed and frightened about living without CapTel. CapTel has been available for over ten years in Australia and I believe it is not acceptable to leave CapTel users without access to family, friends, employment, emergency services and the myriad ways that all of us use the telephone.

Let's be clear about what this means. This is an American CEO, based in Madison, Wisconsin, who is showing more compassion for hearing impaired Australians than is the Morrison government. As he described it, Australians who've been using CapTel were distressed and frightened. That's because CapTel is a straightforward service which uses transcribers to turn a conversation into text to make it possible for hearing impaired people to immediately, in real time, see in text format a conversation which those without a hearing impairment would simply listen to. Jenelle Outhwaite demonstrated the service to us, and anyone who's seen it can immediately recognise what a valuable service this is.

The average age of a CapTel user is 82, and many of them are not immediately able to just pick up and run with the next technology. Older Australians deserve better than they've been getting from the Morrison government. They deserve better than the excuses and the blame game. They deserve better than attempts to blame the Public Service, the previous provider of the National Relay Service, the US technology licensee and even the former Labor government. Hearing impaired older Australians need a government that will take responsibility. We've seen this failure to accept responsibility in the case of the bushfires, in the case of the Australian economy and in the case of climate change. Those opposite aren't willing to do the right thing. They're not willing to swallow their pride and admit when they've made a mistake.

I commend the member for Perth, Patrick Gorman, for bringing forward this important motion today. I commend the work that the shadow minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, and Senator Anne Urquhart have done in highlighting this vital issue for my constituents and 3,500 other Australians.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's pretty low to want to spread fear and misinformation to some of the most vulnerable people in our society with motions such as this on captioned telephone handsets and contributions in the debate on this motion which are completely inaccurate and just spread fear and uncertainty to the most vulnerable in our society—people with hearing issues and people with speech issues. These people have had in place from this government a service that, unequivocally, is continuing into the future fully funded at $22 million a year. Instead, we've got the Labor Party prosecuting a matter which has nothing to do with the Commonwealth government's power. It's to do with a particular proprietary telephony product that is owned by an American company that they choose to license exclusively to another company that will no longer be continuing to provide a service because a better service has been selected by the government, through a free-market tender process, to provide enhanced outcomes for the most vulnerable people in our society.

The National Relay Service provides a vital support to people that need that kind of support in communication. As I mentioned, it's relied on by people with hearing issues and people with speech issues. There are a whole range of different ways in which the NRS supports people to communicate and have the kind of interaction that they deserve to have support from government for in our society. The reality is that we quite rightly went out to the market and put this tender into the market place so that the existing provider could appropriately be held to account against other potential providers that might in fact offer an enhanced service or a service that provided better value for money to the taxpayer. What has happened is that the existing provider was not successful because we went with a new provider that better met the requirements for this service going forward. The government makes no apology for that. We had a situation between 2015-16 and 2018-19 where the cost of the NRS service blew out by 45 per cent over that three-year period. That just means that we don't have the same quality of service that we can support to all the people that those services.

What this motion suggests is that a particular proprietary product, CapTel, which as I say is owned by an American company, yes, is being used by a number of people in our society. It was sold to those people by the previous provider, and they happen to have the exclusive right to that technology in this country. There's nothing that the Commonwealth can do about that. We have been seeking with that company—I know the minister has been corresponding with the company—whether or not there are ways in which they would be prepared to let existing holders of that product continue to use it and to licence that product to the new provider that's been selected by the Commonwealth. It is from an American company. I don't know what the contractual situation they have with the previous Australian supplier is, but the reality is that at this stage there isn't an avenue forward for them to transfer the right to use that service across to the new provider. That is unfortunate, but it doesn't change the fact that we have got to make decisions in the best interests of taxpayer funds and providing the best service for the people that need it.

This is one particular piece of technology. Tomorrow Apple could choose not to sell the iPhone in Australia anymore, and that would be regrettable, but that's at the end of the day a decision of that company. There are other providers around that provide all kinds of technologies that are comparable. We've been working very effectively with all the users of this technology because of the situation that is created by a relationship between two companies It has nothing to do with the Australian government. There are competitor technologies that can be embraced. Technological innovation is exciting. It is always improving into the future, and the fact that this one particular handset won't be useable into the future because of a proprietary relationship between an American company and an Australian company should not prevent the government from making sure that we're making decisions in the best interests of taxpayer funds and service provision to the most vulnerable people, who need those services.

The scope of the tender that went out ensured that, and we made a decision to go with a new provider. It will be the best outcome for the people that we are servicing and will ensure we get best full value for the service that we are all paying for.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The strength of a government can be determined by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members of the community. The Morrison government is devoid of empathy and of compassion and treats those who require extra assistance or a hand up with contempt. This is the government that refuses to raise the rate of Newstart for people who are doing it tough, trying to find work, because that money would apparently 'go straight into the pockets of drug dealers'. This is the government claiming to owe no duty of care or recompense to people they sent illegal robodebt notices. This is the government that ignored advice from the Department of Health to fund more home care packages while 16,000 senior Australians died on the waitlist for their approved package. Now this is the government that has cut funding to CapTel services at the expense of deaf and hearing impaired Australians.

I have had constituents from Aspley, Deagon and Chermside reach out to me after receiving a letter from this heartless government advising that they had decided to cut funding and withdraw CapTel from the National Relay Service. The CapTel handset is a critical tool that gives deaf and hearing impaired Australians the independence and freedom to make and receive calls by transcribing a caption of the conversation. The average age of a CapTel user is 80 years old. Here is a picture of the CapTel handset. As you can see, it has a big screen to help older Australians read the text. Here is the 1980s-style teletypewriter that the Morrison government now expects hearing impaired Australians to use instead of the CapTel handset. Look how small the screen is. How is a person in their 80s supposed to read this screen?

The big question is: what was the huge cost blowout that forced the Morrison government's hand to cut the funding? How heavy was the drain of funding for the CapTel handset on their precious surplus? It was $10 million a year. The Morrison government has stopped funding CapTel handsets to save $10 million a year. This is a government that is so devoid of empathy that they are not even willing to preserve the ability of senior deaf Australians to access modern telecommunications technology for the cost of $10 million a year. In Senate estimates we were told there had been a blowout on the cost of operating the NRS which led to a capped tender of $22 million a year instead of approximately $32 million a year. As the shadow minister for communications previously pointed out, there has been no cost blowout. Australia's ageing population and increasing longevity has driven the increased need for relay services.

I wrote to the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts on behalf of my constituents and urged him to reconsider the government's decision. I told him about one of my constituents, Teresa, and how the CapTel handset has changed her life. Teresa is an 80-year-old pensioner who lives independently in public housing in Chermside. She was very reliant on CapTel to get in touch with her daughter and her doctors and with community service programs like the Burnie Brae Centre, St. John Ambulance and Lifeline. Teresa has never used any other service to help her use her phone. Like a lot of older Australians, she does not have a mobile; she doesn't know how to use it. Before getting a CapTel handset, Teresa had to catch the bus to the doctor to make an appointment in person because she couldn't use a regular phone. She couldn't call her family and she had to wait for her daughter to come and visit or send her a letter. She spent a lot of time alone and she was confined to her house. She reached out to me because she was terrified that without her CapTel handset she would become isolated and lonely, like she was before. She was scared about how she would call for help if she fell over again. She said she felt like a dog that needed to be put down.

In response to my correspondence to the minister for communications, I received a weak and disappointing letter that restated the government's decision to cut funding without concern for her or any of the thousands of hearing-impaired Australians that use CapTel handsets. The letter did not address any of the issues I'd raised about the TTY system, like the fact it transcribes 85 fewer words per minute; it doesn't use a controlled network; and it doesn't automatically loop in a transcriber, meaning users have to call the relay service to arrange their call. The response I received was typically arrogant, cold and matter of fact. The decision is final, there is no turning back. No wonder they have engaged an empathy consultant! But clearly he can't help everybody all of the time.

Thankfully, in January of this year, a US provider of CapTel services stepped up and announced they will temporarily keep the CapTel handset running for Australia's deaf community despite the Morrison government's cutting its deal with them.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member's time has expired. There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19 : 27