Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains have mobile phone black spots which, for the entirety of the nearly 10 years of the previous government's reign, I have been pleading for help with. With the fires, floods and storm risks we face and the isolation of long, lonely roads and the potentially dangerous but wonderful wilderness we live in, in the 21st century we deserve as much mobile coverage as possible, and it's not going too far to say that it can save lives.

Then we have a site like Mount Tomah, which the previous government in 2015 promised a mobile phone tower for. It was promised but then secretly relocated hundreds of kilometres away to somewhere in the Central West. We're fixing Mount Tomah under the Regional Connectivity Program round 2, and I'm pleased that Telstra has begun the necessary planning work for a macro tower at the Mount Tomah RFS site.

Thank goodness for Labor's Improving Mobile Coverage Round, which is fulfilling other election commitments our government took to the 2022 federal election, including across my electorate of Macquarie. These areas were identified in opposition, as we worked with our communities to advocate for coverage improvements, and were no secret to the Liberals and Nationals. I wrote to them about the black spots. I put in submissions to inquiries. I talked about the problems here, but they didn't listen, and they should be thankful that we are doing everything we can to close those black spots. (Time expired)