Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last month, there was a devastating fire in my electorate, in the township of Pomonal. Forty-six houses were burnt to the ground in a community of 350. On average that means that literally a third of the town lost its housing. One of the things that occurred on the day when the fire hit—which often occurs when there's a fire, and which occurs a lot in regional and rural Australia—was the lack of telecommunication services. There was a community meeting held days after the tragic fire, and the town wanted to know when there would be an improvement in telecommunication services. After that meeting, I took the cause up with Telstra, and I'm pleased to be able to say to the community today that Telstra are now going to upgrade the telecommunication base station on Mount William, with the hope of being able to improve telecommunication services into Pomonal. They have an Optus tower, and, with this latest development from Telstra, the hope is that the community will now be able to use both Optus and Telstra. Hopefully we won't have disasters like this in the near future, but, if we do, people will be able to rely on their telecommunication services.