Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to commend some of the comments at the outset of the member for Makin. It is a big issue we are trying to deal with, when you have people in regional areas saying, 'Unless we get the financial assistance grant system working properly, looking after the more remote regional government areas, these council areas will not be viable or sustainable.' It seems ridiculous that a place such as the Gold Coast or the centre of Sydney—the Sydney regional council—has a financial assistance grant yet you have a places such as Bingara or Uralla out in the regions that are struggling to look after their roads. These big councils would make vastly more out of parking fines. We don't have that attribute in remote and regional areas. Everybody has been saying that we should be adjusting the financial assistance grants process. We keep talking about it but we never seem to do it. Maybe it is something for the astute people as we go towards the coming election to come up with a policy on that one.

When I first got into politics in 2004, the big issue then was the final privatisation of Telstra. It had been half privatised by the Labor Party. The government had privatised about 49 per cent of it and wanted to privatise the rest. It was Treasurer Costello at that stage. I think the logic behind it was they used the money from the privatisation of Telstra to pay off what was at that point in time about $80 billion of debt, so Australia would not have any debt after that. That was the trick we used to get ourselves out.

However, in regional areas we were very concerned about this. The reason we were concerned was we just don't trust people to look off after us when they privatise something and say that is the market and that will work. I was in the invidious position because the coalition had won four Senate seats in Queensland and I had actually had, at that point in time, the Liberal Party standing against me to try and beat me. When I arrived down here, I was not really part of the team as I should have been, and the biggest issue was that they needed my vote for the final privatisation of Telstra. I was completely new at my job. Neither I nor any of my staff had been in politics before, so it was rather intense. Trying to get the agreements through, with the universal service obligation, the network reliability framework and the customer service guarantee—a myriad things—and trying to work out what sort of money needed to be put aside so there were some protections for regional areas was an immense task. To be quite frank, I wasn't getting any assistance from either side of politics, and I was having to rely on people external to this building to give me some sort of guidance on where I'd go on that.

I don't think we came up with the perfect solution, but I could see that, inevitably, if I didn't come to some sort of agreement at that point in time, they were just going to go around me and use somebody else. So an agreement that did its very best to look after regional Australia was the one I had to take. The Labor Party had already privatised half of Telstra. There was absolutely no reason to believe that they wouldn't have it in their minds to sell another one per cent of it if they had the opportunity. It was just a matter of time and trying to do the best you could at that spot.

To this day, our office and, I think, many regional people's offices remind you of a front desk for Telstra. Any complaint about telecommunications seem to walk through our doors, and there are many complaints. As this is a bill to deal with consumer safeguards—and I had a fundamental part in bringing about consumer safeguards back in 2005—it is disappointing that we just get these weasel words.

We were given a guarantee that, when 3G shut down, people would not lose service. Now, there was initially a thing called CDMA, Deputy Speaker Goodenough; you probably remember it. It had very low volume but an incredibly good footprint for voice. When that shut down, it went to a thing called 2G—a smaller area but with more data. Then it was 3G, a smaller area again but with more data. Now we're heading to 4G and 5G. But, as they shut down 3G, a lot of people who used to get voice—and this is imperative—don't get it anymore.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's right. They promised us they would.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is one of the big things—the member for Barker would be in exactly the same boat—that defines regional people from people in capital cities.

It can be dramatic if there's an accident. The other day I was coming along a road, and I noticed there was a lady, a young girl and a guy—a wild-looking bloke—on the road. They were just standing around. I was trying to work out what was going on, and as I came slowly around I saw a car had gone off the road. I stopped and I said, 'Who was in the car?' They went, 'They're still in there.' We got them out and walked them up to the edge of the road, but it was very close to them dying. The issue was we had no phone service. There was no phone service. It was about an hour and a half to two hours before an ambulance turned up. That was just one day, driving back up from the coast.

We've had other examples, like when a bushfire breaks out. When the fire goes, you've got to move really quickly to try and deal with it. We all have to deal with that in regional areas. But people are having to drive kilometres up the road to get phone service so they can ring the bushfire brigade and also start to organise amongst themselves—because in country areas people organise their own section of the bushfire brigade. But to contact people you've got to be able to phone them. We also have UHFs. At our place, it's channel 41. But, if you don't know what the UHF is and the other person doesn't have UHF on, then you can't contact them. Five, 10 and 15 minutes is huge when you're trying to deal with a fire. It's absolutely massive. It all comes down to us having a reliable phone system, and we don't.

We've had a petition in our area from Cropper Creek, Cooletai, Gravesend, North Star, Warialda, Bingara and Upper Horton—some of these are coming into New England. They're fed up with trying to operate their business, security and lifestyle without a phone that works. Just recently I went to the cafe at Gravesend, which is coming into the electorate of New England, and the big issue that people wanted to talk to us about is that they don't have a mobile phone system. To be quite frank, many areas have just given up on fixed lines. They don't even bother to maintain them anymore. It's antiquated technology. A lot of local people say, 'We can't rely on Telstra. We're going to have to look at Starlink and go with the new forms of technology that go straight from your device to low-Earth-orbit satellites.' But I think that's about 150 bucks a month, before we start worrying about calls. It's not cheap. But people say, 'It is absolutely fundamentally part of our occupational health and safety requirements in this area that we have a telephone service.'

We have a right to ask the telecommunications companies to abide by this, because they've got bucketloads of money from us to set up mobile phone towers and for the assets they hold when they sell it out of spectrum. In some areas, there's a virtual monopoly on the provision of a mobile phone service. There has to be mandatory compliance with the industry codes that have been set up. There has to be, as this talks to, a proper infringement process if people decide there's a buck to be made by not abiding by the rules.

It'll continue to be the case as you go to high-G delivery that you will need more mobile phone black spots. These areas will require a vastly greater rollout of mobile phone towers. Alternatively, you will have to come up with some program. Otherwise, Elon Musk will be the provider for regional areas, because people will just go across to Starlink. It's my great honour to represent the people of New England, and we've delivered around about 50 mobile black spot towers in places such as Balala, Bonshaw, Drake, Dungowan, Hillgrove, Kings Plains, Rocky Creek, Urbenville, Walcha Road, Woolomin, Attunga, Baraba, Bruxner Highway A and B, Tabulam, Duri, Elsmore, Fossickers Way, Hallsville, Invergowrie, Manilla, Moonbi, Mount Carrington, Oxley Vale, Piallamore, Spring Mountain Road near White Rock, Tamworth, Walcha, Westdale, Copeton Dam, Kingston, Baldersleigh, west of Guyra, Koreelah, Pinkett, Mount Hourigan, Doughboy Mountain, Moonan Flat, Torrington, Wellington Creek, Weabonga—up the hill from me—Spring Ridge, Blackville, Gilgai, Glen Elgin, Mole River Exchange, Tenterfield, Watsons Creek and Woodsreef Exchange.

As a regional member of parliament, some of the biggest things you can do are to get people a mobile phone tower. It's not that they want to do share transactions; they just want to know at Upper Horton that, if someone comes off a horse at the campdraft when it's on—and you've got 1,000 people or so there—and the person is suspected to have broken their neck, you can make the call straight away. People in regional areas have a right to be looked after. The question going forward is about making sure what we've seen from the telecommunications industry, which promised so much to us and to me—and maybe at that early age I was naive enough to believe promises. I got over that problem pretty quickly. But in 2005 I was naive enough to believe that, when people made promises to you, they would actually do them.

We're seeing this again. Now we're getting promises about energy. There's another raft of promises that to be frank, 20 years later, I just don't believe. I do not believe they will be able to maintain the grid in an affordable manner that will all work. I've seen this movie before, and it ends in absolute and utter tears. You end up with a complete fiasco, where people who have been able to swindle the government for whatever it was naive enough to have peeled off get it. The people left picking up the pieces are called constituents. No matter what, the government never turns up later on and fixes the problem. You're just left with a car crash that was a proper, working telecommunications platform where people could make phone calls. In the future, the next one will be, 'You didn't honestly believe we were going to have a working electricity grid, did you?' When we go back to them, we'll say, 'Hang on, these people got 3G, and you promised they would get 4G and 5G, but now they're getting "no G".' They have no G at all. They have no horses at all for this one. What went wrong here? Of course, the deal is done. They got the money. They'll say, 'That was fortuitous!'

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I never heard of fortuitous service till this. They were just getting lucky!

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were just lucky that day! Wind blowing in the right direction—aren't you a lucky fella that you had service at some stage! You should say, 'Thank you very much,' that, in the past, your mobile phone worked. Now, it won't.

You see the sense of cynicism that regional politicians have about that, because, immediately, the dials change. Now, of course, it's back to the swindle factories, intermittent power precincts, and wind turbines and solar panels. 'It'll all be fine. Don't worry. Everything will work well,' once they're decommissioned and fall over in the paddock. 'It'll all work well,' once the bisphenol A and the microplastics blow over your fields so you can't sell your stock in the saleyards because it's contaminated. That has happened. We have to actually come up with a plan to keep our cattle away from the wind towers because they are poisonous, so you don't eat it. You've got about a teaspoon of microplastics in your head at the moment, and they don't want you to have any more. They don't tell you about that little bit, do they? No. All you see is a happy picture of the wind turbine. You're eating the plastics from it, but don't worry—

I don't know why you're laughing about that. I can show you—we have to sign a declaration because it brings on Alzheimer's disease. Is that not a concern?

Okay, I'll take you up on that. I'll give you the report. I'll send it through to your office.

Yes, it has!

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! All comments should be through the chair.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll get it through to your office. This is the absolute ignorance of the facts of the issues. You go out and you support the intermittent power precincts, and you aren't actually aware of the facts that are there in the report. I will get you the report. You should have read it, because I think it was on the front page of the paper! Anyhow, I'll get it to you. You are doing it to our countryside, creating the filth all over our countryside and contaminating it. You're going to an election on the back of it because the minister, with his stupid smile, thinks it is a good idea. (Time expired)

Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak on the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025 today. I note that we're almost on the eve of an election, and I think that what this bill demonstrates is that this parliament and the Australian people really have a choice between two parties—two parties that recognise what real action looks like and one that looks like a party of inaction. What I will say, talking about action, is that I do want to talk about real action.

Since coming to office, this government has not wasted a single day. We have not sat on our hands. We have not dodged the tough calls. We've shown up in moments of crisis and in moments of opportunity, from the Prime Minister and Senator McAllister standing with communities under threat from ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, to rebuilding global partnerships and bringing forward important legislation like this. This is work we've done.

It's been full on, and I've been busy too. In Swan, we've been upgrading, investing and reviving, delivering real change after years of Liberal neglect. We are upgrading public infrastructure, Boorloo Bridge, METRONET and the McCallum Park and Queens Park open spaces. We're investing in housing—501 new homes under the Housing Australia Future Fund and 875 households supported into homes under the Home Guarantee Scheme. We're backing local manufacturing and future industries. Just this month, the Prime Minister was in Swan announcing $750 million to boost metal manufacturing. And this is just one example of what we've been doing.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Point of order: I ask that the speaker be drawn to the subject matter of the debate, which is the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, member for Barker. I am listening carefully. I'll determine whether the member is within the parameters of the bill.

Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This demonstrates that we are a government of action—a government of building a better future. This includes securing our telecommunications as a key part of this future. It is one example of how, every day in everyday life, we are making a lifeline, and we need to secure it. The Labor Party has a big plan for Australia, and every single one of these components feeds into this plan, because we want to make sure that people stay connected, and securing our telecommunications is a key part of that future. It's part of everyday life. It's a lifeline, and we need to secure it.

This bill marks a significant step forward in protecting Australians who rely on telecommunications services. These services are essential in our daily lives for work, education, connecting with loved ones and staying informed. In the digital age, connection is not a luxury; it is a necessity. With that comes a responsibility to ensure that businesses are operating fairly and in the best interests of consumers. This legislation will deliver vital reforms to strengthen the enforcement powers of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, ensuring that it can act quickly and decisively. It also delivers reforms that introduce serious consequences for failures. For too long we have seen examples of telcos treating penalties as a cost of doing business, deciding that paying the fine is easier than fixing the issue. Frankly, this approach is unacceptable, and this government is saying, 'Enough is enough.'

This bill puts an end to the outdated and ineffective two-step enforcement process. As it stands, when a telco breaches its obligations under the industry code, ACMA must first issue a direction to comply. Only if the telco then fails to comply with that direction can ACMA take further enforcement action, even if the initial breach was serious or caused widespread consumer harm. This delay undermines consumer protections and weakens the authority of the regulator. Under the proposed legislation, ACMA will be able to take action when providers breach the code. This is a simple but critical change. It also sends a clear message to telcos that they have a responsibility to meet their obligations to consumers and, if they fail, they will be held to account.

The bill also introduces significantly stronger penalties for breaches of industry codes and standards. The current maximum general penalty, which dates from 1997, is $250,000. This will be increased to $10 million. But the reforms go further. In cases where the benefit obtained from offending conduct is higher or where the company turnover is higher, the new framework will allow for even greater fines. Penalties may now be linked to the value of the benefit received from the breach or the overall turnover of the telco. This brings penalties in the telecommunications sector into line with penalties in energy, banking and consumer law. This alignment is important. Consumers should have the same level of protection and regulatory oversight with regard to telco services as they would with regard to their electricity provider. The days of telcos operating in a regulatory grey zone are over. This bill enables the government to increase penalties that ACMA can issue across all applicable breaches. These include breaches of consumer protection rules. This is about the tools to match the scale and seriousness of relevant breaches.

Another major reform of this bill is the creation of the carrier service provider, CSP, registration scheme. This is a long overdue measure to increase transparency and visibility in the market, particularly when it comes to telecommunication retailers, who often sit between the customer and infrastructure providers. Under the new scheme, CSPs will be required to register with ACMA. This will not only improve oversight of those who are operating in the market but also give the regulator the ability to intervene where necessary. If a CSP is found to pose an unacceptable risk to consumers or has caused harm, ACMA will have the power to stop it from operating. This is about cleaning up the industry. It's all about making sure that telcos—whether they're large or small, retailers or wholesalers—are playing by the same rules and are subject to the same level of scrutiny.

These reforms are substantial. They are practical and necessary. They better equip ACMA to do its job of protecting consumers, upholding standards and taking strong action when telcos fall short. More than that, these changes shift the incentive structure in the industry. They push providers towards a culture of compliance, rather than damage control. They encourage telcos to educate themselves and their staff about their obligations. They encourage compliance. This is about putting consumers first; this is what it's fundamentally about. They also help create a telco sector that is fairer, more accountable and more focused on the needs of Australians, because, at the end of the day, this is what it is all about—putting consumers first.

Australians shouldn't have to fight for fair treatment when it comes to dealing with a telco. They shouldn't have to spend hours on hold trying to resolve an issue that should never have occurred in the first place. They should not have to wonder whether there provider is operating responsibly or ethically. With this bill, we are saying that the status quo is simply not good enough. What we're saying is that consumers deserve better. We're ensuring that the rules and the enforcement powers behind them reflect that reality.

This legislation is just one part of the government's broader efforts to strengthen the consumer voice in telecommunications and to modernise the regulatory framework that governs this critical industry. It follows the clear principle that, when services are essential, protections must be strong. It follows the clear objective to build a telecommunications sector that works for the people it serves, not just for profit margins or shareholders. We are taking action to stand up for fairness for the millions of Australians who rely on these services every single today. We are taking action to ensure the telecommunications sector is one that puts consumers and the Australian public at its core, where it always should have been.

Labor support the Australian public, we support consumers and we are committed to protecting consumers. I commend the Minister for Communications for bringing forward this important legislation. I commend the government for its ongoing commitment to protecting consumers. I urge all members of the House to support this bill.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For metropolitan constituents, it might be difficult to believe, but the single most inquired about issue in my electorate offices day in, day out over the course of more than a decade has been mobile phone connectivity. That dichotomy, sadly, is growing in our country as telcos focus their efforts on providing greater speeds, better reliability—effectively, better services—for those people that live in the heavily populated parts of our country while they turn their back on those people that live in rural, regional and remote Australia. So that gap is broadening day by day.

You heard the member for New England saying that what we don't want is for a world in which our heavily populated areas, our metropolitan centres, are serviced by our national telcos, while those of us who live in the bush have to rely on alternative forms of technology—Starlink and these other things. People are moving in that direction via necessity, but it's also broadening another gap, and that's the disadvantage gap, because those alternative forms of technology are much more expensive and are available to fewer and fewer individuals in an economic sense.

I'm really pleased that the member for Bradfield is here, because, I've got to say, over the term of the former coalition government, he served for much of that period as the minister for telecommunications. As a bloke who has lived most of his life, if not all of his life, in the city, he got it. I expect he got it because there were people like me knocking on his door—and member for New England and others. We may have been an annoyance, but something got through because there were successive rounds of the Mobile Black Spot Program, a program that he himself developed, a program that those opposite, by the way, cut and underfunded.

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just in your seats.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, they were not just in our seats. They were spread around the country. If you want me to go to the priority picks that your minister made in the round before the last one, I can do that if you like. But the reality is this gap has broadened. Most recently, a fundamental chasm has been established. The member for Bradfield, when he was the minister, was astute enough to stand up to the telcos and say: 'No. I know you want to switch off the 3G network. I know you want to sell that bandwidth, because it's very valuable real estate. But I'm going to extend the period before you're entitled to do that, because I need to be assured that those living in regional areas serviced by the 3G network are not going to be disadvantaged by the switch-off.'

There was a change of government, change of minister, change of attitude to this issue or perhaps just a minister who was more easily hoodwinked, because what we have seen during the term of this Labor government is the switch-off of the 3G network. Telcos came to the minister and said, 'Hand on our heart, Minister, nobody will be worse off.' The minister repeated those assurances, assuring Australians living in rural, regional and remote Australia serviced by the 3G network that they would not notice the difference when the 3G network was switched off. And so the 3G switch-off proceeded. It proceeded at pace, of course, because the telcos are very motivated to sell the bandwidth. Literally the day it occurred in my electorate, we were inundated with people saying, 'I don't know what's happened, but I can't make a phone call.' 'I don't know what's happened, but my technology doesn't work anymore.' 'I don't know what's happened, but can you help me diagnose and understand this?' We collected all these stories and we presented them to both the minister and the telcos, who had assured us nobody would be worse off. That's where the story becomes interesting. It's indicative of what you have to guard against in this place all the time.

The response we got initially from the telcos—which, by the way, have now been mugged by reality because there are literally so many people who have lost reception that they cannot continue to prosecute this fallacy—was that 'those people that have lost service because we switched off 3G service were fortuitously receiving service and therefore are no worse off'. Despite having been around communications policy debate in this place for a decade, I'd never heard of the concept of 'fortuitous service', but, if I'm going to accept that as a concept, what the telcos were staying was that the people who were getting mobile phone reception via the 3G service—who no longer do, because it's been switched off—were just getting lucky and so were not worse off. I have to tell you, if you're a farmer in the Mallee, you don't care much whether a telco determines whether or not it's fortuitous service. If you're at the scene of a farm incident, where you've got that golden hour to get people to medical assistance, you don't much care about whether it's fortuitous or not. I'll tell you what you care about: whether it works or not.

I'm telling the Minister for Communications, as we have in a number of engagements since the switch-off, that it don't work anymore. It don't work, and that's a problem. It's a massive problem because the telcos promised you it would. Minister, either the telcos misled you—and, if that's the case, come in here and get into them—or you knew that this would be the outcome and, like other elements of public policy that your government is focused on, you were ultimately making the decision to act in the interests of people that live in metropolitan centres against those that live in regional centres. I've seen more pictures of pandas in the advertisement in the last two days than I care to mention, but that's because those opposite allocated $15,000 a week to feed bamboo to pandas in the Adelaide Zoo at a time when rural South Australians in drought are facing the driest conditions in a hundred years and are not getting a dollar. There is not one dollar to help those farmers deal with that circumstance. So I'm perhaps a little surprised that the Minister for Communications isn't that concerned about the impact of the 3G shutdown in the bush.

I have asked people in my electorate to rate their reception. I have written to every single constituent living in a regional area of my electorate outside of the metropolitan districts, the country towns, and I've asked them to rate their reception. Normally, when you do these things, you get a few responses. You know what it is like, Mr Deputy Speaker. But we have been inundated—2,500 people have taken the time to go to my website and fill in a form indicating what level of reception they receive and whether it has improved in recent years or whether it has declined and in particular whether it was impacted by the closure of 3G.

I have written to the telcos providing them with that data. I have asked them to investigate each and every case. It wasn't me that made the undertaking. I didn't make the promise. The telcos made the promise. The telcos promised the Australian people and the minister in particular that when they turned off the 3G network they wouldn't suffer loss. But that's exactly what's happened. And so, in my view, it's incumbent on the telecommunications companies to investigate each and every single one of those allegations of loss to determine whether in fact people living in regional communities who are paying for a service are receiving that service. If they don't undertake those investigations then, in my view, we'll know that they knew full well what the outcome of the 3G switch-off would be. The minister should demand they undertake those investigations.

We know this is an issue because our friends on the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee have undertaken an inquiry. That inquiry predictably highlighted that the 3G switch-off could have 'been handled better'. These Senate committee reports aren't known for their colourful language. They are ultimately fairly dry documents. But—goodness!—it should stand as a real marker to the minister and her actions in relation to the 3G switch-off that her peers in the Senate have indicated it could have been handled better. I have to tell you, where I come from, they use different language if they are on the side of the road, desperate for medical attention, or have had a medical episode at home. It doesn't even need to be on the farm or on the road; it can be at home. Many of these incidents involve people not being able to make a phone call from their own house. For the person who might be on the side of the road or at home, in a paddock or at the yard seeking medical attention, their language is a little bit more colourful. They don't say, 'Oh, well, the minister could have handled it better.' They are filthy and they know who to blame.

I sit through question time a bit further away nowadays, but I listen to the Prime Minister and, whenever he's under pressure, it's someone else's fault—the Treasurer or the economic crisis we are living through. The cost-of-living challenges that we are all experiencing have apparently blown in on the north wind from overseas and have nothing to do with the decisions that are made in this place. Rubbish! Real leaders stand up, real leaders take responsibility and real leaders act. The Prime Minister assured the Australian people that that was the kind of prime minister he was going to be. He's been anything but. He's ducked, he's dived, he's slipped, he's slid and he's obfuscated. And on Tuesday night we saw an attempt, in a budget that didn't make it to late-night news, to hoodwink the Australian people into returning this government, which is guided by all the wrong priorities, for another term. Well, here's a newsflash for those opposite: the people of Australia always get it right; they're incredibly intelligent and they've seen straight through your Prime Minister, your Treasurer and your government.

There are rumours swirling around this building today that the Prime Minister will call an election on Friday. I hope he does, because the people of Australia are desperate to pass judgement on this Prime Minister and this term of government. They know that we need to get Australia back on track, that we need to get mobile reception back on track, and they're looking forward to the next election delivering an outcome which puts Australia back on the right course, where we start listening to the people in rural, regional and remote Australia, taking their concerns seriously and addressing falling living standards in this country.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese government is committed to putting Australian consumers at the heart of the telecommunications industry. Telecommunications should enrich people's lives, not cause inconvenience, frustration or detriment. We want to ensure that all Australians have access to reliable, high-quality and affordable telecommunications services supported by a strong regulatory and consumer safeguards framework. That is why this government has been actively reviewing the telecommunications consumer protection framework and making appropriate changes, and I thank the Minister for Communications for her hard work regarding the development of these changes. The minister's previous changes include implementing new rules around support provided to consumers experiencing financial hardship and, more recently, directing ACMA to create rules regarding support for consumers experiencing domestic, sexual and family violence.

Our government knows that staying connected is a critical part of life. The reforms proposed in the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025 go to the compliance and enforcement regime for consumer safeguards and constitute a comprehensive package of improvements to those arrangements. They help to ensure the ACMA is an empowered and effective regulator and that appropriate incentive structures are in place to drive better behaviour by telcos.

Staying connected is an essential part of everyday life. The Albanese government understands how critical telco services are for everyone, including those facing vulnerable circumstances, people living in our regions, First Nations Australians and those who rely upon connectivity to support their families and provide services to their communities. Accordingly we want to ensure that the telco industry is working for Australians, that Australians have the best consumer safeguards in place to protect their interests and that there is a strong, clear recourse if telcos do the wrong thing. Telco services should enrich people's lives, not cause inconvenience, frustration or harm. Many Australians are experiencing significant cost-of-living pressures, and this includes being able to afford critical communications services like mobile and internet services.

Debate adjourned.