Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

The interesting thing about this is that Labor argues that payphones are a fall-back option for people living in rural areas if they are unable to use a mobile phone. The sad reality is that if Labor had its way payphones would be the only option people would have in rural and regional Australia. Labor would certainly have kept payphones profitable because under a Labor government that would be the only phone people would have in rural and regional areas. Under Labor, people could wait more than two years to have their home phone connected. What an absolute disgrace! Labor closed down analog mobile phones, leaving rural Australians stranded without a service at all. Labor has no real plan to connect rural and regional Australians to broadband. Under Labor, the idea of rural and regional Australians using new technologies like voice over IP would be unthinkable.

So while payphones are a very important community service, and they will be maintained where they are subject to the universal service obligation, imagine how critical they would become if Labor were in charge of regional communications. Regional Australians are not fooled by Labor on this issue. They know that if Senator Conroy had his way thousands of rural households that rely on satellite internet services would have their subsidies scrapped. Every subsidy for rural and regional Australia, according to Senator Conroy, is pork-barrelling. It is an absolute disgrace. I have a bit of free advice for Senator Conroy: if you want to find out what is going on in regional Australia, get out of your office in Melbourne and go and ask.