Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak to the matter of the 3G changeover date, and I cannot emphasise enough many of the points that have already been made by those people who've spoken before me about how important telecommunications is in regional and remote parts of Australia and that we are completely unprepared for this changeover date. The minister has acknowledged that there are hundreds of thousands more devices that are still 3G that people either have not realised need to be changed or have no ability to change over.

As I go around, I now ask every business I walk into: 'Are you aware of the changeover? Have you checked your EFTPOS machine? Have you checked your petrol bowsers? Have you checked your security and data devices? Have you checked what's out on your water monitoring equipment?' With all of these things, they need to be assured that they have understood whether or not they are still running on the 3G network. In the absence of that understanding, we will run the very real risk of having, on 1 November, failed systems that could put people's lives at risk and could put people's businesses at risk and there being no solution.

As I go around the state, though, what I see is a system that is in complete collapse. The telecommunications providers will say that they are overworked and that there is not enough broadband or capacity. This is crazy. In the last couple of months, I was at the Richmond Field Day, and people had taken satellite dishes off their roof and brought them down to the field day so that businesses could continue to take money. There was absolutely no mobile connection at all in that region because Telstra had failed. It was part of their preparations for the upgrade away from 3G. At the Boulia Camel Races the same thing happened. Can you imagine a more isolated town: three hours from Mount Isa and no telecommunications for the weekend?

By this stage I thought, 'I'm going to get ahead of this.' I rang Telstra up to say, 'Make sure, for the Tully Show that's coming up, you're all across this and you wheel out your emergency NBN van, or whatever it is you do for disasters, because you'll have pressure on the network.' Guess what? No support—no telecommunications. How can we have any confidence? Sorry, I've got one more to add; Tara had their races and camel races just a month ago. This is a joke. When you have no telecommunications at all, you've got no ability to ring somebody, to pay for anything or to take money. These are important communities. Sometimes, thousands of people are there. This is the highlight of their year. This is their opportunity to make money and showcase their region and, because it is a large gathering of people, this is the time when they might need medical assistance. Yet, under the current regime, there is no support.

I don't know, for those people who live around Canberra, if you've got any idea what it's like to be so completely disconnected—nothing. You may not even be able to drive to the next town, because the petrol pump is not working. This is incredibly serious. So I now have incredibly little faith in the telecommunications providers being able to transition us from 3G in any sort of timely manner, because they are failing right now. The upgrades that they're doing mean that there are whole communities without phones or data and without the ability for businesses and hospitals to run or for people to make the most rudimentary connections. That's happening right now—today—yet we're expected to trust that on 31 October they'll be able to switch over the system and it will go in any way smoothly. I do not trust that now.

The minister has an opportunity to say, 'We're not ready.' These are public assets that have been put into many of these towers. People have a right to consider that they have the basic connection facilities, and they currently do not. Minister, please, I'm asking you: you have got to put this on hold until you have any confidence to know exactly who it is you're affecting and what it is you're affecting and to know that the telecommunications providers have any capacity at all to make that transition.

Question agreed to.