Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to pass some comments on the Regional Telecommunications Review’s Framework for the future document, which was released and tabled in this place yesterday. At the outset, I congratulate and acknowledge the work of Dr Bill Glasson and the members of that committee for the first of the regional telecommunications reviews that were scheduled to be undertaken. This is an important document and an important review process, because it is the first such review to be undertaken since the passage of the sale legislation for Telstra and since the establishment, by the previous government, of the $2 billion Communications Fund. That fund ensured that ongoing funds were made available for regional and rural communications services around Australia. It ensured that there would be approximately $300 million every three years to be invested in critical regional and rural communications infrastructure and service support. We on this side of the chamber recognised that the demand for special assistance in regional Australia, as it relates to rural telecommunications and communications infrastructure, would ever be ongoing. We recognised that communications by its very nature is an evolving and changing area of technology and that there will always be a demand for new services and new infrastructure.

The importance of the framework that we put in place when in government was that it ensured perpetual support through this fund for such infrastructure. At any time when government looked to regional communities and saw that they were missing out, we could step in and deliver. It was towards the end of our time in government that Dr Glasson and his committee were appointed to undertake this work and commence this review. They have presented a comprehensive analysis of the communications needs of rural and regional Australia. In doing so, they have laid out many challenges for the government. I will touch on a couple of those briefly, but most importantly what I wish to reflect on today is the challenge for the government of providing ongoing support. Whilst this is the first review set up to spend the funds generated by the Communications Fund, it will, of course, be the last review if the government has its way and closes the Communications Fund.

The report details the critical nature of communications and how further investment could be made to support education and health services in rural Australia through enhanced communication services. It also details how our emergency services and Indigenous communities would benefit from greater assistance, and how businesses in rural and regional areas would equally benefit strongly from the recommendations in this report. It certainly tackles how, in the future, we should guarantee services to people in rural Australia, that we should move away from the old framework and develop a new framework to guarantee the minimum services that people throughout Australia should expect—especially those in regional areas who would otherwise miss out.

These are all welcome recommendations and ideas. I am sure they will be analysed by the government, and I hope that some of them—if not all—will indeed be taken up. But what is critical about this report is that it shines a spotlight on the fact that the government is leaving regional Australia hanging out to dry at the end of this process. I say that because the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, as part of the national broadband network process, is planning to take all of the $2 billion in the Communications Fund and spend it on the network—a network that has seen many delays so far, will not cover at least two per cent of Australia’s rural and regional areas and will leave people missing out. There will be no money left for future reviews and for, most importantly, the implementation of the recommendations that would have come out of those future reviews. That will leave rural Australians worse off. The government’s first challenge in responding to this review is to guarantee that it will leave the Communications Fund intact, that there will be future three-yearly reviews and that funding will be made available for rural communications infrastructure.

The Acting Deputy President:

Order! Senator Birmingham, your time has expired.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.