Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Consumer Protection) Bill 2013, a bill which is very much focused on improving consumer protection in relation to telecommunications services. The delivery of telecommunications services now so deeply and profoundly affects our lives that the focus on consumer protection in this area and the ability of people to properly access telecommunications services is every day becoming more important. So much of our lives now we conduct through telecommunications services. The very way in which our businesses, work and homes are structured makes us increasingly dependent on the provision of reliable telecommunications services, so the need for us to have a robust protective regime is very important.

I want to pick up on the comment that was made by the member for Kingsford Smith. I think that within all of the discussion that we have about the importance for there to be a self-regulatory regime and for us not to impose unnecessary burden on the industry, it is always very important for us to countervail that with the need for enhanced protection for the consumer, given the centrality of these services to the conduct of their daily lives and the difficulties that emerge when those services are simply not available in a reliable and timely fashion. I will talk about a few instances in my electorate where people found that, unfortunately, the sort of assistance that they would have expected from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman was simply not there by virtue of the limitations on the role of the telecommunications ombudsman.

I think that the provision of the Do Not Call Register was a great development, given the amount of intrusion by these phone calls into people's already time-poor lives. Some nights, one would get three or four of these unsolicited telephone calls. The Do Not Call Register was a very welcome development for the Australian community. But, like many people, I have to say it seemed to be failing and calls seemed to resume. So it is pleasing now to see that one of the possible loopholes or enforcement barriers is being addressed in this legislation and that those people who were seeking to circumvent any consequences of breaching the Do Not Call Register by engaging third parties to do the work for them will now be forced to accept the responsibility. I guess you could call it a chain of responsibility measure that has been put in place here. I think there is a lot more scope for chain of responsibility legislation in a number of different areas, but I am very pleased to see that we are accepting some of the commercial realities and are now taking action to ensure that the Do Not Call Register is not easily suborned.

As has been said, I think everyone is very pleased that we are now going to have the capacity to amend the provisions whereby codes can be varied in part. As has been pointed out by the member for Greenway, the requirement that an entire code be amended in order for it to be changed and be up for review has in fact been a negative provision that has stopped progress in the proper development of these codes. So the idea that we can now make targeted and nuanced changes without having to submit the entire code for review is of course very welcome.

Perhaps the final point I want to make goes back to the idea that, whilst it is always important that we are very efficient in the way we regulate industry and do not create needless and duplicated burdens on industry, in this area the need for consumer protection is ever increasing, and that it is not just focusing on cost comparisons and the ability for people to make wise and cost-effective choices—although that is extremely important—but on the very ability for people to have access to a reliable, dependable service and to have a measure of recourse where that reliable, dependable service is not available.

In the last couple of months we have been dealing with a number of issues with our constituents that centre around this and around their disappointment. Two very different sets of residents, with very different issues, came to us because they were surprised that they were unable to get any relief from the telecommunications ombudsman. In the first instance this involved an area of a number of streets in the suburb of Bedford in my electorate. There are a variety of different service providers that people use to get their internet services, but their internet services have always been of a low quality and speed. The services were increasingly falling out, the length of time to access those services was expanding and services would routinely drop out, so you would be lucky if you could get half an hour of continuous service.

This was making it extremely difficult for people seeking to study at home, who would come home at night wanting to use their internet service for research for the education programs that they were engaged in. It was very difficult for people that were trying to run small businesses. They would contact their service provider, and their service provider would say, 'Look, there's nothing we can do about it, it's just that we've got a poorly maintained network here and that's the best that we can do.' So they would contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman would tell them that, as they were not Telstra customers, there was nothing that they could do. They would contact iiNet, and iiNet would contact Telstra, and nothing ever changed, so the roundabout simply continued. Quite clearly we have a problem here. It is simply not possible, it would appear, for the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to deal with fundamental infrastructure problems.

There was a whole street, a new subdivision in a very old, established area. A small subdivision was created. Quite simply, these people could not get any telecommunications services at all. As part of their development they had private structured cable laid to their housing. The contractor they employed installed the conduit cable to the house, to the street verge, ready to be connected to the Telstra pit. However, it turned out that there was no pit in the street. There were attempts to engage with Telstra. Telstra for quite some time refused to accept that this issue was even relevant to them. Finally, after some intervention on our part, there was a recognition that, yes, this was something that the internet provider could not themselves deal with and that it was indeed a Telstra issue.

There were numerous occasions when people were then told that Telstra would come out to the site and deal with this issue. Technicians would come out. They would poke around for a while and then say they had to go back to the exchange. They would go back and they would never return. This went on for many, many weeks. Complaints were made to the telecommunications ombudsman, and again they replied that they were unable to pursue Telstra as Telstra were not the people's service provider.

Quite clearly, in these settings we have problems with the provision of infrastructure that it would appear that the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman is not able to deal with. Many of these constituents, who presume that this is the appropriate person to go to, find that it is not and find themselves in this endless loop between their service provider and Telstra, going round and round in circles. This can have an impact on people's lives, their ability to operate their small business and their ability to engage in education programs as well as all the more day-to-day things that they may wish to do as consumers and as friends and family over the internet.

I think we need to do better. We need to absolutely and profoundly understand just how, as a society, we have become so dependent on the provision of reliable telecommunications services. We have to be very cognisant of the need to have a system that provides a very strong measure of protection for people and a very clear conduit for people to take action when these services fail. There needs to be some ability to cut through the 'it's not my fault; it's their fault' regime that certainly many of my constituents are finding themselves wound into.

Of course, that also leads into the very strong arguments for upgrading our very basic infrastructure to try to deal with some of these problems, at least some of which come from a poorly maintained copper network. I note that the Minister for Communications is here. I am pleased to perhaps now have the opportunity to ask the minister if he is aware of the new cable-laying technology or techniques that have been developed in Perth that provide an enormous opportunity to radically reduce the cost of laying fibre-optic cable in brownfield sites. They dramatically reduce the cost of doing so. This, in my view, will enable us to do a lot more fibre to the premises in a very cost-effective way. It is a logical consequence of engaging in a rollout that these new techniques develop. I would be very hopeful that the minister is open to exploring these new opportunities for laying down stronger infrastructure. (Time expired)

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