Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the House to raise the issue of Mr and Mrs Hiles, constituents of mine who have become extremely frustrated by a telecommunications issue that has been running since August 2007; my staff and I are also extremely frustrated with this issue because we have been helping them over this period of time. It is an absolute disgrace that they cannot, and we cannot, get this problem resolved. Even after numerous attempts by my office contacting Telstra, Optus and the Telecommunications Ombudsman, this matter remains unresolved.

Mr and Mrs Hiles have a telephone account with Optus; however, they have had issues with their telephone line. That phone line is owned by Telstra but Telstra is refusing to do repairs to the line. Telstra went to the house of Mr and Mrs Hiles and put in a temporary line, which is hanging in a tree alongside the house. As you can imagine, this is both dangerous and unsatisfactory. Mr and Mrs Hiles are concerned that they might knock the line down or that someone might fall over it and injure themselves. It is a highly unsatisfactory solution. Telstra has not come back to fix the line and bury it, and Optus will not do anything because the line is owned by Telstra.

The bottom line is that, yes, the line is owned by Telstra, but Optus is willing to take money from Mr and Mrs Hiles each month and to keep their account but will not do anything to fix this line. Telstra are being very bloody-minded, as I am sure other members have found they are on a number of issues like this. This is not the only issue I have in relation to this type of problem. We have contacted the telecommunications ombudsman, who advised that he would seek to have the matter resolved. But his intervention has done absolutely nothing. The TIO advised that they would get a private contractor to come and bury the cable and that they would cover the cost. But, after numerous calls backwards and forwards to both Optus and Telstra, everything remains the same—nothing has happened.

The issue of burying the cable went on, with both the customer and my office contacting the TIO yet again, the customer contacting Telstra and my office contacting Telstra and with the customer contacting Optus and my office contacting Optus. So both parties have been constantly contacting Telstra, Optus and the TIO. We have had an absolutely and totally unsatisfactory solution to this phone line problem. It seems to me that the system set up by the previous government to resolve these issues does not work. From my perspective, it is totally unacceptable that Telstra will not take responsibility for the line and that Optus has the hide to keep billing my constituents for this service.

As I mentioned, this is not the only issue I have had with Telstra refusing to offer services to customers of other providers in relation to their lines. If Telstra are going to hold people in Australia to ransom like this there needs to be some action, and I put on the record in the House today that I will be fighting for action to be taken to resolve issues where Telstra are refusing to meet their obligations as set out in the legislation. This is not good enough and Mr and Mrs Hiles have suffered enough.