Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications. Will the minister update the House on the government's plans to improve mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I know that the honourable member has been a very powerful advocate for fixing mobile phone black spots in his electorate of Hume. In his electorate, there are a total of 139 nominations from the community in that area of black spots which need to be fixed and which are seeking funding from the government's $100 million Mobile Black Spot Program, which my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications has been administering. They have had public meetings there, as they have around the country.

The big development that occurred just last weekend was that the Baird Liberal-National government in New South Wales committed another $25 million to go together with the $100 million committed by the Abbott Liberal-National government to fix black spots. That $25 million will obviously be devoted to New South Wales, where there are nominated 1,822 mobile phone black spots.

This is consistent with the great performance of coalition governments. The Howard government committed money to fix mobile phone black spots when we were in government. Over six years of Labor, not one cent was spent to address mobile phone black spots. And yet every member who represents a regional electorate in this House and any member who spends any time in regional Australia would know that the single biggest telecommunications concern is mobile phones not working. The Labor government committed tens of billions of dollars to deliver fixed-line broadband and fixed wireless broadband through the bush without spending one cent on the single biggest telecommunications concern—extraordinary oversight, extraordinary neglect, extraordinary lack of awareness of what was really going on in regional Australia.

In terms of the work that we are doing in the honourable member's electorate of Hume with the NBN, that too is moving apace. The fixed wireless network has already covered 3,600 premises in his electorate, with towers activated in Cowra, Monteagle, Mount Weedalion and Murringo and around Young. Work is beginning on more fixed wireless towers covering an additional 1,500 premises over the next 18 months, and there are 27,000 premises in the larger towns where work will begin on the fixed-line deployment.

So we are working on both fronts. We are getting the NBN built sooner, cheaper and more affordably, but we are also addressing the single biggest concern in rural and regional Australia, which is mobile phone black spots. Isn't it great that we have a Liberal-National government in New South Wales that is lending its shoulder to the wheel too? (Time expired)