Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

'Shame,' says the member for Mallee, and she's right. Stopping violent sexual predators on online platforms probably should be a priority for this government, but it isn't. It's certainly one of our priorities. That's what we should be addressing through telecommunications platforms. Whether it is cybercrime, sexual violence, scams or violent home invasions with machetes—these are pretty important issues for this country, but they're not the priorities of the current government.

Of course, the other thing we need to address through telecommunications platforms is access to basic services. This has been something that Labor has never been afraid of spending obscene amounts of public money on for low return. The problem is that they still leave so much of the country behind, because their focus has always been on how they use telecommunications as a mechanism for pork barrelling rather than for improving the basic infrastructure that Australians need with a sense of universal obligation. Members from rural and regional electorates can talk about that at length. I don't seek to project or represent their communities on those issues, but I know full well that it remains an ongoing problem, particularly to do with mobile telephony services. The member for Mallee, as I understand it, has previously raised issues where people are increasingly using Starlink installations because they can't get access to the services they need through the National Broadband Network. We also have, even in urban centres like the Goldstein electorate, massive problems around access to telecommunications services—basic things like mobile telephony.

You've got the state government basically seeking to weaponise housing approvals and development. I'm getting more and more complaints in places like Highett, Cheltenham and even Brighton, where people are having increasing problems accessing telecommunications services, including mobile telephony services and even television services. When it comes to basic standards and safeguards in telecommunications powers, this fits as part of the communications framework that people expect to see from our nation's parliament and our laws. Only the other day, I got a complaint about minimum access to services for mobile telephony in Brighton, with someone explicitly saying, 'Can we see more effort from Telstra to be able to access basic 4G and 5G services?'

The same has also been increasingly true around Hampton East, Cheltenham and parts of Moorabbin. More and more people are working from home, but, because of an increasing number of developments of high-rise apartments and increasing disruptions from 5G access to internet connections, they're not getting the basic services and standards that they reasonably expect. So there's an accountability gap about the information they need—and, of course, they need more and more assistance, particularly where there are activity centres. It's not just that they're facing it now; they're concerned that it will fall on deaf ears into the future with this government.

People expect basic standards and basic services. That is not in dispute in telecommunications powers. But what they also expect is that the government is going to step up and meet those expectations, and they're not hearing it, they're not seeing it and they're living with the consequences.

I'll just read out a quote from a constituent only the other day: 'Despite strong community opposition, a development has since been amended to increase from the original plan to eight storeys, with additional apartments. This construction has created absolutely chaos for residents—illegal parking, unsafe road conditions, but 5G disrupted internet disruptions, loss of free-to-air TV reception for residents opposite and numerous other impacts that council has been completely unprepared to manage.' Some of these sit within council and some sit within state government, but the one that sits within federal government responsibility is telecommunications powers. When we talk about safeguards and we talk about standards, this is the lived reality in urban Australia right now, and the government is completely asleep at the wheel.

Of course we support the legislation's broad intention, what is seeks to achieve, but we are mindful. We have seen too many times that members of previous Labor governments, when they're given powers around telecommunications, weaponise them with the objective of seeking to use them to censor or silence opinions or views that they don't like—not ones that are criminal but ones they don't like. They've tried to regulate the media and tried to censor and silence those who have differing opinions. We still remember that era of the Rudd government—and there are some people from the Rudd government who are still around—who got their blood pumping at the idea that they might be able to close down dissenting voices.

The Labor Party have never really liked diversity, except their own diversity, which is from the Left to the far left. We want a full diversity of Australian voices, and that's by making sure systems remain open and making sure telecommunications powers have a limit to ensure there's standardisation and the Australian people flourish—that those powers are not used as a weapon to control Australians, as the Australian Labor Party has a sad, shameful history of doing because that is in their core. It is in their DNA and what they seek to do when they gain the treasury benches.

Debate adjourned.

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