Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

():  I second the motion. I spoke recently in this House about Christine from Cumnock in New South Wales, who had to travel an additional kilometre after a car accident to call triple 0 on a landline at a nearby house because she didn't have mobile phone reception. I also mentioned Joe from Meckering in Western Australia, who called in while I was on a Perth radio station, saying he has regular visitors at his home on the transcontinental highway asking to use his landline because, contrary to network indications, there is no mobile phone reception on his section of the highway.

Like it or not, landline services remain essential to connectivity in regional Australia. They enable people to access emergency services in times of need. They give people the ability to work or run a business, access health care and essential government services, and maintain social connection. Affordable fixed-line voice services—in other words, landline services—may no longer rely on the copper wiring, but the fixed voice services remain critically important. Mobile connectivity remains sketchy at best in large swathes of regional Australia, and it has been made worse by this Labor government's abysmal failure to manage the 3G network shutdown effectively.

While the country has been rightly shocked at the devastatingly tragic outcomes of Optus's recent triple 0 outage—and I hear there has been another one this afternoon—I feel compelled to highlight the fact that large parts of our vast country have no access to triple 0 at all on their mobile phones. That is because they don't have any mobile phone service. The point is often overlooked, but it is not lost on people who live in the regions.

Thankfully, redundancy has been built into the telecommunications system for the most part, due to legislative provisions like the universal service obligation and the statutory infrastructure provider regime, to ensure minimum service levels for fixed voice and high-speed broadband. The Nationals are acutely aware of the urgent need to update the USO and the SIP for this day and age, and landlines currently remain vital for regional connectivity.

I turn now to the text of the motion that my colleague has brought and to the ACCC's draft determination on declared voice interconnection services, including the fixed terminating access service, FTAS; the fixed originating access service, FOAS; and the mobile terminating access service, MTAS. As explained by the shadow minister for communications, the ACCC's determination varies the fees charged when a customer on one telecommunications network calls a customer on another for the handover of that call. Stakeholders, including fixed-only providers, have expressed concern that the ACCC's proposed reductions could undermine service continuity, competition and investment in these essential networks. Communities that are most at risk of being impacted by the ACCC's draft proposal are—and I know this will shock the House!—those in regional and remote areas—

An honourable member: There's a theme there.

there is theme—where there is limited redundancy in the system. I am concerned about what this ruling could mean for competition. While the ruling theoretically entices new market entrants, it jeopardises the viability of existing smaller operators that have footprints and staff in Australia already. Australia has, arguably, the most concentrated telecommunications market in the developed world. Given that the ACCC's remit is to promote competition, protect consumers, support fair trading and regulate national infrastructure to make markets work for everyone, why propose changes to network charges that hinge on a hypothetical rather than reality and potentially reduce competition? It makes no sense to me.

Two submissions to the inquiry—Aussie Broadband and Venture Insights—model that the draft determination equates to a 75.6 per cent reduction in the fixed termination rate, which they say would disproportionately hit fixed-only providers and erode competition. The size of the proposed fee reduction and the speed at which it would be implemented poses a significant threat—a threat large enough to compromise business viability and trigger flight from the market. I highlight that these recommendations— (Time expired)

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