Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025 seeks to establish a universal outdoor mobile obligation for three national operators. It's going to require Optus, Telstra and TPG to provide reasonable and equitable access to outdoor mobile, voice and text services across Australia. There will be benefits for regional and remote Australia, where we've been promised benefits, and certainly my community very much needs those promises. We're told that it will improve competition in the market. The scope and timing can be adjusted by the minister by instrument as market and technology evolve, such as emerging low-level satellite technology, which I personally think will be a complete game changer if we can ever get it truly off the ground.

So while I welcome the introduction of this bill to create the universal outdoor mobile obligation, we must remember that this is just a framework that may lack the teeth needed to ensure that all Australians, not just those that live in metropolitan Australia, have guaranteed universal outdoor mobile connectivity. I do note that it will only cover voice and text to begin with. Telcos are working towards this now, but it is experimental and aspirational, let alone satellite. At least it will prevent telcos from having a monopoly in an area. They must share networks and that is critical in my community. If I look at Kangaroo Island, we have huge stretches where there's one telco and absolutely no coverage if you're with the other.

Even though the universal outdoor mobile obligation is coming, this is not a substitute for continued investment in towers. I can't say that enough: this cannot be a substitute for continuing to invest in towers. In my electorate, on any drive that I do between my electorate office in Mount Barker and my satellite office in Victor Harbor, no matter which road I take to get to the other office, which are about an hour and 15 minutes away from each other, I will go through significant patches where there is no coverage at all. We're talking about an area that's a high-risk bushfire area. We're talking about an area where there's a high propensity of crashes. So there is a real vulnerability that exists for regional Australians that doesn't exist for metropolitan Australia.

If I look across Kangaroo Island, it's about 150 kilometres wide, about 50 kilometres in depth. There are vast patches that have very poor mobile telecommunications. If we look at the rest of regional Australia, at areas such as the member for Grey's electorate or at western New South Wales, you can drive for hours at a time with no coverage at all. Certainly, since the 3G system has been turned off, that coverage has diminished across regional Australia.

I do support the amendments drafted by the member for Indi. I believe that they've been tabled. I will be moving those amendments on behalf of the member for Indi. The member for Indi has, during her whole time in this place, very much championed investment in and forward thinking about regional telecommunications. While I support the introduction of this universal outdoor mobile service, I share the member's concerns that its benefits may not be equally shared across regional, rural and remote Australia. Her amendments seek to address this by explicitly including affordability and availability as aspects of a service being available on an equitable basis, requiring the minister to have regard to fault rectification timelines when setting performance benchmarks—that's going to be critical—and giving the minister an explicit power to make rules requiring temporary disaster roaming during emergencies. In my electorate, when we had the fires, the minister was required to provide a statement explaining the reasons for a determination that the UOMO did not apply in particular circumstances.

Let's look at the regional telecommunications review of 2024. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the TIO, review of regional telecommunications showed regional, rural and remote customers experience limited or no access to telco services—for example, limited, unreliable and poor mobile coverage—no recourse to alternative tech providers, and service faults take longer to resolve. It found that telco regulatory frameworks, including the universal service obligation scheme, need to be modernised to ensure regional consumers' reliable access to telco services. Regional consumers complained of service being unavailable, expensive and/or delayed; limited choice of retailers or technologies; and that sometimes services are discontinued, replaced or no longer supported. Realistically, often the only phone service is a mobile service in regional and remote areas. In some instances, telcos misrepresent mobile coverage as available in areas when it is very clearly not. Mobile coverage maps should be standardised, with information regarding location, quality and speed, and accessibility, to enable informed consumer choice.

The review found that landlines should be useable and reliable, and redress easy to secure. If mobile service problems exist, consumers may not be able to afford satellite service and there may not be alternative carriers. And modern minimum service obligations are needed, for voice and internet, in regional and rural areas.

We deserve the same level of telecommunications that they have in the city. Regional Australia is what's feeding Australia. It's what's clothing Australia. And yet it is very clear that we do have a second-class system when it comes to telecommunications.

When we look at natural disaster coverage, there are complaints re telcos' dealings with natural disasters in regional Australia, in relation to disasters and mass outages. This bushfire season, Mayo residents had to navigate bushfires—including a large one, that was uncontrolled for several days, in Deep Creek; it destroyed a number of homes and outbuildings, and, at one point, threatened the ferry infrastructure at Cape Jervis. A lack of coverage creates safety risks during bushfires and other emergencies, due to the service across our topography.

Mayo residents need to be able to rely on telco services for timely and accurate information, but weather events commonly damage consumer lines or telco equipment, with a wait of several weeks for repairs and replacement. Similarly, weather related power outages can result in telco services no longer working, including if the outage has affected a local mobile tower. Now, that will affect an entire community, when we lose a tower, until it's repaired. Consumers are understandably concerned that they cannot make or receive calls or emails during such outages. And then, of course, we all rely so heavily on apps to find out where a fire is coming from and what weather is coming towards us. So we're losing capacity to work or it's contributing to safety concerns. This is a real issue in regional Australia. Aside from the 2023 and recent triple-zero outages, regional, major and mass outages were also a source of complaints other than those caused by natural disasters.

There are local telecommunications issues in my electorate, as I mentioned previously. In Mayo, shutting down 3G has absolutely reduced our coverage, because you can no longer make calls in those areas where previously you could. When they turned off 3G, and we had 5G, it really limited us, in very many areas, to just the immediate town. Now I know that the government and telcos have said, 'No, no, we've been able to upgrade and expand.' I can tell you right now, as someone who does a huge amount of driving, it had a very real negative impact across my community, and still does.

I would say our blackspots have got wider, and that really impacts our safety. And, as I said, as to Deep Creek, where we had a bushfire in recent weeks, there are still black spots in that community. Areas of known black spots or insufficient mobile coverage that could benefit from a tower in my community include Gumeracha, Montacute, Charleston, Brukunga, Wistow, Dawesley, Flaxley, Harrogate, Chapel Hill, Bull Creek, Nangkita, Woodchester, Currency Creek, Waitpinga, Lower Inman Valley and Deep Creek; and, on Kangaroo Island, Vivonne Bay, D'Estrees Bay and Karatta.

Now I know that, in my time as the member, we have been able to get—and lobbied very, very hard to get—more mobile coverage across our area. But, truly, regional Australia deserves the same equitable mobile phone coverage—I mean, we've all had mobiles now for decades. It's hard to believe that so much of Australia is still left with absolutely no service at all. I do support this bill, but I do support it very cautiously.

See this speech in context