Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025. There has been a break in the debate from the last sitting, and I reference the contribution made by, I think, the member for Parkes, who was critical of this bill because he thought that it didn't go far enough. My question really is: what is the alternative? This is a chance either to do something or to do nothing. While it's quite an amazing statistic that something like 99 per cent of Australians are covered at the moment by mobile phone coverage, that also means that two-thirds of the Australian landmass is not covered. And so we need a practical solution that doesn't technically exist yet but we're working towards. At least this legislation does set down those guidelines clearly for industry to follow, and it does lead the way. It does focus the attention of industry to solve this problem. But, like the member for Parkes, who does represent an area where I grew up—in the town of Broken Hill—I share that frustration of being a member of an outer metropolitan seat. I know the frustration of having poor mobile phone coverage. Even though the community that I represent today and the community that I grew up in might be separated by geography, they are certainly not separated by demography. The communities that I represent are hardworking working-class Australians, committed to their families and their communities. And they have one other thing in common as well, which is poor mobile phone reception.

There are many suburbs that I could mention. I was in Upper Coomera the other day, and I couldn't get connection to Maps. In the relatively new suburbs of Holmview and Waterford, there's appalling mobile phone reception; people are forced to go out onto their driveway and wave their mobile phone around in the hope that they get reception. So I understand the frustration that's felt in the bush where there is zero reception. I understand that frustration because of the area that I represent and live in today, but I also understand that frustration because it is an area that, as I say, I grew up in and worked in.

The time that I spent on sheep and cattle stations between Broken Hill and Bourke really brought home to me the isolation that exists out there, and the importance of communication—or, I should say, what it means to not have that communication. There's an interesting memory that I have, from the time that I came out to work on a property in my late 20s. As it was, I probably didn't know one end of a sheep from the other; I'd never been on a motorbike before; I didn't know my north from my south. I'm sure that one of the reasons that they employed me was for the comic value! They told me that I'd need to fall off my bike at least a hundred times before I'd be a good rider; I certainly fell off a hundred times, and I wouldn't say that I was ever a great rider at the end of it.

As I said, I barely knew my north from my south. In the middle of summer, by the way, north is there, somehow, if you follow the sun, but it's very difficult when you're trying to follow a mob of sheep through the thick scrub. So I had a GPS. In the early 2000s, here we were, in the bush, using GPS. This was no communication device with the sonorous sounds of Siri; this was a rubber-coated device about half the size of my hand that was cable-tied to my bike. You'd put little waypoints in there—the homestead, or some waters—and you'd navigate. It would have a little arrow on its green-and-black screen, and it would point to where the waypoint was and tell you how many kilometres you were from it. I think it's an interesting fact that we were using that out in the bush in the early 2000s, at the same time that people in the city wouldn't have known what a GPS was, but people in the city were using mobile phones, whereas out in the bush in the early 2000s nobody had a clue what a mobile phone was.

It is literally a matter of life and death—communications. There are two experiences that come to mind—two stories that I knew of, which happened before my time out there but which I think illustrate the importance of having adequate communications. One was of a young guy, at the time, about my age, who'd had a motorbike accident. I can't quite remember the detail; he'd hit a kangaroo or a tree or something. Because we relied on UHF technology—and UHF is notoriously unreliable; it works over only a very limited range—he didn't have communication with his homestead. He somehow managed to get himself back home, where he was able to get treatment, but he ended up with a lifelong and debilitating brain injury. And it just makes me wonder: what would it have been like if he'd actually had a mobile phone to be able to call for emergency services at the time? There was another incident—and I'm reluctant to call them 'incidents', because fundamentally they are workplace injuries. But another, even more serious, occasion was when somebody called Skeet had had a heart attack and collapsed, and, tragically, his wife found him, sometime later. Again, it makes me wonder whether or not having mobile phone coverage for Skeet would have meant that he could have survived, so these are genuinely matters of life and death. Communications—it's trite to say—are not just a luxury; they are a necessity.

My mum used to live in the Brisbane suburb of Oxley, which was badly flooded in 2010. In many ways it was a later flood in 2022 which was probably much more emotionally damaging than the one in 2010. But I only say that because the one in 2010 was the first of what has been a series of natural disasters in south-east Queensland that people have had to contend with. So that was the first natural disaster where mobile phone coverage and electricity went down for a long period for a lot of people. With not being able to contact my mum, family members not being able to contact each other, people worried about being able to ask for help, there was really a sense that the difference between civilisation and barbarism are electricity and communications. I have a friend who was a refugee from Bosnia, from the Yugoslav War, war of the 1990s. She said to me that to be disconnected through your communications was exactly what it felt like in war, so that really illustrated to me how important it is to have that coverage. They're all the sorts of problems that come about from not having those communications.

Ultimately, there are so many opportunities available out in the bush with proper communications. As the statistics show, more than two-thirds of Australia is currently not covered by mobile phone at all. And while this legislation is not about getting it to the point where people in the bush have the same coverage which you might expect, even though we don't receive it in metropolitan areas, it is the beginning of a process which really does begin to unlock that economic potential of the Australian bush.

Just to record on Hansard, 'Nugget' Brown, who has sadly passed away, was one of the most decent human beings I've ever met, one of the smartest people I've ever met. Just by the way, he was somebody who couldn't read or write, couldn't sign his name to a cheque, but put him in his environment and he was just an absolute legend. You could spin him around 20 times blindfolded and he'd know what direction to go in. He knew where the calf's mother was, who the calf's mother's mother was. This guy was a genius, and I do want to give him a shout-out today. Also, Simon Brown and Lionel Brown were two people I worked very closely with, who really taught me the value of having a go and hard work, but they used to have a bit of a chuckle with me at some of my some of my crazy ideas. One idea back in the 2000s was that maybe you could chuck a camera on a drone and muster sheep. Unfortunately, Nugget's not around to see that actually happening, but that is something which you can do in areas where there is appropriate technology. That technology doesn't really exist in the outback. If you were to try and use it, it would be horribly expensive. But communications really is one of those essential services that, provided properly and equitably across our vast nation, could really unlock our nation's potential and open it up.

Finally, I'd just like to say that this is not about letting the telecommunications companies get off scot-free. In fact, the Minister for Communications said recently at the CommsDay Regional and Policy Forum, which I mention as an example of where the industry is letting the community down:

The Triple Zero failures last year shook public confidence.

Frankly, they exposed elements of a system that relied on a best efforts approach, and sadly, in some instances, those efforts were far from the best.

At a deeper level, it exposed a discordance between how the industry is regulated, and perhaps how it sees itself, versus how the public expects it to operate.

We have to face reality. At the end of 2025, public opinion of the communications sector was very low.

And I think, at the beginning of 2026, it hasn't improved a hell of a lot.

It is important that legislation like this does show the way for telecommunications to behave when it comes to providing that universal outdoor mobile obligation. It does set some expectations on what government expects of these corporations which are providing what is an essential service. It does show that this government is not just going to wait around for the perfect solution, but, as always, this government is pragmatic in its approach and is getting ahead of the curve.

Ultimately, whether you've had an accident out bush, whether you've broken down, whether you need to communicate with your homestead or whether it's somebody from my electorate driving out to see a family member or a friend or going across Australia, this is the typical Australian way. This is also the typical Albanese government way. This is about making sure that nobody is left behind. Even if, fundamentally, this striking statistic we're talking about is where just one per cent of Australians live, this is about making sure that that one per cent, who deserve the same access, have access to those services that people in the city have.

The frustration that my community feels and that I feel by having substandard telecommunications in the 21st century means that the industry needs to do better. The government is making sure that they are accountable. This bill goes towards that, and works in a constructive way to make sure that all Australians have access to the services that are essential in the 21st century. I commend the bill to the House.

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