David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025 in principle and support what the government is trying to achieve here in the evolving shape of telecommunications. Particularly for those of us that represent rural and remote electorates, it's important. This evolving technology gives us hope because, at the moment, there isn't a lot of hope for us. Many of the telcos have packed up and left, and that cancer that started in regional Australia is now spreading to peri-urban areas around capital cities.

It's admirable that the government is trying to keep pace with the change in technology, and that is important. But there is an important admission in this bill that doesn't go to actually address much of the framework that is already in place through the universal service obligation. The universal service obligation was put in place when Telstra was privatised, and, at that stage, the technology that was available to every Australian were landlines and payphones. There were around 60,000 payphones when Telstra was privatised. We're now down to about 14,000. I mean, the only people using payphones at the moment are drug dealers. No-one is using payphones at the moment, and landlines are becoming less and less frequent.

But, unfortunately, the universal service obligation has not moved with the technology. This government is taking one step too far in terms of forgetting that there is still technology that we rely on out there in regional Australia, and the universal service obligation should be extended to existing telephony infrastructure that much of the Australian taxpayer has paid for, not the telcos but the Australian taxpayer through the black spots program that we put in place when we were in government we put in place. That was there to try and give coverage to people in regional Australia. But, unfortunately, the universal service obligation still only controls the landlines and payphones and omits covering the maintenance of mobile phone towers.

We put in place over 1,500 when we were in government under that black spot program, but there is no regulatory framework to make the telcos maintain them to the standards of which they're meant to. A mobile phone tower should in its establishment cover around a 14-kilometre radius. Now, in many of the cases because the batteries aren't being maintained, there is no service, and there is no requirement on the telcos to go and repair those towers. In regional and rural Australia, that has actually diminished, and, in fact, many of them are flat out being able to cover the towns in which they reside in or even the highways that they cover. But even worse is when they say, 'Well, we still get our landlines out there.' In many cases, a landline is all we can use. In the case of very remote stations in my own electorate out in western Queensland in the outback, it's their only communication to get the flying doctor in.

But under the old universal service obligation, the only requirement for the telcos to go and fix these landlines has an averaging provision. So even the Productivity Commission found that Telstra, who have the contract for the universal service obligation and who gets $270 million a year to maintain those payphones and to maintain those landlines, were actually averaging the provisions of repairing landlines in capital cities because, lo and behold, that's where their technicians were, but they were averaging provisions out in the outback. In my own electorate, I can tell you that in Birdsville and Roma, they were taking three, six, 12, 18 months to repair landlines. In fact, I even have a photo sent to my electorate office of Telstra's ability to actually repair a landline out near Roma. I think it was between Roma and Injune. They've actually run a new line from the main telephone power line coming down the highway, and, instead of putting new poles up, they've actually wrapped it around a couple of gum trees through to the house and attached it to the house. That was their way of fixing this landline for these people who'd been waiting for nearly six months.

Telstra is having a lend of us. $270 million a year, and they use average provisions to be able to take the money off the Australian taxpayer. I grant you, about $100 million of that is Australian taxpayers, and $170 million is what's levied of the telcos, but they are effectively having a go at us all. That is why this bill should actually extend to the existing infrastructure that's there, particularly that mobile telephony, to hold these telcos to account, to remove the averaging provisions as a penalty, to make sure that telcos are there, johnny-on-the-spot, to fix these problems not just with landlines and payphones but with mobile phone towers.

In the town of Dalby—12,000 people live in Dalby—Telstra took down their mobile phone coverage service for nearly two weeks. They did not care one iota about the fact that the good people of Dalby had no mobile telephony for nearly two weeks. That is a disgrace. My heart pours out to the families who lost loved ones because of the triple zero fiasco only less than 12 months ago.

Let me say to those in this chamber today that we face that sort of risk and that sort of outcome that we saw because triple zero went down because of Optus every day in regional, rural and remote Australia. Our mobile phone towers don't work. There's no regulatory guardrail for them to be fixed. That's the sort of risk that we face up to every day. While there's a national outpouring of mourning for the families that were lost, understand that that happens to us every single day. Our whole communities lose mobile phone towers for a couple of weeks. We lose them along our highways. This is where we've got to understand the technology that's there also needs to be protected.

I'm proud of the National Party that made the reform around USO pivotal to our policy pitch to make sure not just that landlines and payphones are protected but that mobile phone infrastructure—particularly that you, the Australian taxpayer, have paid for—is maintained and kept to a standard to protect every Australian. That's where we should go. Even with low-orbit-satellite technology, which is what we're moving towards to regulate here—and congratulations to the government for taking those steps; it's the right thing to do; it honestly is—the telcos themselves will tell you that their mobile phone infrastructure that is there, those towers that are right across, will still be required for backhaul and backup. So why wouldn't we, as legislators, amend this bill to also regulate to ensure that the universal service obligation is extended to mobile telephony infrastructure to protect every Australian?

I understand now. We've been battling for this for years for those that live in regional and rural Australia, and it's only now that this cancer has grown from regional and rural Australia to periurban Australia that we are understanding why there is action. This is why it's important, as legislators, that we get this right. We can fix it. If there's $270 million a year being paid to Telstra through a universal service obligation contract, then we have every right to change that. If Telstra doesn't want to do that, who cares? There'll be some other entrepreneur out there that'll want to take this contract up, and they'll want to go and make sure that these landlines and these payphones—whatever's left of them—as well as the mobile phone towers across Australia are maintained. That's a universal right that we deserve as Australians. This is a universal service that saves us.

Society has evolved because of the technology that's been provided to this country, and that's a great thing. But none of us should be left behind. I say to the government that the opportunity that lays ahead has been missed. It is right to ensure that there are regulatory guardrails around the new technology, but missing what's there is a missed opportunity. It does risk lives. It puts our lives at risk, and that's why we've been passionate, as the National Party, to stand up and say we can't go on with this any longer and that this is a risk to our wellbeing. It's not just for us to be able to get on with the commerce of feeding and clothing you and sending the resources in to save the bills. This is something that, as a parliament, I think we should come together and fix.

This is a positive step that the government has taken with respect to the new technology, but it's missing the opportunity that lays there for us. I say to the government: please go back to the drawing board and add this. It's not asking for any more money. We're not saying we want more than the $270 million that goes out every year in the universal service obligation. But, because there are fewer landlines and because there are fewer payphones, Telstra's having a red-hot crack at us. They're having a red-hot crack at the Australian taxpayer. Who wouldn't want a contract for $270 million to do three-fifths of bugger all? There are no payphones to fix—so much so that they made them free to use anywhere around Australia—and the landlines are definitely going down in usage.

There will be a day when technology will take out the need for the copper, and that's a good thing, even in those remote places in my electorate, like Birdsville, west of Longreach and even west of Roma, where you can't get mobile phone coverage so you still need that landline for that hour of need to ring the flying doctor. This is an opportunity to say, 'Let's get this right.' Let's actually pause and understand the complexity of the problem and not leave a gap, which—hands up—we've all missed. But it's one we've always fought to close in the National Party. This is pivotal to getting the telecommunications right in this country.

We can simply say that we are not asking for any extra money. We are asking for a reallocation of that $270 million, which doesn't need to go towards addressing these low-orbit satellites and the new technology that's going on. We don't even own that infrastructure. But we own the infrastructure that was there, which we gave as a free hit to these telcos, who are making money out of it. We are simply saying, 'Let's reallocate that $270 million to make sure those towers are maintained.'

While we're at it, why wouldn't we look at mandated roaming? I congratulate the government's move towards mandated roaming in emergency circumstances. But we face emergency circumstances every day in rural and regional Australia. The Mobile Black Spot Program allowed Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to all apply. We've got stranded assets across regional Australia. You might go through a Vodafone tower, then you hit two Telstra towers and then you hit an Optus one. Unless you've got three different phones that connect into them, they're basically useless. So why wouldn't we look at that? The ACCC, when they last looked at this, made a mess of it, to be honest. They said that we shouldn't have mandated roaming.

I'm not saying that you should get it for free. I'm saying that what the telcos should do is tell us what it costs to have roaming on your phone. If you go overseas and you decide to take roaming, you pay $5 a month or $5 a week or whatever it is. Give us the number and let the consumer decide whether they want roaming so they can use any tower. I'm not asking the telcos to pay for it. I'm simply saying, 'Why don't you give us the number?' It might be $10 a month, $20 a month or $25 a month. The consumer should decide. They should be able to decide that they can go under any mobile phone tower in this country and use it if they're prepared to pay for it.

But the telcos don't want that, particularly Telstra, because they use regional Australia as their biggest advertisement in the cities, saying they have the most coverage across Australia. They use us as their selling point but screw us over and give us nothing in return in terms of the infrastructure we need—so much so that the ACCC found just the other day that the claim they made in some of their advertising about the coverage they had was actually false. I could have told you that five years ago. They're full of it. The reality is that Telstra's been found out, so let's not let them dictate terms about how our telecommunications should be in this country. They don't care. They gave up a long time ago, and I gave up on Telstra a long time ago. They are full of it, and the reality is they are cleaning up the Australian taxpayer and having a red-hot laugh at us.

This is an opportunity for this parliament to go back to the drawing board and get this right—to add onto the work that this government is doing with respect to the new technology that's coming and to fix the mistakes of the past. That's what a good parliament would do, a parliament that understands the complexities of a universal right of telecommunications to keep us all safe and to give us the opportunity to go and make a quid. That's what we want.

We're not asking for a cent—not one brass razoo. I'm not saying we want one more cent, apart from that $270 million to force Telstra to do the job that they are paid to do and to do a job that they could do. If they don't, get rid of them. Who cares. Someone else will take up that universal service obligation and spend that $270 million in such a way that the Australian taxpayer, particularly people in regional Australia, might be able to turn on their phone or use it in their hour of need, when they need to ring triple zero. My heart bleeds for those families who lost loved ones, but just understand that that happens to us every day.

Why would we stand in this parliament, with an opportunity to fix it today, and just walk past it and let it go? That's not what legislators should do. We should have the courage to take on the telcos, particularly companies like Telstra, who have done nothing for regional Australia. They've done nothing but take. Now the good people of peri-urban Australia are feeling the same thing. This is the time to square the ledger, square it up with Telstra, and make that $270 million work for the Australian taxpayer.

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