Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

I rise today to take up the series of complaints in my electorate about the Telstra coverage and ongoing service-related issues in relation to mobile phone reception in the Hills District. I remind the House that my electorate is in a major metropolitan city, Sydney, in the middle of a really urbanised area. This is an ongoing concern, because, in spite of my—as the federal member—and others' raising this directly with Telstra, we're receiving a series of inadequate responses about very low and unacceptably weak signal in the middle of urban Sydney.

My constituents have raised with me these matters, and they've taken up the complaints with the telecommunications ombudsman, and other matters, as they're entitled to do. Indeed, Telstra has been recommending to them—and I'm going to go through this specifically for one case in my electorate—the purchasing of an additional antenna at their own cost. It doesn't sound too unreasonable when you think about it for a moment. However, this antenna has a minimum cost of $2,568 over 24 months—the Telstra GO G41 Stationary Yagi and Panel Antenna Bundle. The other advice my constituent received was to move to the north-eastern corner of his less-than-700-square-metre property to make his phone calls—or to buy a $2½ thousand antenna for his service. I remind the House that this is in the middle of suburban Sydney.

We need to explore why this is happening. The reason why I'm raising it to the House's and the government's attention today is that, when the original NBN Co was created by the previous Labor government, there were these contractual clauses written into the legislation about denying Telstra the ability to offer the same services as NBN Co and, indeed, denying Telstra—and I spoke about this at the time—the ability to research or upgrade or do certain things which conflict with the NBN. I wonder what's happening, because, as service degrades in urban centres—and this is not the only constituent. We've tested it even in my own electorate office. We get a single bar—and I've raised that directly with Telstra as well—in the middle of Castle Hill, in the middle of an urban area. We're seeing degradation of service across the board.

I asked Telstra, and I do say to the government we need to start taking quite seriously the ongoing arrangements between NBN Co and Telstra—whether this is denying reasonable service to everyday Australians. The idea that a person is told to spend $2,500 on an antenna at their property to get mobile reception in the middle of a major city is, really, I think, unacceptable to most members of this House. The idea that you'd have to stand in the back corner of your property in the middle of a major centre as well and still receive weak service—this simply isn't good enough. So I do say to Telstra again—in the parliament, before we take this further—this matter is serious. It has many people affected in a major urban centre, and I'm sure this is happening in more parts of Sydney. This is a cause we will continue to raise.

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