Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to bring to the attention of the House today the fact that a very dubious practice is taking place in the telecommunications industry, and I have to name AAPT. I have received a number of complaints in my office, and I am sure that members of this House have had similar complaints from people who have had their telephone services changed to AAPT without giving consent.

In one example AAPT rang and a young woman who has a disability answered the telephone. She advised the salesperson from AAPT that the telephone account was in her mother’s name. The telephone salesman regardless transferred her account to AAPT, without even verbal permission. Last week there was another incident raised with me, which involved two similar telephone numbers. One woman agreed to have her account transferred to AAPT, but unfortunately for my constituent AAPT transferred her number instead. The woman whose number was transferred was most upset, because she was getting much higher accounts from AAPT. Then she was given a bill from Telstra to transfer back to Telstra. Full credit to Telstra: they have fixed it up and got rid of that bill, and the problem has disappeared. Another example of AAPT’s aggressive behaviour is this: a business in my electorate, which is located in a shopping centre, agreed to go to AAPT; AAPT transferred the whole shopping centre over to their service.

I believe there is an issue here for the government. Apart from the fact that complaints have been lodged about the behaviour of AAPT, I think it shows that there are real problems with the regulation of the telecommunications industry. Something has to be done to prevent the aggressive behaviour of telecommunications companies like AAPT. I sincerely hope that the minister deals with this so that this type of behaviour stops and people stop being hurt and disadvantaged by the actions of companies like AAPT.