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

I would like to support the comments made by the member for Banks in his statement to this House. I have had similar concerns. The Area General Manager of Telstra in the Hunter, Chris Cusack, came to visit me last week to justify the sacking of 210 workers in my area. Whilst he was there he told me that Telstra would no longer communicate with my office. He told me that, if I wrote to him on behalf of a constituent, he would contact the constituent and give absolutely no feedback to my office.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Disgraceful!

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

It is absolutely disgraceful. If my office rang Telstra Country Wide with a complaint, it would not get back to me; it would get back to its customer. I want to put on record in this parliament my absolute contempt for Telstra and the way it has behaved in recent times. It has become a law unto itself, sacking workers and refusing to communicate with members of parliament.

The other issue that I would like to very quickly raise relates to radio and television reception within my local area. I am currently undertaking a survey of residents in affected areas, checking out those residents to see whether or not they can get commercial or ABC radio coverage, mobile phone coverage—which appears to be the worst of all from the surveys I have received back—and commercial and ABC television. I have already written to the minister about this issue and she wrote back to me saying that residents in the area may not be able to obtain reception. She came up with a couple of suggestions—talking to an antenna technician, which all of these residents have done; modification of orientation of existing equipment, and most of them have already done that—and also stated that any changes for the ABC’s point of view would have to relate to budget considerations. The one suggestion she gave me that absolutely floored me, considering that none of my electorate would be more than 185 kilometres from Sydney, is that they apply for a satellite and then they might be able to access Southern Cross through the Seven network or Imparja.

I think that, in this day and age in an area that is just outside Sydney and very close to Newcastle, it is an absolute disgrace that they are not able to access radio and television. I think that, once I have completed this survey, I will have the hard evidence to demonstrate that something needs to be done. (Time expired)