Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Thursday, 5 May the analog television signal was switched off in the electorate of Murray. In the weeks leading up to that event, and in an ever-increasing crescendo, my office and local television and antenna installers have been besieged by desperate pensioners who now have poor reception or no reception at all. These people, some of the most frail and vulnerable people in our community and with the least mobility and least means to pay, are the latest victims of Labor's latest shonky hare-brained scheme. These people have taken up the free set-top box installation and training package. We are seeing pensioners having their battered eight- or nine-year-old televisions being fitted with set-top boxes paid for by the government at an average cost of about $350 for the package. That might sound like a nice idea for the first 10 seconds but, after that, most intelligent people would figure that it would be much cheaper and less complicated if, instead of paying to retrofit very old sets with renewed technology, the government simply helped pensioners to buy a brand-new digital TV. They could buy them from local shops and therefore support local business communities. They could have local expert technicians, who they know and trust, install their new TVs and tweak their antennas, or even replace them if necessary, and all would be happy. Indeed, they would be praising the government instead of condemning them as they are now doing.

These pensioners would not be left with an incompatible aerial that still needs tuning—that is, if they can get the government's installers to revisit them. They would not be left with two remote controls—one for the set-top box and one for the TV. They need to synchronise these two remotes. Some of these people are in their late-eighties and early-nineties and they are desperate and concerned about how to do all of this every time they want to change their TV's function or channel. They do not always have their 13-year-old great grandchildren there to help.

These pensioners would not need to let strangers into their homes who are mostly not up to the job. These installers appear to be in the same league as the shonky installers of pink batts, or at least trained in the same school. They refuse to return promptly to fix up malfunctions, and when they simply cannot make the thing work, they confidently announce that the problem is with the pensioner's TV set and they should just go out and buy a new one as soon as possible. Of course, the installer still gets paid, on average, a $350 service and equipment fee regardless of whether the job takes 15 minutes or three hours and several returns.

Instead of everyone talking about who won the footy in my local area, our local source of funny stories is: 'Did you hear the latest set-top box installer episode?' We had the one about the set-top box man who arrived in a cloud of dust in a kombi van with 'Nimbin' painted on the side of it and a mattress in the back. When he got up on the roof to tweak the antenna, he asked the lady to show him which direction the Bendigo TV signal would come from. Then there was the one about a local supplier of set-top boxes—an expert installer who will do the job. He guarantees a good job for $75. He was originally complaining about the set-top box installation scheme because no local technicians or experts won any tenders. He is now saying it is the biggest gravy train he has seen. He has been called out—and, unfortunately, he does have to charge—to fix up all the malfunctioning sets when the governments installers will not return to deal with them or have simply disappeared from the area altogether. These local technicians can supply a new digital television from their local shops, keeping the local town going, for around $200.

So here we have a scheme which is well-meaning—just as the pink batts scheme was well-meaning—but it is from a government that just did not think it through. It comes from a government that had a cash for clunkers scheme for about five minutes and a scheme for checking grocery prices for about three minutes—and what about Fuel Watch! This is a government that does not understand the details of managing a program. It was happy to throw $300 million at this scheme without first trying it on a small group of elderly or disabled people to see if it actually works in practice. They did not even test and check it out to see whether they were going to get brownie points by investing, in the first instance, $300 million—but watch this space; this figure is no doubt going to triple and quadruple. In fact, they could have been winners if they had simply said, 'We're changing to digital television and we can provide cheap and adequate television sets for pensioners for $200 or $300.' This would have been a great saving, and everyone would be happy. We would not have vulunerable people getting nervous and concerned about having people in their homes—worried about whether their TV set really does need replacing or whether the technician simply does not know what to do. (Time expired)