Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about telecommunications in my electorate of Farrer. I would like to say that this is going to be a good news story about telecommunications in all of Australia, but sadly I cannot. My comments tonight are prompted by this government's recent response to the 2011-12 Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee, the so-called Sinclair review. This response was made public on 23 August this year, which just happened to be the day after the last session of parliament. We should not read anything into the timing; we should only note that this is the first opportunity that I or any of my fellow rural and regional MPs have had to comment on the government's rather disappointing reply.

The minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital economy was, of course, very excited about the Sinclair review's comments on the potential of the National Broadband Network to improve the lives of regional Australians. He went so far as to suggest that the review confirmed that people living in regional Australia supported the government's investment in the National Broadband Network and the decision to prioritise the rollout of fast, reliable and affordable broadband to regional areas.

The fibre rollout of the NBN so far announced for the electorate of Farrer will cover 0.12 per cent of the electorate. If the minister considers this to be prioritising fast, reliable and affordable broadband to regional areas, I cannot wait to see what will happen when he really gets his skates on!

Even more disappointing than this announcement was the government's feeble response to the Sinclair review's genuine concern about the patchy or non-existent mobile telephone coverage in the electorate.

In a classic case of 'Let's do absolutely nothing', the minister said the government would encourage NBN Co. and mobile carriers to work together to take advantage of future fixed wireless towers to improve services. So here we have a federal minister of the Commonwealth who is so excited at what his very costly NBN is yet to achieve. It not likely to do so within the life of this parliament, or the next three after that, but it is apparently going to fix mobile phone black spots as well.

Of course, this is nonsense. Let me give you an example of why. Last month NBN Co. lodged a development application for broadband rollout in the small Murray town of Howlong. Howlong, just by sheer luck, under this government's flip-flop policy, happens to have just over 1,000 premises. So it could be assumed that the project was for the laying of fibre optic cable to Howlong homes and businesses. No. It was for a 50-metre tower to provide wireless broadband to the area. And where is that tower proposed by NBN Co. to be located? Just two kilometres from Howlong's town centre.

So now we have a small country town designated for fibre optic broadband but with back-up wireless just in case it all falls over or the money runs out, or both. Even if we do believe that the minister's super-fast prioritising of super-fast fibre happens as quickly as he would have us all believe, tell me the sense of locating a tower inside a town which is due for NBN to be rolled down the local street. On any level of common sense the fixed wireless tower would be located as far outside of communities like Howlong as possible to ensure that the wireless footprint can travel as far and wide as possible. Just as importantly, this could then complement the minister's far-flung thought bubble that NBN Co. and the telcos will work together to improve mobile phone coverage in the future.

Placing the NBN tower around 15 to 20 kilometres from Howlong could even deliver wireless broadband to the town of Savernake, 70 kilometres away, which has no mobile phone coverage. Instead, under this government, one town will have two methods of receiving the NBN and two local towers will be delivering the same mobile phone coverage in Howlong but there is no mobile phone coverage even planned for the town of Savernake—appalling planning. Time after time, the Gillard administration proves why it is hopelessly out of touch, incapable of implementing its policies and hopeless when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars wisely.