Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have spoken in this chamber before about the terrible situation of the Pinery bushfires, and in 2015 I and my electorate started the year with bushfires in Sampson Flat and devastating bushfires through One Tree Hill in the Adelaide Hills, and we ended the year, very sadly, with the fire in Pinery and Mallala, which had its epicentre, really, in places like Wasleys, Hamley Bridge, Owen and the Pinkerton Plains. When you went out to these communities just after the fire, you saw the intensity of the fire. It was literally like a moonscape out in these communities. The fires had burned so hot that everything was gone—fence posts, fencing and every bit of crop. Quite often the loam had burnt out of the soil and there was nothing but sand left at the side of the road. So it really was quite the dystopian vision. And obviously there were very devastating losses of stock and to farming communities and farming families, and, tragically, there was loss of human life and there was injury.

Today I rise to present the petition by the community of Wasleys in South Australia regarding poor mobile phone coverage, which they have had to endure prior to this issue, but of course not having mobile phone coverage during the period of the fire did present a number of issues. There are many people who have spoken to me—including Mo Shepherd, who is a pillar of the community out there, and Stella Bliss, who is the principal petitioner in this petition—about the fact that not having very good mobile phone coverage exacerbated some of the evacuation issues that were experienced on the day. Often messages were not received at all. Sometimes they were received late. And, tragically, receiving messages late, in an untimely fashion, with a fire like this—a fire which burned so quickly, and had a front, at one point, of 50 to 60 kilometres, and which changed direction, and burnt with an intensity that had not been experienced in living memory on the Adelaide Plains and in the mid-north—exacerbated issues. Certainly it opened all of our eyes to the interaction between mobile phone and internet communications. Obviously we rely on those things in all of our communities, and we rely on them to give us timely information, but in this situation we learned that there were some issues with that reliance on technology.

So I present this petition, which has been approved by the Petitions Committee.

The petition read as follows—

This petition of the community of Wasleys, South Australia draws to the attention of the House: inadequate mobile phone coverage within the township of Wasleys which resulted in a crisis situation due to poor mobile phone coverage during the Pinery bushfire of 25 November, 2015.

We therefore ask the House to: provide funding for the upgrade of telecommunications infrastructure for the township of Wasleys under the Federal Government's Round 2 of the Mobile Black Spot Programme.

from 769 citizens

Petition received.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a division in the House, but please continue, Member for Wakefield.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Notwithstanding the issue of the division bells—and they are going off, on and off—in presenting this petition I would just say: this is a very important issue for my electorate.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11:10 to 11:34

It gives me great pleasure to return to the subject of the Pinery bushfires, which devastated my local community out there in the Adelaide plains in the mid-north. Many of the people I grew up experienced loss in this fire. They were farm lads back in the day but now they are farm owners out at Freeling and places like that.

Before the suspension I was talking about mobile phone communications on the day. Messages arrived late, and often those messages were about evacuation points and where to evacuate to. Obviously that is a very serious issue. This petition calls for new towers at Wasleys, Hamley Bridge and Roseworthy to ensure mobile phone communications in this area. This area, which is not that far from Adelaide, deserves modern telecommunications. This fire certainly highlighted that need, and I have been writing to the Prime Minister and also to the Premier and the state Treasurer about properly funding mobile phone communications out in this region. In the wake of these terrible fires—we are now five months on from them—the need is still there and the communities look to their governments for a sign that we are listening to them and that we are prepared to commit to local infrastructure which will improve their communities.

heading

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In what will possibly be my last contribution in this parliament, I would like to go back over the last three years and some of the things I have been able to achieve for not only my electorate but the state of Tasmania, which is in a much better state than it was three years ago. When we came to government, unemployment had an eight in front of it in Tasmania. We still have more work to do, but today it has a six in front of it. Business confidence was low. A major driver in the Tasmanian economy had been smashed thanks to the Labor/Green double whammy of Hobart and Canberra working in tandem to shut down the forest industry in Tasmania. We have supported and enabled growth again in that sector, and Tasmania's business confidence now is amongst the highest in the nation. Last week Minister Greg Hunt announced that Warwick Smith, the former member for Bass, will do a feasibility study on the capacity for and the benefits of a second interconnector to be built between Tasmania and Victoria. This will enable investment—whether it be in tourism, agriculture, aquaculture or energy—to flow into Tasmania and also will provide a greater degree of energy security. Tasmania is a leader in renewable energy in this country, producing 40 per cent of Australia's renewable electricity.

Over the last three years we have had the nation's single biggest infrastructure investment—$50 billion around the country—and Tasmania has benefited substantially as a result of that commitment. The rollout of the Mobile Black Spot Program has seen 19 new phone towers committed to in the first round in my electorate of Lyons. Some of those are about to begin construction, which is great news for those communities which have poor or no mobile phone coverage. There has been investment in roads, whether it be at a local level through the Black Spot Program, whether it be through the Roads to Recovery Program or whether it be through more substantial projects such as upgrades of the Bass Highway and the 10-year action plan to upgrade Tasmania's major arterial, the Midland Highway. The expansion and improvement to the rail network in Tasmania is very important in moving freight around and keeping some of that heavy traffic off Tasmania's roads.

The expansion of the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme was a major initiative for our state, and this came on the back of the decisions that were made by those opposite in their time in government, when they changed the coastal shipping legislation. That had a terrible impact on our state. We lost our only international shipping service as a result of that and therefore the cost of moving freight to and from Tasmania went up, in some cases by as much as 60 per cent. The Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme expansion to exports was a welcome, but not total, fix of the damage that previously had been done under Labor.

The investment in irrigation is an enabler for so many communities in my electorate. It is not just about the investment that farmers are making; it is about the investment that is occurring in those regional communities that will benefit businesses and employment in those regions and make things such as schools and businesses more sustainable in local towns.

We have embarked on a second phase of that and we are continuing our plan to develop a stronger, more diversified economy, and that was the document, the plan, that was released on Tuesday night. It is about investing in the National Innovation and Science Agenda to support new start-up businesses. It is about using and leveraging off the procurement that will result from defence spending. Indeed, in my electorate, One Atmosphere at Eaglehawk Neck and the Defence Science and Technology Group facility up at Scottsdale are examples of where Tasmania can benefit from that.

Of course, the free trade agreements have been a wonderful thing for Tasmania, and I think Tasmania has captured and imagined the opportunity that exists to our north perhaps better than some other parts of the country. The tax cuts are also a huge boost to small and medium businesses in our state. We have fewer big businesses in Tasmania. We have more small businesses by proportion, and the extension of the tax cut—a 2½ per cent tax decrease—from businesses with a $2 million turnover to those with a $10 million turnover is significant.