Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Telecommunications are an essential service that Australians rely on. The pandemic has reminded us how much we rely on it. We need telecommunications to keep in touch with family, for school, for work, for health and in times of emergency. But for many Australians the telco is worse now than it was 20 years ago when we all had landlines. People in the cities and regions can't use their phones at home, people can't access the internet and there are so many stories of bad telco customer service. On a good day, bad telco is an inconvenience which leaves people seething with anger. On a bad day, it's a matter of life and death.

Telecommunications companies take money from customers and don't deliver any services, and when the customer tries to call and complain or to get their money back they spend hours waiting and get no solutions. It's not good enough; the telcos have been getting away with shocking consumer practices for too long. In my electorate, which is in metropolitan Sydney, people work from their cars or from park benches because they can't get the coverage they need in their homes. People went to work in LGAs of concern during the lockdown because they couldn't realistically work from home. Teachers were teaching from McDonald's car parks, because they couldn't deliver lessons on Zoom at home, and kids learned from a shopping centre car park, or some schools had to run their printers around the clock so they could deliver lesson packs to children when learning online wasn't possible.

Last week I met a family of five working and homeschooling from an outside table at the Kenthurst shops. The family had come from Arcadia, several suburbs away. It was cold and rainy, and they said they did this most days because they have no telco service at home. Kenthurst and Arcadia are 10 or 15 minutes away from Castle Hill, not in a remote part of Australia. I spoke to another woman, from Dural. Her internet and phone services are so bad that her son had to defer his university degree. He can rarely attend class online and, when he can, it constantly drops out. The lack of service has affected his mental health and caused unnecessary stress for the rest of the family.

It's because of situations faced by families like these that I recently published an exposure draft of a telecommunications reform bill with the support of 16 other colleagues from every state in Australia. Since the release of the exposure draft on 30 September I have received hundreds of submissions and emails of support from people across the country. The bill proposes a universal mobile service obligation so that people are able to use a mobile phone to make a call or access the internet inside their home or at their workplace. A customer service guarantee will mean that no caller to a telco will be left on hold for more than five minutes. No-service no-fee provisions mean anyone who is without service at their home or business for more than six hours between eight am and eight pm over a month gets that month of service for free. The bill makes telcos and their executives financially liable for preventable deaths caused by their inaction when a coroner finds that the death would have been prevented had the telco acted differently. Telco execs would be held personally accountable for their poor customer service and failure to meet the needs of customers. Telco executive bonuses would be contingent on customer service improvements.

So what did the telco sector say in response? Did they admit they had a problem or suggest an alternative solution? No: the response from the telco sector should surprise no-one. Firstly, they said that there's nothing to see here and that they're doing a great job. Secondly, they said that the bill asks far too much of them. Big telco attacked the bill—how unsurprising—because the status quo suits them just fine. The telcos are as out of touch today as the banks were in 2017. In 2017, when the now Prime Minister was Treasurer, he introduced the Banking Executive Accountability Regime. The rationale for that regime was that the banks were in a privileged position in the economy. They deliver an essential service and the community expected a higher standard of accountability from their executives, especially when the banks were failing to meet community expectations. Today the same is true of telcos. In those days the banks said it would never work, that it would harm consumers and it would increase costs. Instead, it built community trust, created greater accountability, deferred executive remuneration and pegged it to better outcomes.

But the telcos don't want to change. The CEOs of Telstra and NBN live the high life on multimillion-dollar salaries while people in my electorate are in life-threatening situations because they have no mobile reception. Last year I was contacted by a woman who had called an ambulance when her husband was experiencing chest pain. When the ambulance arrived, the defibrillator could not communicate with the cardiologists at the hospital to send and receive instructions, because it relied on a mobile signal. Paramedics were running back and forward from the house to the street trying to get reception. The patient tragically died. In another case a mother had to text her daughter to call an ambulance for her father because there wasn't enough reception to make a call.

It's time the telcos took their heads out of the sand and started to deal with the real problems that Australians face every single day—the appalling customer service, the lies they tell about connectivity, and the fact that at times of natural disaster they're not accountable for failing to provide life-saving services. The status quo means that they can keep billing people for services they don't receive. It means telcos can say, 'Yes, you've got coverage in your home,' even if the only place you've got coverage is standing on the dog kennel when the wind's blowing in the right direction.

Let's see the contempt with which the telcos treat their customers. New figures released today by ACMA show the average amount of time taken by telcos to fix problems has risen by almost 50 per cent. Fiona Cameron from ACMA said:

The time taken to resolve complaints is going in the wrong direction and one million complaints a year is still far too many.

Echoing provisions in my bill, she said:

We think it's time for every telco to make its complaints handling performance public and transparent.

Last month, Telstra announced a customer service improvement plan. It involves closing call centres and sending customers to bots. The executive responsible said his teenagers don't like to talk to people and do everything online. Last time I checked, it wasn't the teenagers who are paying the bills. How is this tricky move improving customer service? Recently Telstra said they were making all payphones free. They said it as if they were performing a great act of philanthropy. In fact, it's taxpayers' money that funds much of the payphone network, under the universal service obligation, and Telstra is pretending to be generous. Telstra is also charging customers more for less, giving customers no reduction in fees despite slower upload speeds on its NBN plans. Earlier this year Telstra sold 49 per cent of its tower business to taxpayer funded superannuation funds for $2.8 billion. Despite all this taxpayer money, only a tiny proportion is being invested into network improvements.

Last year, Telstra shocked the nation when the full scope of its abuse of vulnerable Indigenous consumers was revealed. In a first, Telstra was ordered to pay $50 million following an ACCC investigation. Telstra admitted that between 2016 and 2018 it breached Australian Consumer Law and acted unconscionably when sales staff at five Telstra stores signed up 108 Indigenous consumers to multiple postpaid mobile contracts which they didn't understand and couldn't afford. ACCC Chair Rod Sims said Telstra:

… used unconscionable practices to sell products to dozens of Indigenous customers who, in many cases, spoke English as a second or third language.

This conduct included manipulating credit assessments and misrepresenting products as free, and exploiting the social, language, literacy and cultural vulnerabilities of these Indigenous customers.

Telstra's board and senior executives failed to act quickly enough to stop these illegal practices when they were later alerted to them.

The conduct of the telcos is appalling and they must be brought into line. It's obvious that they have no fear and that the current regulations are not causing them to change their behaviour. Consumer groups have shown support for my bill. Their research highlights the telcos' woeful performance. CHOICE'S Alan Kirkland said:

It's unacceptable for people living in a city like Sydney not to have mobile reception in their home. Even worse if they live in a bushfire risk area.

The Consumer Action Law Centre published a report that found that telcos were using pushy sales tactics and didn't make available affordable financial hardship programs, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. When families were experiencing financial distress as a result of the pandemic, the telcos sent in the debt collectors instead of offering payment plans.

The Consumer Policy Research Centre published a sector scorecard which looked at mortgage providers, credit providers, rental providers, insurers, energy providers and telcos, and compared their performance. Telcos came equal last, alongside credit providers, when it came to supporting consumers during COVID, and they were last by far for offering assistance and support to consumers. They came second last for offering helpful advice and customer service, and this won't surprise anyone who's had to try and call their telco. On customer service they were worse as the pandemic progressed. Possibly most concerning, though, is that telcos came dead last, scoring a woeful 2.8 out of 10, for providing accessible and positive user experiences.

Allan Fels, the former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, also supports my bill, saying more needs to be done. He said: 'For many years, the telco industry has failed to make access to mobile phone services universally available, even in a number of suburbs. Yet such access is an essential service and vital in emergencies. After waiting so long, it is clear that the only solution is legislation backed by sanctions compelling it.' They were the words of the former head of the ACCC. I say, when the banks needed to do better we brought in the Banking Executive Accountability Regime; the telcos are next.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192(b). The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 18 : 46