Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That the following matter be referred to the House Standing Committee on Communications, the Arts and Sport, for inquiry and report:

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission's Draft Determination on Voice lnterconnection Services, with particular reference to:

(1) the cost modelling inputs and assumptions used in the ACCC's modelling for declared voice interconnection services;

(2) the discrepancy between fixed and mobile termination rates and the potential implications for market neutrality;

(3) the financial and operational impact on fixed-only voice telecommunications providers;

(4) the potential consequences for businesses and consumers in relation to end-user pricing, service availability, and quality—particularly in regional, rural, remote and isolated communities;

(5) the implications of the proposed determination for regional, rural and remote communities, where fixed voice services remain essential due to limited mobile coverage;

(6) the resilience and redundancy of national voice infrastructure in ensuring service continuity during mobile outages and emergencies;

(7) the implementation and transition arrangements required; and

(8) any other related matters.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Lindsay moving a motion to refer the following matter to the House Standing Committee on Communications, the Arts and Sport, for inquiry and report:

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission's Draft Determination on Voice lnterconnection Services, with particular reference to:

(1) the cost modelling inputs and assumptions used in the ACCC's modelling for declared voice interconnection services;

(2) the discrepancy between fixed and mobile termination rates and the potential implications for market neutrality;

(3) the financial and operational impact on fixed-only voice telecommunications providers;

(4) the potential consequences for businesses and consumers in relation to end-user pricing, service availability, and quality—particularly in regional, rural, remote and isolated communities;

(5) the implications of the proposed determination for regional, rural and remote communities, where fixed voice services remain essential due to limited mobile coverage;

(6) the resilience and redundancy of national voice infrastructure in ensuring service continuity during mobile outages and emergencies;

(7) the implementation and transition arrangements required; and

(8) any other related matters.

House standing committees in this place play an important role in our democracy. They are a way for the communities, stakeholders and experts to have their say, to challenge ideas and approaches and to test legislative and regulatory changes that impact Australians. House standing committees not only investigate any matter referred to them by the relevant minister but also propose their own topics of inquiry. Committee chairs are appointed by the Prime Minister and receive an 11 per cent salary increase, equivalent to more than $26,000 a year. Since the 48th Parliament began, only three of the 10 House standing committees have launched inquiries. The Chair of the Standing Committee on Communications, the Arts and Sport has been sitting idle, with not a single referral from the Minister for Communications and no proactive measures that they wish to investigate.

I note the member for Macquarie is the chair of this committee and recently stated the committee had been receiving private briefings from departments to prepare for an inquiry. The member for Macquarie further stated:

The committee is considering options for inquiries, and we expect those inquiries to kick-off in the near term.

Well, it has been six months since the election, and we have not seen a single scrap of fruit from the efforts of those very important briefings and preparatory work. There are a plethora of ideas for the standing committee to investigate, and today I stand here to present just one of them for you to take up. The committee can thank me for this.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Please direct your comments to me. When you're referring to 'you', that is me you are talking to.

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, through you. I understand. On 6 August this year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC—

which is what I'm discussing now, thank you for your assistance—released its draft final access determination and associated cost modelling for declared voice interconnection services. This determination includes fixed terminating access service, fixed originating access service and mobile terminating access service.

Fixed terminating access service covers the cost of terminating a call to a fixed number, while mobile terminating access service applies to mobile calls. Together, they make up the voice usage component of a phone service. When a customer on one network calls a customer on another, a regulated fee applies for the handover of the call.

The ACCC's draft report proposes a 75.6 per cent reduction in fixed terminating access service rates and a 24.4 per cent reduction in mobile terminating access service rates, effective 1 January 2026. Our telecommunications fixed voice networks continue to play a critical role in national communications infrastructure, providing redundancy during mobile outages, supporting emergency call systems and underpinning essential services in health, enterprise and government. The communities most at risk of being impacted are those in regional and remote areas. What a surprise! Some challenger and fixed-only providers—and by this I may be smaller end of town, not Telstra, Optus or TPG but Aussie Broadband, Symbio and the like—have expressed to me their concern that the proposed reductions and non-price provisions could undermine service continuity, competition and investment in these essential networks. It is really important, given the current state of our telecommunications sector, that all providers, particularly smaller providers, are able to sustain themselves in the market. They feel that this inquiry would go a long way to testing the viability, transparency and cost implications of these changes before they are enacted.

As detailed in the motion, we propose the inquiry look specifically at the cost modelling inputs and assumptions used by the ACCC, including the framing and definition of 'modern efficient operator', the treatment of fixed-only versus integrated mobile/fixed operators, the exclusion of key cost components, such as transmission and backhaul to points of interconnect, and the assumptions regarding economies of scale and technology mix. We also request that the committee review the discrepancy between fixed and mobile termination rates, including the rationale for the differential rate reductions between fixed originating access service and mobile terminating access service. Before any change is enacted we must look at the implications of this discrepancy for market neutrality and regulatory consistency.

As I foreshadowed earlier, investigating the impact of these changes on the telecommunications industry is vital, particularly the financial and operational impact on fixed-only voice providers, including potential revenue loss, cost recovery challenges and investment disincentives. It is imperative that we understand any flow-on impacts of these changes, not only on the industry but, more importantly, on everyday Australians. There are likely to be broader implications for wholesale and retail providers, which has the potential of resulting in operator consolidation or the withdrawal of smaller providers from the market. There is no competition when smaller providers have to leave the market. We know all too well that, where there are flow-on effects for businesses, there are flow-on effect for Australians.

We ask the House Standing Committee on Communications, the Arts and Sports to investigate the likely consequences for end-user pricing, service availability and quality, particularly in regional, rural and vulnerable communities. In parallel, the committee should also review the impact on enterprise, government and emergency services that rely on fixed voice infrastructure, as well as the risk of reduced choice and innovation in the market. Fixed voice services in regional, rural and remote communities are essential. Before any changes are enacted, we should understand the impacts for regional and remote communities. Fixed voice networks play an essential role. Any reduced service availability, increased costs or diminished competition in these communities would be an unacceptable outcome, especially for vulnerable communities reliant on fixed voice infrastructure. Further, the committee should test whether these changes will have the unintended consequence of reduced investment in the network, its resilience and our critical telecommunications infrastructure.

The ACCC draft report proposed implementation timeframes of 1 January 2026. This is just eight weeks away. The world could change in the telecommunications space in such a short period of time. I hope that without further inquiries and consultation this implementation timeframe is reviewed.

As I said, the committees' work in this place is so important. The Australian public expects each and every one of us to take our job seriously—jobs that their well-earned taxpayer money funds. If Australians knew that committees were sitting idle—I don't think one single Australian would think it was a good use of their hard-earned taxpayer money to have politicians sitting around parliament when they should be working. Some of that work is the work that I've just mentioned. We're handing over a very important job that could be started now. It could have major impacts, particularly in regional and rural Australia, where people are already suffering telecommunications failures. We are seeing that right now with Optus. If the smaller providers leave the market and only three large providers are left—well, we know what happens when there's not enough competition.

Hopefully, with the committee's assistance and inquiry into this matter, we can ensure that our telecommunications network is safe and resilient and that it remains competitive. That is the very least that we can do for regional Australia and for all Australians, who expect every politician in this place to be working hard for them.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

():  I second the motion. I spoke recently in this House about Christine from Cumnock in New South Wales, who had to travel an additional kilometre after a car accident to call triple 0 on a landline at a nearby house because she didn't have mobile phone reception. I also mentioned Joe from Meckering in Western Australia, who called in while I was on a Perth radio station, saying he has regular visitors at his home on the transcontinental highway asking to use his landline because, contrary to network indications, there is no mobile phone reception on his section of the highway.

Like it or not, landline services remain essential to connectivity in regional Australia. They enable people to access emergency services in times of need. They give people the ability to work or run a business, access health care and essential government services, and maintain social connection. Affordable fixed-line voice services—in other words, landline services—may no longer rely on the copper wiring, but the fixed voice services remain critically important. Mobile connectivity remains sketchy at best in large swathes of regional Australia, and it has been made worse by this Labor government's abysmal failure to manage the 3G network shutdown effectively.

While the country has been rightly shocked at the devastatingly tragic outcomes of Optus's recent triple 0 outage—and I hear there has been another one this afternoon—I feel compelled to highlight the fact that large parts of our vast country have no access to triple 0 at all on their mobile phones. That is because they don't have any mobile phone service. The point is often overlooked, but it is not lost on people who live in the regions.

Thankfully, redundancy has been built into the telecommunications system for the most part, due to legislative provisions like the universal service obligation and the statutory infrastructure provider regime, to ensure minimum service levels for fixed voice and high-speed broadband. The Nationals are acutely aware of the urgent need to update the USO and the SIP for this day and age, and landlines currently remain vital for regional connectivity.

I turn now to the text of the motion that my colleague has brought and to the ACCC's draft determination on declared voice interconnection services, including the fixed terminating access service, FTAS; the fixed originating access service, FOAS; and the mobile terminating access service, MTAS. As explained by the shadow minister for communications, the ACCC's determination varies the fees charged when a customer on one telecommunications network calls a customer on another for the handover of that call. Stakeholders, including fixed-only providers, have expressed concern that the ACCC's proposed reductions could undermine service continuity, competition and investment in these essential networks. Communities that are most at risk of being impacted by the ACCC's draft proposal are—and I know this will shock the House!—those in regional and remote areas—

An honourable member: There's a theme there.

there is theme—where there is limited redundancy in the system. I am concerned about what this ruling could mean for competition. While the ruling theoretically entices new market entrants, it jeopardises the viability of existing smaller operators that have footprints and staff in Australia already. Australia has, arguably, the most concentrated telecommunications market in the developed world. Given that the ACCC's remit is to promote competition, protect consumers, support fair trading and regulate national infrastructure to make markets work for everyone, why propose changes to network charges that hinge on a hypothetical rather than reality and potentially reduce competition? It makes no sense to me.

Two submissions to the inquiry—Aussie Broadband and Venture Insights—model that the draft determination equates to a 75.6 per cent reduction in the fixed termination rate, which they say would disproportionately hit fixed-only providers and erode competition. The size of the proposed fee reduction and the speed at which it would be implemented poses a significant threat—a threat large enough to compromise business viability and trigger flight from the market. I highlight that these recommendations— (Time expired)

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question before the House is that the debate be adjourned.