Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As far as Senator Conroy goes with his fibre to the node, he is fully aware that it was only ever going to be in the large metropolitan areas. It was not suitable to go out into regional and rural Australia. It is important that Senator Conroy realises that the government will be working in partnership with industry and other key stakeholders to use the $1.1 billion Connect Australia package to develop sustainable and strategic communications infrastructure throughout Australia. It may well be that the best way to address these issues is by using a substantial part of the Broadband Connect funding to stimulate the development of significant new broadband infrastructure. Importantly, any network that the government makes a significant investment in will have appropriate access arrangements to ensure that sustainable broadband competition is able to continue to develop in regional areas.

Labor used to preside over a cosy duopoly in telecommunications but, under the competitive regime that this government has fostered, consumers have been the winners. Prices have fallen by around 20 per cent and there are now around 100 telecommunications companies to choose from. With the expression of interest process for Connect Australia as a first step, the government has completed an expression of interest process to test the feasibility of an infrastructure based approach and to inform the design of any subsequent program. There were more than 70 expressions of interest received and the government is currently evaluating the results of this process. I can assure you that I have strongly supported one expression of interest from the area I come from in Western Australia.

The government is also confident that we will see some very exciting infrastructure projects grow out of this funding to leverage projects worth much more than the contribution being put forward by the taxpayer. There could be a mix of fibre, copper, satellite and wireless solutions to deliver quality, high-speed internet services to areas where the competitive market simply will not go. Importantly, these projects will be developed on top of the significant infrastructure based competition already occurring in competitive metropolitan and major regional markets. 

I will also comment on the payphone issue that was raised by those members opposite. Telstra’s plans to remove up to 5,000 payphones were first revealed earlier this year, and I made a speech about them. Telstra is already a quarter of the way through this rationalisation program, but it has become apparent that in most cases the removals are where there are already multiple payphones at one site. It is important to note that there are more than 60,000 payphones in Australia and, given the significant growth of mobile phone use, it is not surprising that the use of payphones has dropped. However, payphones continue to be an important community service for many people, and that is why the government regulates Telstra to ensure that payphones are reasonably accessible to everyone in Australia.

Telstra cannot just remove payphones where it feels like it. There are at least 7,500 unprofitable payphones and two of those are being removed from my community. As far as we are concerned they are not used, so why should they stay there and be maintained? Telstra cannot remove these other phones because of the universal service obligation. On top of this there are tens of thousands of profitable payphones which will remain in operation. Obviously there are surplus payphones in Australia that are not necessary for Telstra to meet its community service obligations, especially where there are multiple payphones at one site. But the government will not allow Telstra to leave communities completely stranded without payphones, and Telstra cannot do this under the law.

We are committed to maintaining the USO and it will not be watered down. In fact, in June this year the government actually increased Telstra’s obligations in relation to the removal of payphones, and it also increased the responsibilities of the regulator, ACMA, in monitoring Telstra’s obligations. Telstra is now required to undertake stricter consultation processes, identify all of its USO payphones in regional and rural areas, and rewrite its USO standard marketing plan for payphones. Considerable progress has already been made with these initiatives.