Thursday, 9 February 2023

Clyde North mobile phone coverage

Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:15): (33) My adjournment tonight is for the Minister for Industry and Innovation, and the action I seek is for the minister to attend a community meeting with residents who are fed up with the spin from Labor about fixing mobile reception in Clyde North when they know all too well that the best way to fix this problem is not just cash but a policy and a change in planning to allow more towers to be built as a priority. Residents in Clyde North have been approaching us for a long period of time in relation to the issues they have faced around reception with their mobile phones. Obviously, that includes data as well. It is one of the fastest growing areas in the south-east. Tens of thousands of people are moving in, and as well as the roads, the rail, the schools, the education facilities and the hospitals, one of the things that would be seen as a necessity these days is mobile phone towers to ensure people can have access at home.

One of the concerns is that when Telstra or the major companies have put in applications to put in mobile towers in sportsgrounds, they have gone through a process with the council and the council has knocked them back on multiple occasions. The sportsgrounds would be willing to accept them, and the community is willing to accept them at sportsgrounds. It appears that because of the legislation the council has made a choice to not accept them at those grounds, and that is impacting the lives of people living in those areas. Whilst it impacts people who are doing education at home and working from home, one of the greatest impacts in those areas is the access to emergency services. With calling 000, we have seen cases down there where people have tried to ring the fire department or where people have tried to ring an ambulance, including on a bowls green where they had to walk back inside the building to use a landline to call 000. The one that would break most people’s hearts is a lady who had to call 000 from outside her house, knowing her husband was not going to survive but not being able to spend the last couple of minutes with him because she was outside trying to call 000. These are circumstances that should not happen in a First World nation, these are circumstances that should not happen in the growth corridor of Casey, and I am calling on the government to talk about not just the funding that goes in there, which we know is important, but more importantly how we update the planning legislation and ensure that the towers can be built when these areas are getting constructed and that they are taken into consideration as a priority, the same as when we put in our precinct structure plans. We have got sportsgrounds, sewerage and phone connections through the ground; we also need to make sure we know where mobile towers are going, and therefore we would not have the issue of people saying, ‘I want a mobile tower – just not in my backyard’.