Page 2470 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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local councils in other states, such as Woollahra in Sydney, New South Wales, put in place guidelines prohibiting towers from being built within 300 metres of places that are frequented by vulnerable populations such as schools and residential aged care facilities. I ask the government: if a small or local council can create guidelines, why cannot the government of the ACT?
Mr Deputy Speaker, there are other aspects to consider if we take a larger view of 3G towers. For instance, I believe that there are concerns about the cost of this 3G roll-out to Telstra, which is currently, I believe—and I have not heard the news today—the third during government ownership. This roll-out is in an already relatively well provided for urban area—I will put a caveat on that in a minute—compared to the many rural areas which cannot yet access even CDMA and which certainly do not have access to broadband. We know it is not need that drives the delivery of these technologies. If it were need then I know that all of Gungahlin would have access to broadband, yet there are parts of Gungahlin that do not.
Telstra has asserted to me that this will answer the demand of young people who are thirsty and hungry for this technology. That may or may not be true. Of course, as Hugh Mackay’s work has shown, young people are definitely into communication in a way that is different from us. But there is also evidence that young people are not taking up this technology at the rate that has been predicted. Many of them are taking the precautionary principle to their own wallets and there are real concerns around this. I was at a meeting the other day at which David Tennant from CARE reported that people who had taken on one of these phones were suddenly presenting to his organisation once the three months period was up. These are phones that are practically given to people. Young people do not always read the fine print in agreements and can be totally unprepared for what they have taken on. In one case a person had a phone bill of $2,000.
Although there are real concerns on a larger scale, the MPI that I have proposed deals with the ACT in particular. Our communities deserve to be properly consulted about towers being constructed within their areas. They deserve the right to have a say about whether they want their nature park disrupted by an ugly piece of infrastructure that they do not plan to use or their house devalued by a piece of equipment which has potentially deleterious health impacts. Our people deserve to be given the opportunity to decide whether they want their children exposed to electromagnetic radiation and, most of all, they deserve to be properly informed about construction near their houses. Consequently, they look to the government to provide safeguards. I think the 300-metre rule is a good one and, where there is an alternative to having one of these towers placed near residences, it should be taken up.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Planning) (4.16): Mr Deputy Speaker, today’s matter of public importance, the installation of 3G mobile phone towers in Canberra, is just one aspect of the broader issue of telecommunication facilities that are continually being developed and implemented in and around the ACT. The ACT government supports the concept of all of its citizens having access to the latest technologies, and in the ACT the uptake rate is generally higher than in other localities in Australia. Consequently, new generation technologies are rolled out more extensively and more quickly here than in other places. We want to ensure that Canberra develops as a connected society, and this includes having the best access to telecommunications services. 3G services, or mobile
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