Page 2473 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
In conclusion, telecommunications is an essential part of community and business life. Many small businesses and many householders now rely upon it. It is important that we maintain pace with this technology if we want our community to have the best possible technology available to it and if we want our community to be competitive in terms of business and other activity. For that reason, I have confidence in the process. I know the issue of mobile phone towers always causes some concern in the community but the substantive issues that Dr Foskey raises are not supported by the evidence. The health information is clear and is based on detailed assessments by Australian national authorities who have the expertise to make these judgments. The ACT government do not have the expertise to make those judgments. We rely on the advice of those national, independent authorities who do have that capacity. So any suggestion that we should impose extra standards on health grounds when there is no evidence to support those standards is not one that I can agree with.
The other issues around visual amenity, aesthetic amenity and those sorts of concerns are, I believe, well addressed through the planning process—through the opportunity for people to make comment, for the network provider to take those comments on board, to make adjustments where they feel they can do that within their technical limitations and through the network plan itself, with the regulator saying what is and is not acceptable. I think that is an appropriate way to manage this process. I think at the end of the day the benefits that our community receive from having access to this technology are strong and positive, and the negatives that Dr Foskey highlights are not of a level to warrant a disruption to the installation or roll-out of this technology in a way that will hinder the ability of members of our community to access it.
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (4.27): The Liberal opposition welcomes Dr Foskey’s MPI, namely the installation of 3G mobile phone towers in Canberra—albeit a literal statement, as 3G mobile phone technology has already been rolled out and will, no doubt, continue to be rolled out by the relevant telecommunication providers who, in effect, are responding to the demand for improvements in the delivery of, amongst other things, mobile telephone technological advancements.
Mr Deputy Speaker, we need a balance to be brought back into this very emotive debate. I am not here today to defend Telstra or, for that matter, any other carrier per se. On behalf of the Liberal opposition I will continue to seek as much information as possible during consultative periods and subsequent community consultations. I must say that my office and I have already spent an inordinate amount of time liasing with key personnel from relative telecommunications authorities. We have lobbied on behalf of the communities who have concerns merely about the location of some mobile phone towers across the territory and associated equipment.
Overall, this process was undertaken—as far as I can see, this has been and continues to be the case—in an open manner by the telecommunications groups. They responded in often difficult circumstances to the demands of affected neighbourhoods. Ian Peters, from Telstra Countrywide, has always met with groups when asked to do so. However, one might well ask: where has the planning minister, Mr Corbell, been in all of this process? I have to say that it was quite noticeable that at most, if not all, of the public meetings, instead of the minister we saw his departmental staff, oftentimes struggling to
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .