By Parker Mckenzie
Casey MP Aaron Violi has condemned the latest round of federal telecommunications funding as “blatantly political” pork barreling, while the federal government has instead argued it is just levelling the playing field after previous rounds of funding favoured Liberal and National held electorates.
In the $40 million Improving Mobile Coverage Round, announced in early March, 40 Labor electorates, 11 coalition seats and three held by independents received funding to improve mobile phone coverage through new projects. The electorate of Casey was not included in the funding round.
Mr Violi said the rhetoric of the Labor Party prior to the federal election compared to their actions now was “complete hypocrisy.”
“There’s no way you can give funding to 40 Labor seats out of 54 without it being pork-barreling,” he said.
“Whether it is bushfires, whether it’s flooding, whether it’s the storms that we went through, there are more emergencies than ever before and reliable communications are vital.”
He said not being able to make consistent and reliable phone calls in modern Australia was an unacceptable situation for many local residents.
“We had examples during the June storms where people couldn’t call out for help,” he said.
“Communications is something that has to be above politics because it can be life and death. It’s an essential service that should be treated as such.”
The government, however, argued that the overrepresentation of Labor seats in the funding stream was because when the former Coalition government ran a priority round of funding for the Mobile Black Spot Program in 2016, 124 of the 125 towers were in Coalition-held electorates.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said she was proud to belong to a government that was improving connectivity in rural and regional Australia by substantially increasing funding for regional communications.
“The October Budget delivered $2.2 billion in funding for regional communications over five years, including $480 million for NBN’s Fixed Wireless Network expansion and upgrade,” she said.
“This is compared to approximately $1.3 billion in the previous Liberal-National Government’s Budget.”
Ms Rowland said the Improving Mobile Coverage Round was separate from other funding like the Mobile Black Spot Program.
Funding for two new mobile base stations in Silvan and Menzies Creek, promised by the Coalition if returned to government at the 2022 federal election, was announced by Ms Rowland on Thursday 21 July and dozens of new mobile towers were announced by the Victorian Government’s $255 million Connecting Victoria program in October 2022 to help address significant mobile coverage issues throughout the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges, which is one of the most bushfire-prone regions in the world.
Mr Violi said more investment was needed to ensure the communications network was resilient ahead of disasters.
