Mobile Black Spot Program

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (15:17): My question is to the Minister for Regional Development. As the relevant state minister for the federal government's Mobile Black Spot program, can the minister explain to the house why the state government offered no financial contribution towards this program which has led to South Australia receiving only 11 out of the 499 new mobile phone base stations which were built across the nation?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (15:17): As the Minister for the Public Sector, I am indeed responsible for engaging with the commonwealth on telecommunications matters, and I say it that way because part of the way to understand this is that telecommunications has always been a federal responsibility in combination with the telecommunications companies. It has always been the case.

Some time in the last year the federal government came to us and asked us if we were interested in contributing to what has always been their responsibility and at a time when we were dealing with—take your pick—stopping giving money to pensioners for their rates concessions, the removal of years 5 and 6 from the Gonski agreement that we had been led to believe they had signed up to, what they walked away from in health, homelessness. So, what we were confronted with is yet another example of the commonwealth government saying that something that has always been their responsibility suddenly is not entirely theirs.

In that instance, we decided to see what would happen, and what has happened is that we have received the equivalent of 8 per cent of the $100 million that the commonwealth had set aside. We have received about our proportion of the $100 million that they set aside. We have had 11 mobile black spot towers—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I warn the Treasurer.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: We have had 11 mobile towers put in to deal with black spots, six of them in the APY lands which is not a particularly commercial decision to make for the telecommunications company but extremely important for the APY. There are also two in the Riverland, two on the Yorke Peninsula and one in the Hills.

We have let that run, we have seen what has happened, we have seen the extent to which the commonwealth government views states that do not want to participate in taking over their responsibility from them. There is another round coming up and we will very carefully scrutinise the circumstances under which the other states received what they received, and make a very careful and considered decision about what our participation may or may not be next time.