Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025
Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (11:48): I'd like to start by acknowledging the previous speaker and the sentiment that she finished with, which is that the bill is focused on there being no standard, for an Australian, where anybody is above what is right or wrong. It's a point that we in this parliament, and those who have had the great privilege of serving in parliament, should all reflect upon and is perhaps something that the former premier of Victoria should be thinking about at this important moment in the context of his behaviour in Beijing in the past 24 hours.
Getting to the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025, this legislation, on the surface of it, is not one that should necessarily quicken the blood or excite many of the members in this House. It's to do with ACMA regulations in the context of making sure there are appropriate standards in place and extending them beyond carriage providers, and I get that, for a lot of people, this may not be a very exciting or enthusing topic.
Of course, it's very important. When legislation's drafted, particularly for telecommunications or technology—technology will always outpace regulation and the law. In one sense, that's actually a good thing.
Technology is moving at a pace that is faster than government. Government should be slower because it is calm, it is methodical, and, when it seeks to impose a standard, it is universal, whereas technology, by its nature, is dynamic, it is exciting, and it seeks to move faster, because it's reflective of human need. That is why I've always been so excited about technology and excited about the potential not just of things like internet, of course, and telecommunications but also of what artificial intelligence can do.
But we're also mindful of the human impact, and, of course, that's where law comes in to maintain standards and ethics but also to make sure that, where there's an overstep or a breach, government does its proper job to secure safety, dignity and security. And that's a constant balance for all of us. But another thing we have to look at is how law can be weaponised by government to seek to silence or censor people.
So I look at this bill—and we're going to support it—but I do so, frankly, with caution. I'm old enough—and I'm not that old—to remember the last time we had a Labor government. There are members in this chamber who weren't here and are now, bright eyed and bushy tailed—some elected in 2025 and some that were elected before then—sitting on the government benches, proudly wearing the moniker of the Australian Labor Party— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): Order!
I give the call to the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors. Mr Rae: I'm seeking a point of order for clarification. I understand that Practice is clear that, where a member has already spoken, they are not eligible to then second the second reading amendment.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is correct, Minister. A way forward is if the person who did move the second reading amendment stands up and seeks leave to second the second reading amendment. Dr Webster: by leave—I second the second reading amendment.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. You can proceed, Member for Goldstein. Mr TIM WILSON: Thank you, Deputy Speaker Chesters.
But I'm sure you're going give me a whole 15 minutes all over again. I was in full flight! That's okay.
I'm old enough to remember when there were former Labor members sitting on the benches of this parliament on the government side, during the last term of a Labor government, debating legislation. I wasn't here; I was but a member of the public concerned about the future direction of this country. I remember when Labor members were sitting on those benches, and what were they using telecommunications powers for?
They were using them to shut down the media—to silence and regulate the media, look at pathways to introduce internet censorship and limit what Australians could see when they didn't like what Australians were searching for. They looked, particularly, to impose different pathways of internet censorship, because they wanted to control people's lives. I've said this in this parliament many times before: the objective of the Labor Party at every stage of your life is to control Australians.
They want to control education so they can control what your children learn and how they see the world. They want to control the workplace so that unions can control you and your standards. They want to control housing so that you rent and they can control how you live and make you dependent.
They want to control you on a salary so that you never have the dignity and independence of owning your own small business. They want to control your superannuation through an industry superfund so that you never have the independence and dignity of an SMSF to manifest and manage your own destiny. And, of course, when it comes to telecommunications powers, it is the most wonderful backstop for them to be able to go on and control the information you seek, how you can access it and, even with the wonders of mobile telephony and technology, stop you accessing the information that you seek.
So I look at this legislation—I look at every piece of legislation in the context of telecommunications—and my starting position is that I look at the minister, I look at those at the table, I look at those on the opposition benches, and I go, 'I never start from a position of trust,' because I've seen what you've done before. I know your natural temptation to control the Australian people and how you weaponise this legislation to do so.
You just need to look at their performance in the past week. We talked about it earlier in the week. Think about the gift that they have been given by the Australian people of a 94-seat majority and the trust that they have been given.
What are they using—or abusing—that trust to do at the moment? Introduce a veil of secrecy and shut a curtain down over this parliament and Canberra to silence journalists, to limit their capacity to access information and to limit scrutiny of this parliament. They have made it harder for Australians to submit freedom-of-information requests to scrutinise decisions of government.
They have introduced fees to make it harder for people to access basic information about how public servants and the government are making decisions. We've seen how they want to literally abolish pathways for reviews of decisions in the context of Defence medals. I have never thought that this was a priority of the Australian government, but, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis when people are dealing with the realities of financial stress and getting to the supermarket with a red basket, this is their priority.
When it comes to the powers and the priorities they have, this is where it is. It is not based on how they empower the Australian people. When it comes to telecommunications and introducing standards, I always look at them with a high degree of scrutiny because the government's focus has never been on how they empower the Australian people; it has been on how they control the Australian people.
It doesn't mean there aren't important measures that need to be addressed through telecommunications powers. One of the biggest problems we face in this country right now—and it's a big challenge in the context of Victoria; you can speak to the member for Mallee—is the proliferation of crime. Crime is a massive problem, no matter where you go in Victoria.
The failure of Victorian government to address the problems of crime—whether it's in the streets of Black Rock, Beaumaris, Brighton, Bentleigh, McKinnon or Ormond. Throughout the Goldstein electorate, there are violent home invasions, people breaking into people's houses, or scams and cybercrime, which is going on all across the country. That was why community safety and crime were such important issues in the Goldstein electorate at the election, including the proliferation of antisemitism, which was manifest both in physical form and on telecommunications platforms.
One of the things we also took to the election was the importance of having mandatory minimum sentences in the context of online sexual violence and crimes. That isn't the priority of this government. Closing FOI pathways for Australians is.
Closing Defence medal review pathways is. Stopping the access of the opposition to be able scrutinise the decision-making government is their priority— Dr Webster: Shame! Mr TIM WILSON: 'Shame,' says the member for Mallee, and she's right.
Stopping violent sexual predators on online platforms probably should be a priority for this government, but it isn't. It's certainly one of our priorities. That's what we should be addressing through telecommunications platforms.
Whether it is cybercrime, sexual violence, scams or violent home invasions with machetes—these are pretty important issues for this country, but they're not the priorities of the current government. Of course, the other thing we need to address through telecommunications platforms is access to basic services. This has been something that Labor has never been afraid of spending obscene amounts of public money on for low return.
The problem is that they still leave so much of the country behind because their focus has always been on how they use telecommunications as a mechanism for pork-barrelling rather than for improving the basic infrastructure that Australians need, with a sense of universal obligation. Members from rural and regional electorates can talk about that at length. I don't seek to project or represent their communities on those issues, but I know full well that it remains an ongoing problem, particularly with mobile telephony services.
The member for Mallee, as I understand it, has previously raised issues where people are increasingly using Starlink installations because they can't get access to the services they need through the National Broadband Network. We also have, even in urban centres like the Goldstein electorate, massive problems around access to telecommunications services—basic things like mobile telephony.
You've got the state government basically seeking to weaponise housing approvals and development. I'm getting more and more complaints in places like Highett, Cheltenham and even Brighton, where people are having increasing problems accessing telecommunications services, including mobile telephony services and even television services. When it comes to basic standards and safeguards in telecommunications powers, this fits as part of the communications framework that people expect to see from our nation's parliament and our laws.
Only the other day, I got a complaint about minimum access to services for mobile telephony in Brighton, with someone explicitly saying, 'Can we see more effort from Telstra to be able to access basic 4G and 5G services?' The same has also been increasingly true around Hampton East, Cheltenham and parts of Moorabbin. More and more people are working from home, but, because of an increasing number of developments of high-rise apartments and increasing disruptions from 5G access to internet connections, they're not getting the basic services and standards that they reasonably expect.
So there's an accountability gap about the information they need—and, of course, they need more and more assistance, particularly where there are activity centres. It's not just that they're facing it now; they're concerned that it will fall on deaf ears into the future with this government. People expect basic standards and basic services.
That is not in dispute in telecommunications powers. But what they also expect is that the government is going to step up and meet those expectations, and they're not hearing it, they're not seeing it and they're living with the consequences. I'll just read out a quote from a constituent only the other day: 'Despite strong community opposition, a development has since been amended to increase from the original plan to eight storeys, with additional apartments.
This construction has created absolute chaos for residents—illegal parking, unsafe road conditions, but 5G disrupted internet disruptions, loss of free-to-air TV reception for residents opposite and numerous other impacts that council has been completely unprepared to manage.' Some of these sit within council and some sit within state government, but the one that sits within federal government responsibility is telecommunications powers.
When we talk about safeguards and we talk about standards, this is the lived reality in urban Australia right now, and the government is completely asleep at the wheel. Of course we support the legislation's broad intention, what it seeks to achieve, but we are mindful. We have seen too many times that members of previous Labor governments, when they're given powers around telecommunications, weaponise them with the objective of seeking to use them to censor or silence opinions or views that they don't like—not ones that are criminal but ones they don't like.
They've tried to regulate the media and tried to censor and silence those who have differing opinions. We still remember that era of the Rudd government—and there are some people from the Rudd government who are still around—who got their blood pumping at the idea that they might be able to close down dissenting voices. The Labor Party have never really liked diversity, except their own diversity, which is from the Left to the far left.
We want a full diversity of Australian voices, and that's by making sure systems remain open and making sure telecommunications powers have a limit to ensure there's standardisation and the Australian people flourish—that those powers are not used as a weapon to control Australians, as the Australian Labor Party has a sad, shameful history of doing because that is in their core.
It is in their DNA and what they seek to do when they gain the treasury benches. Debate adjourned. Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.