Radio interview on Power 100, Townsville with Archie & Bretz

ARCHIE ARENSON, HOST: The Government announced yesterday successful grant outcomes to fulfil an election commitment made by the Albanese Government to improve mobile coverage and quality in some of the identified locations across regional Australia. This is why it affects us. A total of an eyewatering - I mean, I'd love to earn this as a yearly salary - $37 million in Commonwealth funding has been awarded under the Improving Mobile Coverage Round.  And joining me right now to tell us all a little bit about that is our Federal Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland. Good morning, Michelle.

MICHELLE ROWLAND, MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Good morning, Archie. Great to be with you.

ARENSON: Now, Michelle, you've come on the show before. You love your rock music that we play here on Power 100. Do you remember what we were talking about the last time you came on the show?

ROWLAND: Oh my goodness, you're going to have to give me a clue. It's been a couple of months since I was in Townsville.

ARENSON: You revealed something about your first ever album that you ever had. Was it Bon Jovi?

ROWLAND: Of course. Bon Jovi, ‘Slippery When Wet’. My first pay packet when I started working in a supermarket and I made about $30 for two nights' work, and I spent every single cent of it on the new Bon Jovi album, ‘Slippery When Wet’. And I still have it to this day to remind me about the importance of hard work. So, thank you for reminding me. That's made my day!

ARENSON: Well, in the conversation about hard work, I know this has been a program that's very close to your heart about improving this mobile coverage in regional Australia. So, look, the obvious question has got to be: what areas in Townsville and North Queensland are going to be on the receiving end of these mobile-tower upgrades that you guys announced yesterday?

ROWLAND: Sure, well, I'm really pleased. This was a series of election commitments that we took and we funded in our first budget. And I'm very pleased to announce that East Douglas will be receiving one of those coverage round funding envelopes. And what this means is improved coverage for the residents of East Douglas, not only to ensure that they stay connected, but, when I was in Townsville - and as I continually hear across regional Australia - mobile connectivity is so important for emergency purposes, especially during times of natural disasters. So, I'm really pleased that East Douglas has come out of this funding round through an independent assessment of applications by my Department. This is good news for local residents and I am really pleased to be able to deliver this.

ARENSON: Now, Michelle, this is a bit awkward - people are going to start thinking a bit of nepotism has happened here because the radio presenter you are talking to right now is a new resident of Douglas. Now, you've got to confirm to our listeners that I had absolutely nothing to do with the location that was chosen for these towers due to where my new house is.

ROWLAND: Absolutely not, this was undertaken independently by my Department.

ARENSON: Okay, good.

ROWLAND: I accepted all of their advice. It is going to be great, not only for you, but for all local residents in your area as well.

ARENSON: So, Michelle, when can we expect to see this work start and finish? What's the timeline looking like at the moment?

ROWLAND: We will move expeditiously to conclude an agreement with Telstra, who was the successful co-investor here. Telstra will go about identifying a site, and hopefully, considering that this is an area of such need, we'll have a couple of sites that will be able to be chosen. Once that's done, we should be able to proceed without delay. It does also depend on a number of local approvals, and the unfortunate thing about this infrastructure is sometimes that can take the longest time where you have objections and the need to balance local residents' needs and connectivity and coverage issues. But I am very hopeful that there will be strong local support for this to get done, including from the local council and local residents, and that Telstra will work expeditiously to get this delivered as soon as possible.

ARENSON: So, you've mentioned that Telstra is going to be  responsible for whacking this tower up. If some of our listeners - someone listening right now - might be an Optus customer or a Vodafone customer, are they going to be able to share this network? Is it going to improve their signal too, or will this only be for Telstra customers?

ROWLAND: That's a really good point. The way in which our regime works in Australia is that if it's technically feasible to be able to co-locate different services on a particular tower, then there's a whole regime for that. But we are looking at being able to have something that's much clearer in future. I'm very keen on having what we call multi-carrier coverage so it doesn't matter what network you're on, it's not subject to any individual agreements with the carriers. We need to have a situation where we maximise the number of people who are able to benefit because, let's face it, this is taxpayers' money that is being used to subsidise a private operator. So we're looking at new solutions into the future.

Telstra will set all this out in its contract with the Commonwealth and with whatever particular landowners are chosen. But I'm very alive to this and I think there's lots of areas for improvement in our mobile-rollout regime at the moment, including the fact that I know Townsville is a growing area. Too often we have new developments that go in with water, electricity, sewage treated as essential facilities, but we don't have provisions for mobile services. It's very difficult to go in and retrofit once you've got a suburb that's been built. So, it's an excellent question. I'm really alive to it, and I'm very much encouraging Telstra and any other operators to share as much as possible because people expect to have coverage irrespective of what operator they might have signed up to.

ARENSON: Well, we're excited for the rollout to happen and for that coverage to improve. Sometimes living in a regional area, you might think we get left behind, but great to see the Government is going to be investing in some regional infrastructure to help us all out. Our Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland, one of the biggest Bon Jovi fans on the face of the planet, thanks so much for your generous time this morning and we look forward to seeing you in Townsville, hopefully very soon.

ROWLAND: Pleasure. I look forward to it.