MOBILE BLACK SPOT
PROGRAM
944. Hon MARTIN ALDRIDGE to the Minister for Regional
Development:
I refer to the minister's ministerial statement and
subsequent response to parliamentary questions this week about the federal
government's mobile black spot program.
(1) What is the
amount of money unallocated from the regional telecommunications project that
could be used to co-invest with the federal government?
(2) What is the reason that the
funds have been unallocated?
(3) When did the ''needs
analysis and prioritisation study'' commence, and who is conducting the
study?
(4) When will the study be
finalised, and at what cost?
Hon
ALANNAH MacTIERNAN replied:
I thank the member for the question,
and I also note the contribution made by the member last night during members'
statements.
(1)–(4) I
will just make these comments. Of course, as I said at the time when the
federal government made its announcement of round 4, we did not have a specific
allocation. In the intervening four months, we have developed greater clarity
about what sums of money might be available unallocated in the existing fund.
As I have also said before, we expect that at least $3 million will be
available.
I say to members that I had a very
productive discussion today with the federal minister, Bridget McKenzie, about
how we can work together. I think the member will find that the $25 million
allocation that the federal government had emerged in very similar
circumstances to our ability to find these moneys, in that the contingencies
for the earlier projects were not all expended. I also want to say that both of
us are very focused on looking at alternative solutions, such as the use of
small-cell infrastructure, hilltop repeaters et cetera, so that we can get a bigger
bang for what is a relatively modest fund compared with previous funds. We will
be working on optimising those solutions, looking at the work that we have done
in our digital farm project, and seeing whether those sorts of small-cell
infrastructure applications, and mobile towers that are mobile, might be useful
in this round.