weekly hansard - Queensland Parliament - Queensland Government

2552 Private Members’ Statements 23 Aug 2005
If I drive six kilometres outside Rockhampton towards Emu Park, there is no mobile phone
service. Do not worry about broadband! There is no mobile phone service.
Mr Horan interjected.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Member for Toowoomba South, I warn you. You have been sitting there all
day making those sorts of interjections. I warn you under standing order 253.
Mr HOOLIHAN: If I drive further towards Emu Park, which is 42 kilometres away, I do not get any
mobile phone service until I get within two kilometres of Emu Park. From Cawarral, Keppel Sands,
Mount Chalmers right through to The Caves there is no mobile phone service. This is within 20 to 25
kilometres of a major regional city. There are even spots in Rockhampton where there is no mobile
phone service. Telstra should not be sold. Telstra should put all of its funding into improving our
telephone services, including our mobile phone services. I call upon the federal government to call off its
sale of Telstra until we do get decent services in regional and country areas.
Queensland Ambulance Service, Kingaroy
Mrs PRATT (Nanango—Ind) (10.22 am): The wives of ambulance personnel in Kingaroy have
become whistleblowers. They are reporting to me—I have letters here, but due to the confidentiality that
I promised them I will not table them today; in due course I may very well do so—that four out of seven
officers are off on stress leave, fatigue leave or for other reasons. The QAS is not replacing the staff, so
that has left only three qualified officers to cover the area. One officer has been off for two years and
reportedly is not coming back. Three other officers are off on stress leave. Two more officers are
undergoing counselling at the moment, and it has been suggested by their counsellors and their doctors
that they should, in fact, be away from work. That would leave only one officer—if everyone did their
maths.
Officers are refusing to take leave because of the consequences for the community, as they
believe the ambulance station would be left totally unprepared to deal with emergencies in the area.
There are certificate IIIs, which is just above honoraries, but that means that they cannot go out by
themselves and take the place of qualified paramedics. There are two PDOs and they have been put on
but they only ferry the patients between hospitals.
These wives are under so much stress that they have put everything in writing. One of the wives
states—
On Monday—
This was yesterday—
Another officer is going on holidays which will only leave two paramedics on call for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and the
Kingaroy QAS with two paramedics will be serving a population of 12,000 people. How long before these two officers are
incapacitated by tiredness and ill health?
Another wife states—
Four other officers are off work because of stress and fatigue and two others are being counselled.
It is has been going on for too long and needs correcting.
Time expired.
Sale of Telstra
Ms JARRATT (Whitsunday—ALP) (10.24 am): I am thinking of taking lessons in how to spell
‘help’ using a smoke signal because, once the Howard government sells off its remaining shares in
Telstra, that may well be the quickest way to make contact with many parts of my electorate. The other
option may be to purchase carrier pigeons. I know what you are thinking, Mr Speaker: our federal
National Party member De-Anne Kelly has a reputation for standing up to the Howard government—
surely she would never support the full sale of Telstra and is no doubt standing side by side with
Barnaby Joyce sending a loud message to her political masters in Canberra. After all, Bob Katter was
quoted in one of De-Anne’s own election pamphlets as saying—
De-Anne does not change political parties or her principles to suit the time.
De-Anne herself said in an article in the Daily Mercury, dated 28 May 2002—
There is no indication whatsoever from rural and regional constituents that they would agree to a further sale of Telstra.
Yet only yesterday I heard De-Anne on ABC Radio saying that she backed Howard’s proposals
for the full sale of Telstra. What could possibly have led to this remarkable change of heart? According
to Mrs Kelly, her constituents have told her that it is okay. Yes, it sounds unlikely, but Mrs Kelly insists
that this is what has prompted her conversion on the road to Canberra. What actually transpired was
that Mrs Kelly included a survey in one of her taxpayer funded publications that asked a range of
questions including some that related to Telstra. She represents over 135,000 people across the
electorate of Dawson.