Mr LLOYD (5:05 PM) —Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, may I congratulate you on your election to the Speaker's Panel and wish you well in that position.

This afternoon I want to speak about the dangers of mobile phones. I am not talking about the health risks of mobile phones; I am talking about the financial dangers of mobile phones. Most people would not realise that as part of the service when they hook up to a mobile phone they have access to 0055, 1900 and overseas international calls. This is a problem that affects a lot of people in Australia because Australians love mobile phones.

Having had a look at the research that was done by the Parliamentary Library on the growth of mobile phone use in Australia, it was quite extraordinary to see how significantly the Australian mobile phone market has grown over the last two years. There were one million subscribers in March 1994, two million in June 1995 and in October 1997 over five million Australians had a mobile phone. The size of the Australian mobile phone market is estimated to grow to some 6.5 million subscribers by the year 2000, which represents an annual average growth of 13.7 per cent.

In 1995, Australia had the fourth highest rate of cellular mobile phone penetration amongst OECD countries. Only Sweden, Norway and Finland showed higher rates of mobile phone ownership. It seems almost everyone in Australia has a mobile phone. As a parent of two young men—teenagers—I have been very pleased that they have had access to mobile phones in the last couple of years. It is also comforting to know that my wife has a mobile phone with her when she is driving late at night. I know that is now the situation in most Australian families. So what I am talking about today does not just affect one or two people, it affects virtually every Australian family.

I have chosen to highlight the issue today because a number of very distressing cases have come to my attention. The first one of those received a great deal of publicity in some of the national media. I was contacted by a constituent of mine, Mr Brian Smith, who had a mobile phone which he did not use very much. He was a small businessman and he had the phone in his van. He did not realise for a couple of days that it had been stolen. He went looking for it and found that it had disappeared. When he contacted Telstra—his provider at the time—to get his mail off the voice mail, he discovered that he had a phone bill of $18,495 for which, according to the carrier, he was responsible.

Through negotiations we managed to help Mr Smith. The people who had stolen his phone were identified and charged, which meant that responsibility for the cost of those calls could then be transferred to those people who had been charged with stealing his phone. Since that time, I have been contacted by another two constituents from Umina Beach who are in exactly the same situation and now face a phone bill of $6,799.50. They were not aware that their mobile phone had been stolen. I believe it was less than two days before they notified the phone company that it was missing. I have not been successful in convincing the carrier to waive this phone bill.

There are many other people who are in the same situation. Most people do not read the fine print when they sign a mobile phone contract, but they are responsible for that mobile phone, responsible for the calls that are made from that mobile phone and have a responsibility to notify the carrier the minute they no longer have control of that phone. Most of us occasionally—quite often frequently—put down our mobile phone and cannot find it again, and it may be 24 hours before we discover where it is. It is quite frightening to think that if someone had picked up that phone and decided to dial 1900 numbers—which are rated at something like $5 per minute—and either left that phone on or used it for an extensive period of time, the owner of that phone could be responsible for a bill of something like $5,000 or $6,000 in a matter of one day.

When I was investigating this case on behalf of my constituents at Umina, I spoke to the detectives at Gosford police station. They informed me that they are currently investigating 14 cases of stolen mobile phones—in excess of $2,000 each—all in the Woy Woy peninsula area and involving 1900 and 0055 numbers. So it is not an isolated case.

I guess technology has moved faster than the legislators and the insurance companies. We need to do something about it because the lives of these people are being ruined. Small business people and families are being hit with these huge bills. It is not possible to insure against these bills. If someone breaks into your home and steals goods worth $18,000, you can insure against that. Hopefully your insurance company will cover you for it and you will get new goods and get on with your life. But if someone breaks into your home and steals your mobile phone and then racks up $18,000 worth of mobile phone calls, you cannot insure against that. You are responsible for that unless those culprits are caught. It is something that has to be changed.

I have written to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Alston, and he is investigating my concerns. I put to him that surely we could put in place a discussion paper, a code of practice or, if necessary, legislation which would limit the liability of mobile phone owners to perhaps a few hundred dollars. At the moment, liability is totally unlimited. Most people realise that if they have their wallet stolen and their credit card is used, there is a limit to the amount that can be charged on their credit card so that there is not financial ruin.

The mobile phone industry has moved quicker than governments and legislators. At the moment, every one of us who has a mobile phone which has access to 1900 or 0055 numbers is risking financial ruin if we misplace our phone and then it is stolen and used to dial those 1900 numbers. In my own area—the peninsula area—it is known, particularly to the younger teenage people in the area, that if they steal a mobile phone they can use it to access these 1900 information lines, which are often sex lines from overseas and are charged, as I said, at about $5 per minute. It seems to be a bit of a game to them and they do not realise that innocent families are then being hit with these huge bills.

I urge every single one of the 6½ million people in Australia who own mobile phones, who do not need access to overseas or information calls, to ring their provider and ask for those calls to be barred. It is a simple phone call. I have done it with my family's mobile phones and I encourage everyone else to do the same—to ring up and ask for those numbers to be barred. If you do need to make an overseas call, you can ring your provider, give identification and have the service put back on. I am telling everyone in Australia to get on to their providers.

More than that, I encourage the providers to look at the fact that, at the moment, these services are provided without request. When you get a mobile phone, these services are included as part of that connection. Surely it would be safer for the consumer if those services were not included unless they were requested by the consumer. Most of us tend not to use our mobile phones for overseas or information calls and it would be much safer if they were not in the initial contract. I appeal to the providers—and there are a number of them now throughout the Australian community—to look at the possibility of having that service put on the mobile phone on request and not automatically.