Mr NEVILLE —I have been a trenchant critic of the removal of facilities from regional and rural Australia. The removal of banks is one dimension of this problem, but the removal of phone boxes from isolated communities sets a new benchmark in the abrogation of civic responsibility and it is a demonstration of insensitivity. To my way of thinking, it negates every positive image of Telstra as part of the fabric of regional and rural Australia. Measured against the less than satisfactory performance in the installation and service of domestic customers, it shows how painfully out of touch Telstra has become with rural Australians.

In the little community of Ubobo in the centre of the Boyne Valley in my electorate, a fatuous notice appeared in the one and only phone box indicating the removal of that box some time after 15 October. The euphemism of `relocation' was used in the notice which was code for, `We're about to rip out your phone box.' In response to an objection, a Telstra executive suggested that the people of Ubobo use the phone box up the road, which just happened to be 17 kilometres away. In the other direction, it is 52 kilometres to the township of Calliope.

In other words, Telstra was prepared to leave a 70-kilometre-long stretch of road through the Boyne Valley without a public phone. Ubobo and its adjoining community of Nagoorin are isolated communities. Many residents live in low socioeconomic conditions; many of them have no domestic phones whatsoever. A public hall is the centre of the Boyne Valley for public meetings and the requirement of a phone box for safety is, indeed, most important. To fund the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, the Hockeyroos and the Telstra Dolphins, while denying communications as a basic right of all citizens in remote and isolated areas, particularly those who are in deprived circumstances, is a social obscenity.

This is just one of many phone boxes targeted in my area. I have another one at Canoe Point near Boyne Tannum, another one at the Tipperary Flats in the township of Mount Morgan and yet another one in Mount Larcom. I serve notice on Telstra, and anyone else who is so lacking in social responsibility as to deprive people of these basic rights, that they are going to find me a trenchant critic.