Former Labor candidate for the seat Parkes Kate Stewart has accused Mark Coulton and the Nationals of failing the electorate on mobile coverage.
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Ms Stewart, who contested the 2016 election, said it wasn’t good enough that more than half of Parkes’ 393,413 square kilometres were classified as mobile black spots.
However Mr Coulton said the Coalition had worked to install more than 700 new towers under the mobile black spot program and was also working with telecommunications companies to update existing towers with the latest technology.
He said it was Labor who had failed to address the problem by not addressing black spots during their six years in power.
Ms Stewart said the Coalition were leaving thousands in the electorate without decent coverage.
“Mark and the Nationals keep talking about how terrible the situation is but he has been a Member of Parliament since 2007 and his party has been in government since 2013. What has he done?,” she said.
“Mobile coverage is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity and yet the Parkes electorate doesn’t even have 50 per cent coverage, and areas where it does have coverage are still patchy.”
Mr Coulton said it was hypocritical of Ms Stewart to say he had done nothing when her party ignored the issue.
“The Labor Party did nothing but rob funding intended to help fix mobile black spots when it was in power,” he said.
“It didn’t spend a single dollar on black spots and in 2008 took away a $2.5 million communications fund secured by the Nationals for regional and remote telecommunications and turned it into $900 grants for people.”
Ms Stewart said Labor had planned to make the NBN wireless towers they wanted to use for their rollout mobile capable in a bid to extend range but said the Coalition had abandoned that when it came to power.
She said it was unacceptable that in most locations west of Dubbo, phone reception disappeared a few kilometres outside of bigger towns.
“You get two kilometres out of Bourke and you lose mobile reception but it's not just a problem in the far west of the electorate,” Ms Stewart said.
“Coverage between Coonabarabran and Moree and Coonabarabran and Dubbo is patchy. It's bad around Lightning Ridge and Walgett too.”