Scott McConnell says the lack of communications in much of the NT ‘absolutely is a risk to health and wellbeing’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A Northern Territory politician has called on the government to invest immediately in mobile coverage after the tragic death of a family in remote central Australia.

Scott McConnell, a member of the NT parliament, said on Monday that

“the vast majority” of his electorate of Stuart had no mobile coverage, and it was harming communities across northern Australia.

“It’s just simply ridiculous that in this modern age, most of the geographic areas in the NT has no mobile coverage,” McConnell told Guardian Australia on Monday. “As soon as you drive out of the substantial population centres of Alice Springs or Katherine, within 30km you have dropped out of range. Vast tracks of the Stuart highway have no mobile coverage. Vast tracts of other major sealed roads have no coverage.”

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Communities in central Australia have been in mourning since Wednesday when police discovered the bodies of a young family who died when their car broke down on Jarra Jarra road.

The bodies of a 19-year old man and woman, and a three-year-old boy, were found on Wednesday, and the body of a 12-year-old boy was found on Thursday on the remote road near Willowra, 300km north-west of Alice Springs. Their identities have not been released out of respect for the wishes of the family.

“The incident recently is too raw to speak of specifically, out of respect to families,” McConnell said. “It’s sadly not uncommon where something unfortunately has happened to people because they have not been able to communicate … it absolutely is a risk to health and wellbeing.”

He said the government needed to act to roll out mobile coverage as a priority.

“If there is better connectivity in the community, people are better able to communicate. If those levels are higher, these sorts of things would help, they really would … Some people will scoff and say it is too difficult. I’m sure it is difficult but there are technological advances being made all the time. We need to work on this.”

In April, the territory government announced it would invest $14m over four years to improve telecommunications in the bush – with every dollar also matched by Telstra.

“Every Territorian, no matter where they live, deserves to have access to high-quality phone and internet services,” the treasurer, Nicole Manison, said at the time.

Eight remote communities are expected to receive coverage by 2019 under the plan. Since 2009, 37 remote communities were connected to internet and mobile networks, Manison added. In September, the information services minister, Lauren Moss, also announced $8.5m to build an undersea optic fibre cable to the Tiwi Islands.

McConnell welcomed these moves and said “it is a lot better than it was”, but the cost of doing business in northern Australia was still “far too high”.

He compared the huge spending on infrastructure in the major cities with lack of proper mobile coverage in NT, saying that regional areas needed to be improved for Indigenous communities and for immigrants being sent to work in regional areas.