Lismore Mayor Cr Jenny Dowell, Federal Member for Page Janelle Saffin and State Member for Lismore Thomas George with copies of the community petition outside Telstra’s Goonellabah Call Centre
Bipartisan call for Telstra to invest in digital infrastructure for Lismore
PAGE MP Janelle Saffin, Lismore MP Thomas George and Lismore Mayor Cr Jenny Dowell have called on Telstra to make a $3.4-million investment in digital infrastructure to compensate for closing its Goonellabah Call Centre later next month.
In a bipartisan front last Friday, the local politicians met with Telstra executives Peter Jamieson and Sue Passmore at the call centre to put forward a package of proposed initiatives and to hand over a community petition, signed by almost 6000 local residents, condemning the imminent retrenchment of 116 staff.
“First and foremost, our concerns remain very much with the affected staff and their families, and we were able to meet with staff to check on their welfare and to see whether they needed further assistance with redundancy, transfer or searching for alternative employment,” the politicians said in a joint statement.
“The call centre has been operating for 20 years and the economic impact of its closure is the direct loss of 116 local jobs, amounting to $3.4 million in salaries annually, and a flow-on impact to a further 290 local people’s jobs and incomes, amounting to about $11.9 million annually,” they said.
“Our proposal requests that Telstra CEO David Thodey and his corporation invest an additional year’s worth of salaries ($3.4 million) in a partnership with Lismore City Council to retrain affected workers, build new digital infrastructure to double or better broadband access speeds, and improve local businesses use of broadband.
“We are also asking Telstra to leave the call centre’s internal infrastructure intact to reduce any start-up costs should Lismore Council be able to attract another business to the purpose-built location.”
Ms Saffin, Mr George and Cr Dowell pointed to a recent council-funded study by the Digital Economy Group which found that the Gold Coast had far higher ratios of fixed and mobile broadband infrastructure than Lismore per head of population and by land area.
“As a regional area, we are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters – major floods, storms and bushfires -- relying on critical infrastructure to co-ordinate emergency services responses and keep people in contact during times of crisis,” they said.
“With so few towers in Lismore per head of population, the existing towers become congested easily and this is a matter of public safety and concern. We need to build community resilience wherever we can.”
Mr Thodey and his management team have been given two weeks (by Friday, October 5) to respond as to whether they will support the Lismore community with a digital infrastructure investment package.
Monday, September 24, 2012. Media Contact: Peter Ellem 0437 303 875.
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