On May 10, 2012, the Senate's committee report was handed down. Unfortunately, the report recommended that Senator Brown's Bill NOT be passed.

It was an unfortunate ending to what began so promisingly for communities.

Click here to read the report on the APH website

The only real high point of the report was an excellent Dissenting Report from Senator Brown. It raised many of the issues that are of real and urgent concern to communities around the country.

Click here to read Senator Brown's report on the APH website

Communities have their say in Canberra

Late last year, Bob Brown presented a Bill to the Senate (Telecommunications Amendment [Mobile Phone Towers] Bill 2011). On 09.02.12, it was referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Telecommunications and the Committee is due to report on 09.05.12. Following our group's written submissions to the Committee in response to Senator Brown's Bill, NoTowersNearSchools was pleased to be invited to present there. Two members of our group flew to Canberra on 12.04.12 to do just this.

It was an amazing day at the hearing into Bob Brown's Bill. For communities anyway. NTNS was represented, as well as other community groups from around the country (one from Toowoomba, plus groups from Tas and northern NSW).

It wasn't such a good day, though, for the government agencies responsible for protecting Australians' health and welfare regarding mobile phone towers. When ARPANSA and ACMA representatives were questioned about critical issues including, health, regulation and application of the precautionary approach in the rollout of mobile phone infrastructure, they were unable to answer basic questions that senators put to them (questions derived from the submissions of, and presentations by, community groups, such as NTNS). These questions were not overly complex or, one would have thought, unexpected. And yet, senior representatives of the Government were left speechless and tongue-tied. It seems this is perhaps the first time they've been genuinely challenged in a forum in which they are compelled to answer on the claims they routinely make about mobile phone towers. And, when they were called to task on these claims, they simply had no answers.

Today it became alarmingly obvious that THERE IS NO WATCHDOG PROTECTING AUSTRALIANS in regard to the endless and accelerating rollout of mobile phone towers. Of course, our group has been saying this for two and a half years now. Today, though, the proof was there for all to see. In many, many regards, the government has no idea what the telcos are actually doing:

* The Government has no idea if the telcos are sticking to their claims re EMR output from towers (They revealed to the inquiry today that, of the 18,000 mobile phone towers in Australia, last year just 21 of them were audited to check the EMR outputs were as the telcos claimed they were. When only 0.001% of towers have been checked, monitoring big business to ensure the health of Australians appears to be of negligible concern to our Government. And that's just how many were checked. Of those, we are not sure how many met the initially claimed EMR output. We are also left wondering: With more and more towers going up all the time, will the Government be checking more and more towers, or will they just continue to leave it to the telcos to do whatever they please?).

* The Government has no idea what research is occurring around the world in terms of potential negative health effects from exposure to EMR (they confessed to the inquiry today that they only consider research that's written/presented in English! The thing is that there's a wealth of crucial, worrying research from non English-speaking countries that they are clearly ignoring, discounting, brushing aside without any consideration whatsoever).

* Regulation of telco operations is non-existant. When things go wrong (and they do in a frightening proportion of the cases), there is no one, no body, no government department, no contractor, no one overseeing that or regulating that.

NTNS sees this as a heartening development that seeks to protect the future health of all Australians and we hope it amounts to something substantial. At the very least, some important questions are being asked and vital answers are being demanded by people who must be answered. When the proceeding transcript and video become available, we will put up a link to those. Stay tuned for updates. We will definitely be watching this closely and keeping you informed of developments.

Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Telecommunications:
Click here to open the Telecommunications Amendment (Mobile Phone Towers) Bill 2011

Bob Brown's Bill:
http://www.comlaw.gov.au /Details/C2011B00186

Read the transcript in full on the parlinfo website: http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au

We are pleased to announce that the mobile phone tower on the aged care facility on Main Avenue, Bardon, was demolished on Monday 28/11/11.

The three-tower plan is finally (two years later) in operation. The tower locations are:

This plan means there should now be lower cumulative EMR levels at Rainworth State School than it has had for many years.

More details and photos