Bob Katter

“Just another example of how out of touch Telstra is with people living in the bush.

“They are proposing service disruptions over the busiest weekend of the year for the Julia Creek and McKinlay areas. It is not an understatement to say “lives will be put at risk,” Mr Katter said.

The Julia Creek Races and Dirt’n Dust Festival is one of Mid-west’s largest tourism events. Mr Katter said, “During this event the population goes from 500 to 3000, this is a huge increase for such a small town.

“I would like to think they care about remote communities, but when they do things like this it suggests otherwise. The Races and Dirt n Dust festival is scheduled for April 19-20 and the Telstra works are scheduled to take place from the April 18-24.

Telstra estimates that this essential service will be cut for eight hours and will include an all-sector full site outage in McKinlay and eight hours all sector and 3G outage Julia Creek. “We have called on Telstra to put an immediate stop to any disruptions over this critical weekend and the days before and after when thousands will be travelling to and from Julia Creek.

“It is the worst possible time to be playing around with telecommunications,” Mr Katter said.

“This ludicrous decision must be immediately reversed.”