Residents met with Member for Mallee Andrew Broad, Member for Lowan Emma Kealy, Horsham Rural City Council and Telstra representatives on Wednesday to discuss mobile phone blackspots.

Wartook Valley missed out on a new phone tower in June, when Telstra announced it planned to build 18 new towers in the region to fix mobile phone blackspots. 

Member for Mallee Andrew Broad said while the meeting did not get the community any closer to a tower, it meant the community was more informed.

“Unfortunately we didn’t deliver a tower earlier this year and we owed it to the community to go and talk to them,” he said.

Mr Broad said everyone at the meeting wanted the tower.

“Horsham Rural City’s David Grimble asked a good question, which was what more can the community do,” he said.

“To be frank, the community is doing all they can. 

“We now have to try to look at the criteria and see what we can do.”

The community is hoping to secure money for a tower in round two of the federal government mobile blackspots program.

Mr Broad said the community would form an action group.

“I will take a couple of people to Canberra later in the year to discuss the issue further,” he said.

“It is now up to the three levels of government to move forward.”

Mr Broad said many communities that were successful in getting a tower in the first round of funding put forward their own money as well.

“We are talking huge amounts of money, which obviously helped those communities be successful,” he said.

Horsham Rural City chief executive Peter Brown said council wanted to keep working with the community.

“Hopefully the Wartook and Laharum communities will form themselves into a group to continue arguing for this,” he said.

“We are happy to work with them and we want to make sure the next submission is as strong as it can be.”

Mr Brown said a potential tower also needed state government support.

“Especially from an emergency management perspective, the state government needs to have a strong voice.”