Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition is supporting the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. Before going into the body of my speech, I would like to join with other members in complimenting the ABC in particular on the work that they have done in the bushfire circumstances, and they are well-known to us for similar activities in my area in cyclone periods. In fact, when we get a cyclone, generally the radio station at the eye of the cyclone and one either side of it go onto 24-hour local broadcasting. So their efforts in Victoria are in keeping with the best traditions.

It was not always so. We had an inquiry some years ago on the committee that I chaired that was then known as the transport and communications committee. We conducted a very far-reaching inquiry into regional radio. One of the things we detected in that inquiry was a very poor response to emergencies. Before we had even tabled our report, the ABC, commercial radio and I forget who the third party was got together and tried to get a protocol together because they could see this train coming down the track that would be quite critical of them. One of the things that has caused that is the excessive networking, out of hubs, of country radio stations. Sadly, that has not been totally corrected. Despite what the coalition did during their previous term in office in requiring newsrooms to be manned and so on, there are still a lot of liberties being taken in that field. But that is not the purpose of the bill today, so I will not dwell on it.

The bill before us today will broaden the access to the integrated public number database, the IPND. It will take it beyond its present scope so that emergency services agencies around the nation can make mass outbound phone calls to listed and unlisted numbers to let people know of developing life-threatening situations. We have talked a lot today about cyclones and there have been one or two references to floods, but it goes a lot further than that. A cyclone is one of the most damaging of all things and it can take many lives, as we all know from the Cyclone Tracy circumstance in Darwin. We have also seen in our region, though Australia has been spared it in living memory, the danger of a tsunami. I would think that this service would be at its most heightened in the event of a tsunami. We have seen other things overseas and we need to get ready for them. We are building gas plants. I know that Central Queensland, possibly Gladstone, is going to have a major gas plant. We all remember the dreadful circumstances in Bhopal in India where whole communities were subjected to chemical intrusion. If that were to happen, heaven help us if it did, people would need to know how to get out of a chemically affected area in the best way possible.

I for one support this legislation. I realise that, as some speakers have said, there are some worries about privacy. I do not think they apply, but all I would say to that is that, if any state or territory were to abuse this power that the Commonwealth is passing on to them, they should be taken off the list. If it were used for any other purpose but a genuine emergency, I think that the Commonwealth should come down on that state or territory very heavily. The measures give the Attorney-General the power to determine under what circumstances the IPND can be accessed for a warning. It is anticipated that an emergency will be defined under existing state and territory legislation.

A telephone based early warning system is just plain common sense. I think we have seen enough examples in recent times in our own country and overseas, as I just mentioned, that clearly illustrate how important it is to have various agencies of government able to do this. Emergency service agencies have argued that a national early warning system is needed and the matter was put before COAG in 2007 but for various reasons it was not progressed. We can never be absolutely sure that a more sophisticated or extended IPND might have made a difference in recent circumstances but I make the observation that if it saves one additional life then what we are debating today will be all worth while. Allowing the integrated public number database to be used for such purposes is the right thing to do, because it gives the state based emergency services more flexibility in responding to situations.

If we have learnt one thing from the tragedy of the Victorian fires it is that information is power—power to decide whether to stay and defend one’s property or power to decide to leave and, more importantly, to leave early. In the event of a broad scale, rapidly developing emergency situation such as a bushfire, most if not all avenues of information become lost in one way or another. We saw in Victoria where the power grid went down and people were left with absolutely no power options. We also know that a lot of phone systems—although you often have one handset on a bypass—work on your landline power, and, if you do not have power, that can make things very difficult.

This underlines the liability of mobile telephone black spots. If there is simply no mobile coverage, one option—a potentially lifesaving option—is not available to people. Topography and geography play a big part in dictating the quality of coverage. In other words, if you are in an area that does not have mobile coverage and your electricity lines have gone down or your phone line has gone haywire because of heat or for other reasons, you are totally isolated. I for one would like to see an audit of black spots, particularly in areas like the Central Highlands of Victoria. We need to have an audit of that. Ninety-eight per cent coverage is very good, but we are not talking about landmass here; we are talking about real people—and I think the strategic placement of some additional towers might be in order. I hope that the royal commission will look very carefully at that.

Australia is the size of the United States, yet we have only one-thirteenth of their population. So we have to cover these things strategically as best we can. We do pretty well, but the wake-up call was in the last fortnight and we should respond to it. Mobile coverage is taken for granted by a lot of us. I have a son who lives in Brisbane. He is 3½ kilometres from the Brisbane GPO—you cannot get much closer than that; that is almost inner city Brisbane—yet he does not have mobile coverage. So there are black spots everywhere. When they are in strategically vulnerable areas, I think we have to be right on the ball.

Back in 1997 the coalition government established Networking the Nation, which to date has been the most ambitious communications and infrastructure program ever attempted in this country. The whole program was designed to improve availability, accessibility and affordability and to use the communications service to close gaps in communications access between metropolitan and non-metropolitan Australians. After its cessation in 2005, more than $230 million had been invested in almost 800 projects. Funding went to not-for-profit agencies such as local councils, regional development organisations and local government associations, and around $73 million was invested in building telecommunications infrastructure. Of this, half was for mobile phone towers and related equipment. An evaluation of the NTN program showed that, during its operation, it funded 267 telephone installations and provided mobile phone coverage to 1,000 settlements across regional Australia—with almost 60 per cent of those sites being in remote and very remote areas. From that, about 280,000 people—or up to four per cent of the population of Australia—were able to live within proper mobile phone coverage.

I have a number of telecommunications towers in my electorate. I was listening to the member for Corangamite. I know he is a new member—and he is a good mate of mine—and I say to him: you have to be on the ball with Telstra, Optus and other agencies and with your communications ministry, because these things do not always fall in your lap; you have to be an agitator. I have a lot of towers—in Agnes Waters; in 1770, which is located between Bundaberg and Gladstone; in Baffle Creek, which was on a high mountain, like the member for Corangamite was talking about; in Miriam Vale; in Woodgate, south of Bundaberg; and in Moore Park, north of Bundaberg. Many of these, I might add, are now in the electorate of the member for Flynn. Nevertheless, I worked very hard to get all those towers, and I am sure the member for Corangamite can do likewise.

So we have achieved some outcomes for people living in isolated areas. But, as I said before, there is no silver bullet. All the things we are talking about today are incremental. I challenge members sitting in the chamber—though there are not many in the House at present—to write down the SES number. Can you at this minute write down the SES emergency number? It has been on television day after day over recent months. I cannot; I tested myself in the office and found that I cannot write it down. What I am advocating, hand in hand with this extension of the broadly based emergency coverage to the states, is that we have the right education program. If that is not in place, the system does not work.

During our inquiry into communications, I recall we were discussing emergencies. Someone gave evidence of, I think, a central western New South Wales town—probably not far from where you live, Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz. I do not remember exactly what happened. I think a tanker or something had turned over on a highway and someone rang the local radio station, which just happened to be on network at that time. So he rang the hub station in Sydney, saying ‘There has been a great emergency here; can you break into the programming for the town or, if you can’t do that, can you put it on your network?’ The girl at the switch said, ‘Oh, no, we cannot do that. Just ring up your SES; they will look after you.’ We have to get much more sophisticated than that. There has to be an emergency protocol in every country town, especially with commercial radio—I have no worries about the ABC in that regard—and, to some extent, with television. We need this IPND system as well. We need a communications awareness program. We need to put all of those things together. As part of that whole umbrella of activities, we also need to make sure that we are strategically putting in telecommunications towers.

As I was researching this, I was very impressed with some information made available from Ericsson, which I thought might be of interest to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ericsson has a type of mobile tower that allows them to set up a temporary mobile transmission area. During the recent fires and in collaboration with Telstra, Ericsson provided fixed wireless terminals to the Country Fire Authority—the CFA—to restore voice and data services to areas affected by the blazes. I think that that is quite commendable. That might be something that the royal commission looks at: if you cannot afford to put a tower somewhere, could you perhaps make available to the local Country Fire Authority a mobile tower that they could operate? It might be on an old four-wheel drive or fire truck that can be taken into an emergency situation and put on a hill that covers a whole valley where there might be a number of fires. There are a lot of innovative things that we could do, and I commend Ericsson for their work on this. Their human resources executive, Tristram Gray, said:

Once transmission was restored, they—

they being the CFA and the community—

were able to communicate the direction the fire was moving and to respond effectively. Not only that, but the people in the community were able to maintain communications with each other.

The other thing that we saw from these fires was the inability of people at times to contact their relatives.

The other thing that I would like to see the royal commission do—and it is an adjunct to this—is to require phone kits in areas of high risk to carry two batteries. When we got our first mobile phones we always got two batteries and that was a very sensible thing. I know that the life of batteries has increased dramatically since then—I acknowledge that—but nevertheless there is nothing worse than being in a situation and having your battery go. It happens to me from time to time and I know how embarrassing it can be, but when it is life and death stuff then it is a different matter. Again, if power lines are down and you cannot recharge, you are doubly vulnerable. Another thing that I would like to see the royal commission consider is for there to be some way in certain vulnerable areas of Australia to encourage telephone companies—and whether this should be subsidised or not I do not know—to provide a second battery for people’s mobile phones at the time of purchase.

That is my contribution. I think this is a good measure. I do not think that it is the total answer or the silver bullet, but I think that it will go a long way to making Australia safer in emergency situations such as fires, floods, cyclones, tsunamis, chemical spills and the like.

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