Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank all members who spoke on the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. There were pertinent points made by all speakers, and I would like to acknowledge the contributions of the members for Dunkley, Dawson, O’Connor, Corio, Gippsland, Bendigo, Forrest, Corangamite, Hinkler and New England to this important debate. I want to also acknowledge the bipartisan support for this important bill going forward and I welcome the offer of support and assistance from members on both sides of the House on this issue.

I am encouraged by the recognition by members that information contained in the IPND is highly sensitive and needs to be managed carefully. I am encouraged by the acknowledgment that this bill represents an important step and input towards assisting implementation of telephone based emergency warning systems by states and territories. The IPND is the most competitive and accurate Australian public number database available, and information is updated on a continual basis. It contains around 50 million Australia telephone numbers and other information, including whether a service is a residential or business number and what type of telecommunication service is provided by each number.

Given the sensitive nature of the information contained in the IPND, access to this information is strictly limited under the Telecommunications Act. This bill proposes amendments to the act: to allow information to be disclosed from the integrated public number database in order to facilitate state and territory government initiated telephony based emergency warning systems; to give the Attorney-General the role of determining the circumstances in which IPND information could be disclosed, and to whom; to address concerns that telephone based emergency warning systems do not overload and disable the telecommunications network—including access to the 000 emergency hotline; to explicitly allow location dependent carriage service providers to access listed public number information in the IPND for the purpose of supplying location-dependent carriage services; and to provide strong privacy protections for individuals’ personal and sensitive information contained in the IPND.

In light of the unprecedented Victorian bushfire emergency, which claimed so many lives in that state, the government has also made a regulation under the Telecommunications Act 1997 to enable immediate interim access to the IPND for emergency warning purposes. The regulation will enable immediate access to the IPND by individual states and territories who wish to implement a more limited telephone based emergency warning system as soon as possible. It should be emphasised that the regulation is not a long-term solution and is also not a substitute for the amendments contained in this bill. As I said in this place on Monday, the historical advice to the Commonwealth has been that any plan to allow the states and territories access to the IPND as part of any emergency warning system would be best secured by a legislative amendment. It should also be emphasised that telephone based emergency warning systems can only supplement—and not replace—the range of measures currently used to warn the public of emergencies, such as television and radio, public address systems, doorknocking, sirens, signage and the internet.

Members speaking on this bill have acknowledged that, while a telephone warning system will add to the emergency response capability of states and territories, other mechanisms and measures will continue to remain important. In this context, the capacity to provide telephony based alerts—which will be enabled with the passage of this bill—would be a valuable additional tool that the states and territories could draw on in the event of an emergency situation. Actual emergency warning message delivery systems will be implemented by the states and territories as part of their responsibilities for managing emergencies and disasters in their jurisdictions. Individual states and territories will retain autonomy to decide when and how best to warn their citizens of emergencies and disasters and whether a telephone based warning system is most appropriate for their jurisdiction. I understand that on Monday the Commonwealth wrote to state and territory governments advising that, if they are able to agree to a national system at the next possible COAG meeting, the Commonwealth will make a further financial contribution to establish such a system, which would be owned and operated by the states and territories.

Whether or not a national system is established, there remain technological challenges to overcome to enable any system to communicate with all telephones in a threatened area. Advice to the government is that current technology is limited to communicating with fixed landlines and mobile telephones on the basis of billing address only—that is, rather than the location of the handset. This can mean individuals in a threatened area do not receive a warning on their phones, and individuals outside a threatened area receive irrelevant warnings. To help address this gap, at the next COAG meeting the Commonwealth will offer the states and territories financial assistance for them to conduct collaborative research on the viability of a location based emergency warning system.

As we enter the latter stages of the current bushfire season, I commend the work, sacrifices and dedication of the many Australians working in disaster affected areas, including the fire services, police and others working on the front line, and I impress upon all in the community the need for continued vigilance. As I advised the House in question time, I visited the bushfire affected areas in Victoria last week to discuss with local government leaders the way forward in terms of reconstructing those communities. I also had the opportunity to have one-to-one discussions with some of those very brave emergency service workers; they do our nation proud.

I would also like to reiterate that all those working in the disaster affected areas will have the continued support of everyone in this House and everyone in the Australian parliament. In summary, the steps announced by the Rudd government on Monday, including the introduction of this bill, will help make telephone based emergency warning systems one part of Australia’s disaster response capability. The bill will also clarify arrangements for the delivery of location-dependent carriage services. I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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