Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

My electorate of Indi in north-east Victoria is no stranger to disasters.

Floods are a fact of life for communities along rivers such as the Goulburn, the Broken, the Ovens, the King and the Murray, and recent floods in 2022 and 2023 show the devastation they can cause.

Already this century, we've experienced the Black Saturday bushfires, the Black Summer bushfires, and now the January 2026 bushfires.

Two fires in Indi this summer, known as the Longwood fire and the Walwa River Road fire, left more than 300 homes destroyed, and over 250,000 hectares of land burnt. These communities are now on a long road to recovery.

As I've travelled through affected towns in recent months, I've seen communities showing up for each other, town halls turned into relief centres, neighbours helping neighbours, people giving all that they can. Indeed, Minister McBain is here today, and she's accompanied me on these tours. In the worst of times, our resilience and strength is clear.

However, resilience isn't limitless.

For many communities, this is the second or third catastrophic disaster in just a few short years. What were once-in-a-century events are now happening once in a decade, or even more often.

Unfortunately, as climate change makes disasters more intense and more frequent, government investment in our communications network resilience has lagged, with serious consequences.

We must do better for our regional communities.

The SCiND bill

That's why today I'm introducing a bill to strengthen communications systems through natural disasters. This bill will do three things.

First, it will require the regulator to identify phone towers in high-risk areas and set out minimum power backup requirements for these sites.

Second, it will enable the government to implement temporary disaster roaming, which could save lives in an emergency.

Third, it will create a clear pathway for the government to invest in community wi-fi and satellite internet at community halls or other technologies that can be deployed during a natural disaster.

I'll now explain these reforms in detail.

Temporary disaster roaming

I continue to push for the implementation of temporary disaster roaming, or TDR.

TDR would allow a person in a disaster affected area to temporarily connect to another mobile network when their usual network is unavailable or severely degraded, so they can still make and receive calls and text messages during an emergency.

Some countries have had disaster roaming in place for years, and it's been recommended by inquiry after inquiry here in Australia, including the government's very own Regional Telecommunications Review in 2024.

However, despite saying it was looking into disaster roaming over two years ago, the government is still yet to act.

When I asked for an update last year, I was told that the government hopes to implement TDR soon, but it's an industry led initiative.

Frankly, this hands-off approach isn't good enough for my electorate, where bushfires this summer have destroyed hundreds of homes and left communities disconnected.

I welcome that the government is now saying that it hopes TDR will be implemented before this summer. But with the telcos dragging their feet, and the start of summer only six short months away, hoping simply isn't enough.

The government must show leadership—pull Telstra and the other telcos into line—and get it done.

Mandatory power backup

Another key issue exposed by fires in my electorate is the lack of power backup at towers.

We know that when a mobile phone tower has a battery or a generator onsite, sites stay up longer and enable people to receive life-saving information, or to communicate with their loved ones.

It's why I've recommended at least 24 hours of power backup—and why I had the Parliamentary Budget Office cost this policy at last year's election.

Mandatory power backup has the support of the Victorian government, who have called for 'long-duration battery energy storage solutions that deliver more reliable power supply to key telecommunications infrastructure that can support power loads for 24 hours'.

Similarly, the government's own Regional Telecommunications Review backed my recommendation, calling for 'minimum power backup periods for new critical telecommunications infrastructure, with existing assets to be captured over time'.

But the government hasn't acted—so I am.

This bill will require the Australian Communications and Media Authority to identify high-risk sites and determine the minimum power requirements of these sites.

Communications resilience grants

The final pillar of my bill is to put disaster resilience alongside payphones, the National Relay Service and the emergency call services as eligible public interest telecommunications spending.

It's an overdue amendment that would make it easier for the Commonwealth to invest in things like Cells on Wheels, which can be rapidly deployed to disaster affected areas. Similarly, it would allow the Commonwealth to continue a long-term investment in satellite internet, routers and battery backup for halls, community centres and schools right across regional Australia.

Conclusion

This bill, if implemented, would save lives when the next fire, flood or storm arrives.

In regional Australia, we face a future of more frequent, more intense disasters, and the government must do more to ensure communications systems are as resilient as they possibly could be.

See this speech in context