I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) Australia's three major telecommunications providers commenced Temporary Disaster Roaming (TDR) on 1 October 2026 as a measure intended to improve communications during natural disasters affecting regional and remote communities;

(b) TDR can only operate where an alternative mobile network remains available and has sufficient capacity to accept additional users during a disaster event;

(c) many regional, rural and remote Australian communities continue to rely on a single mobile network provider, meaning TDR cannot operate when that network fails;

(d) reliable telecommunications are critical during bushfires, floods and other emergencies, providing access to emergency warnings, evacuation information, emergency services and family communications; and

(e) forecasts of elevated bushfire risk across many regional areas have reinforced the importance of resilient telecommunications infrastructure ahead of the 2026-27 summer season; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) immediately identify those regional, rural and remote communities where TDR is unlikely to operate during a network outage;

(b) provide a comprehensive strategy to improve telecommunications resilience in disaster-prone regions;

(c) accelerate investment in mobile coverage, backup power systems and network redundancy across regional Australia; and

(d) report to Parliament on measures being taken to ensure regional Australians are not left without communications during life-threatening emergency events.

I rise to bring this motion because functional telecommunications save lives. They also should never be optional, but in our day and age they absolutely are. As another bushfire season approaches, regional Australians deserve far greater confidence than the Albanese government is currently providing.

The government has promoted temporary disaster roaming as a major step forward for regional telecommunications resilience. While any additional protection is welcome, the reality is that this system has significant limitations that many Australians simply do not understand. Temporary disaster roaming only works when there is at least one other network tower available, so one is not enough. You actually need two if you're going to have the temporary disaster roaming function. That sounds simple enough until you consider the reality of regional Australia. Across large areas of my electorate of Mallee, and indeed across regional Australia, communities are often served by only one mobile network, and at times an unreliable one at that. If that network fails during a bushfire, storm or flood, there may be no alternative network available for residents to connect to. In those circumstances, temporary disaster roaming offers absolutely no solution. That is the uncomfortable truth the government has failed to acknowledge.

For city residents, losing mobile reception can be frustrating. For regional Australians, losing comms during a disaster can mean missing an evacuation order, being unable to receive emergency warnings, losing contact with family members or being unable to call for assistance. In the worst cases, it can have devastating impacts, with the loss of life. After the first national emergency warning test of AusAlert on 27 July this year, constituents reached out to me concerned they didn't get the message. I am sure the shadow minister for emergency management will have more to say on our emergency preparedness under Labor. When a fire is moving quickly and conditions are changing by the minute, reliable comms are every bit as important as roads, emergency services and power infrastructure. Regional Australians understand this because they've lived through network outages during floods, storms and bushfires. Regional Australians know—sadly, all too often under Labor—what it means to be utterly cut off.

The temporary disaster roaming system falls short of the universal safety net many believe should be delivered. The real challenge is not simply creating a mechanism for networks to share coverage during emergencies. The challenge is ensuring regional Australia has sufficient telecommunications infrastructure, coverage and redundancy, full stop. If a regional community is dependent on a single network and that network goes down, temporary disaster, roaming will be of zero use. Those affected remain disconnected, exposing them to further vulnerability and risk.

For too long, regional telecommunications have been treated as a secondary priority. Yet every summer we ask regional Australians to confront bushfires, severe storms and floods with fewer services and less infrastructure than their metropolitan counterparts, and, more so, we expect our locals in the regions to actually do the firefighting. This is unacceptable. A postcode should not determine whether someone can receive an emergency warning. A postcode should not determine whether someone can contact their family during a disaster. And a postcode should not determine whether someone can call for help when their life is in danger.

Farming communities across my electorate contribute enormously to our national economy, our food security and our country life. Justice says they ought to have the same safety and connectivity as every other Australian. The government must provide a clear plan to address the communities that remain outside the reach of the industry's temporary disaster roaming where there is only one telco or, worse, none. Labor must invest in network resilience, back-up power capability, redundancy and comms infrastructure that truly operates as critical infrastructure, because when bushfires— (Time expired)

I thank the member for Mallee. Is the motion seconded?

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

My electorate of Gilmore on the New South Wales South Coast has certainly had its fair share of disasters in recent years, including the horrendous Black Summer bushfires. Those fires impacted our region for weeks in December 2019 and January 2020. During the disaster, lives were lost; hundreds of homes were razed; businesses, farms, livestock and native bushland were destroyed; and community infrastructure was impacted.

I know, as we head into another high-fire-danger season, residents in my electorate are feeling very anxious about the elevated risk of another Black Summer. I've spoken with dozens of residents who lost their homes or who were left stranded with no way of contacting family members when the phones went down and the power went out. They were frightened, isolated and unable to let their families know they were alive. Bushfire victims and local communities across Gilmore have been crying out for better communications capability. They don't want to be left in the dark when the next disaster strikes. That's why I've been advocating strongly on behalf of my community for improved communications, especially during times of disaster.

I'm proud that this government is working hard to improve our comms systems by making infrastructure more resilient, with the recent upgrades to the Mount Wandera transmission station, the installation of composite power poles, and better satellite communications at our emergency centres. We've got a new Australian fire danger rating system and AusAlert, the new national messaging system, to keep people informed. We've rolled out emergency noticeboards and bushfire safe havens in communities, and we've grown our aerial firefighting assets.

The $14 million Strengthening Telecommunications Against Natural Disasters, or STAND, program funds satellite wi-fi in emergency evacuation centres and emergency coordination points, and the $50.3 million Mobile Network Hardening Program is upgrading and improving the resilience of Australia's mobile network telecommunications infrastructure. Thanks to this government, towers are being built, batteries are being installed, reliable high-speed broadband is being rolled out and capacity is being increased.

From 1 October, people in Gilmore and right across the country will also have had access to temporary disaster roaming, or TDR, which can be switched on during times of disaster. It's reassuring to know that, if there's a fire, flood, storm or cyclone, people will still have access to calls and texts, and some basic data to use apps like iMessage and WhatsApp on their compatible smartphones. We know there's more to do, but this is another very important tool we've added to help keep people in regional and rural areas safe, informed and connected when they need it most.

We're working closely with the three major telcos, Telstra, Optus and TPG, who are leading this technology, so that, when one provider goes down during an emergency, temporary disaster roaming can be activated. TDR will automatically switch phones in the impacted area to another carrier's mobile network where it's available. This means that, if a town has a Telstra tower and an Optus tower and the Telstra tower goes down during a bushfire, Telstra customers can roam onto the Optus network for general voice, text and basic data, not just triple zero calls.

This would allow people to stay in touch with friends and family, keep up to date with emergency warnings, look for road closures and check the weather. The mobile network operators are responsible for activation decisions, which are made in accordance with agreed technical parameters, available coverage and network capacity constraints. In situations where one mobile carrier has been hit by a natural disaster, it will contact another carrier to check network availability and, if available, request TDR to cover the impacted area. This is a game changer. The government has also recently passed legislation to create the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation, UOMO, which will require mobile network operators to provide nationwide baseline outdoor voice and text coverage where you can see the sky.

After years of neglect, I am so proud that we're getting on with strengthening our regional telecommunications system, with a $1 billion co-investment that we're rolling out over the next few years.

I take great pride in seconding this motion. I acknowledge not just the member for Mallee and her interest but also the member for Gilmore, and I acknowledge her leadership during the Black Summer fires and her understanding of the implications of not having proper telecommunications in our hour of need.

Natural disasters invariably happen in regional Australia, and this is where our telecommunications are failing us. This has been a failure of policy settings for some years. The reality is that the more remote you get, the greater risk there is to human life, because we don't have the choice of a telecommunications provider. In most of these places there's only one provider, so you can't switch to another provider to be able to get that safety element. So what we have to understand is that there are broader scale policy changes that need to take place to ensure the safety of every Australian, and that's not just about mandated roaming. We should be doing this as a fait accompli, particularly for regional Australians.

We have isolated assets, where you may drive along a highway of 200 kilometres, and there'll be three Telstra towers and you'll hit an Optus tower. If you happen to have an accident underneath the Optus tower and you've got a Telstra phone, it's no good to you because you can't ring triple zero because you're isolated—you have no connection. The reality is that we have to think more broadly about this and about mandated roaming particularly in regional areas. If you go overseas, you pay your $5 a month, and you can actually have that. You can roam onto anyone's tower.

I don't think we should be giving this away for free. I'm not asking the telcos to do this, but I am simply saying that, if I have a have a Telstra phone and if I want to pay whatever the cost is that it costs them—$5 a month—then I choose to take that and put that on my phone. That is a policy setting that would cost the Australian taxpayer zero and would protect many of us in regional and remote Australia in our hour of need. That is common sense. I have advocated for that since I got to this place in 2016, and the ACCC for some reason in 2017, without even looking at this apart from sitting in their office in Sydney, thought that this will stop investment by the telcos in regional Australia. Telcos are not investing in regional Australia because the market is not there. You need about 2,000 people underneath a tower for it to be financially viable, so they don't give a rat's about us.

Telstra is a cancer, a corporate cancer, that has now spread from rural and remote Australia into peri-urban Australia because they are not investing in these towers because it's not commercially viable for them. So what we need to do is ensure they do invest in it. This is where not only should we have mandated roaming for regional areas for the consumer to pay but we should reform the universal service obligation. I acknowledge what the member for Gilmore talked about in the outdoor mobile obligation that they're going to put, but that's about the low-orbit satellites. We don't own that infrastructure. Elon owns that, and we're trying to regulate that. Let's think about what we can regulate.

We can regulate the infrastructure on the ground, much of which the Australian taxpayer has built. Many, over 1,500, new mobile phone towers were built when we were in government, and they continue to do a few of them now. But the reality is that the telcos have had a free hit out of this. What we should do is reform the universal service obligation that was put in place when Telstra was privatised to maintain landlines and payphones, because that was the technology in place at that time. Low and behold, mobile telephony has come along, but we haven't moved the regulatory guiderails with it. There is $270 million a year that Telstra has in a contract to maintain landlines and payphones. We've gone from about 64,000 payphones when Telstra was privatised down to about 14,000 now, and there are bugger-all landlines left. The reality is that they are getting a free hit.

What we should do—and this is what I've asked for the amendment to be—is have the universal service bill that's in front of the House extend to land infrastructure as well, and that $270 million should go into maintaining the towers. What we saw, this cancer that is Telstra and the telcos—that is what happened in that tragedy when triple zero didn't work and the system failed, because there was no maintenance and there is no regulatory burden on the telcos—and Telstra, in this instance, who owns the USO—to maintain the towers. This is where, as legislators, it would cost us nothing to extend the universal service obligation and use that $270 million to make sure that those towers are maintained and work to the standard they should.

A mobile phone tower should work to about a 14-kilometre radius. If they don't work to that standard, there should be a requirement for them to go out and fix these things within a certain timeframe; otherwise, we will be sitting here talking about this again, and lives will be lost. Yes, there was a tragedy in Sydney, where someone couldn't get through to triple zero. Come and live where I live, where we don't have triple zero most days, because the towers don't work, because Telstra doesn't give a rat's about us. This is where we need leadership and this is where we need bipartisanship to fix this.

Reliable communications can be the difference between safety and tragedy in a natural disaster. Whether it's bushfire, flood or severe storm, Australians do need to be able to receive emergency warnings, contact loved ones, access information and, when necessary, call for help. That's why the introduction of the temporary disaster roaming as of 1 October is such an important development for rural, regional and remote communities like the rural area of my electorate and the western Wheatbelt in the Perth Hills. Temporary disaster roaming is designed to keep Australians connected when disaster strikes. In practical terms, it means that, if a community has both a Telstra and an Optus tower and one network is disabled during a bushfire or other disaster, customers may be able to roam on the remaining network for voice calls, text messages and basic data servicing. That means people can continue to communicate with their families, check emergency information and be informed during a disaster.

Importantly, temporary disaster roaming is not limited to triple zero access. It's about helping people maintain essential communications during what can be an incredibly stressful and uncertain time. But, of course, as the motion recognises, temporary disaster roaming is not a silver bullet. We have a very complicated communications system. This program can only operate when another mobile network remains available and has sufficient capacity. There will continue to be communities across regional, rural and remote Australia that rely on one single network provider, and if that network fails the temporary disaster roaming cannot provide an alternative connection. The reality is that this highlights a broader challenge before us: building a telecommunications network that is resilient enough to withstand increasingly severe natural disasters.

The good news is that the temporary disaster roaming is only one part of a broader effort to improve resilience—a broader package of reforms and investments that's already underway. The government has committed $14 million through the Strengthening Telecommunications Against Natural Disasters, STAND, program. The program supports satellite wi-fi services at emergency evacuation centres and emergency coordination points. We've also invested $50.3 million on the Mobile Network Hardening Program, which is focused on improving the resilience of telecommunication infrastructure so networks are better able to withstand extreme weather events. I know this all too well with the bushfires in the Perth Hills and the regional areas of Bullwinkel. These measures sit within a larger framework of a $1 billion pipeline of regional telecommunications investment to deliver new towers, improve back-up power systems and increase the network capacity of those towers across regional Australia.

Building resilience takes a coordinated effort across different services and agencies so that we can provide more layers of protection, better coverage, stronger towers, reliable power, satellite capacity and network redundancy. These reforms matter. The Albanese government is continuing to improved fixed-line communications, committing to completing the rollout of the remaining fibre-to-the-node upgrades and new satellite broadband arrangements that will be particularly important for regional and remote areas.

Just recently, parliament also passed legislation establishing the universal outdoor mobile obligation, and this important reform requires mobile network operators to provide baseline outdoor voice and text coverage across Australia and provides powers to establish service standards around real liability and fault rectification. All Australians should have access to critical communications, whether they live in a capital city or in the regional areas. Public safety, we agree, should not be determined by postcode.

Australians want to know when the systems they rely on will be there when they need them. Temporary disaster roaming is a valuable new tool and a step forward into a more resilient network. It won't work everywhere, and it will not solve every problem, but it can be deployed, and it has the potential to keep communities connected at the times when they need it the most. We all agree that Australians—and our objective, really—should not be left without access to critical communications during an emergency just because of where they live.

Reliable telecommunications are a lifeline in regional Australia, connecting families, protecting livelihoods and providing access to emergency services when lives are at risk. I rise to support the member for Mallee's motion, recognising the introduction of temporary disaster roaming on 1 October 2026 while highlighting the infrastructure gaps that continue to leave regional Australians vulnerable. Developed by Australia's three major mobile network operators, temporary disaster roaming allows customers affected by natural disaster outages to potentially connect to another functioning network for calls, texts and basic mobile data. But its effectiveness depends on another network being available and having sufficient capacity. You cannot roam onto a network that simply isn't there. For communities served by only one provider, this initiative offers little protection when that network fails.

Across Capricornia, from the Capricorn Coast to Clermont and our rural districts, dependable communications are essential, particularly when severe weather cuts roads and delays emergency assistance. For central Queensland farmers, connectivity can mean the difference between saving livestock and suffering devastating losses. Flood warnings give producers precious time to move cattle to higher ground. Bushfire updates help them to move stock to safer paddocks, protect property and make decisions that safeguard their families. When the network fails, that vital window to act can disappear.

Inadequate coverage also threatens vulnerable Australians who depend on mobile connected medical alert devices. Recently, my office heard from a constituent who relies on such a device because of her health and personal circumstances. She has already experienced failures caused by poor mobile coverage, even without a major network outage. A device designed to summon potentially life-saving assistance offers little reassurance if it cannot connect when help is needed. For older Australians and people living with disabilities, reliable coverage supports independence, dignity and the confidence that assistance is within reach. When someone presses an emergency button, they need to know their call for help can get through. Their life may depend on it. That is why improving connectivity cannot be limited to disaster response alone.

Forecasts of elevated bushfire risks for the 2026-27 summer season underscore the importance of resilient networks. During fires, floods and severe storms, mobile services carry warnings, evacuation advice and vital information for first responders, yet disasters can damage towers, interrupt power supplies and overwhelm capacity, Temporary disaster roaming can help when networks overlap, but it cannot create coverage where none exist or guarantee services where multiple networks fail. No network means no service, and, during a disaster, that can mean the difference between life and death. The government needs a comprehensive strategy to deliver reliable connectivity before, during and after emergencies. That means identifying communities where roaming cannot operate; accelerating investment in mobile coverage, backup power and network redundancy; and ensuring providers are accountable for addressing known vulnerabilities.

I acknowledge Telstra's efforts to improve regional coverage, including planned upgrades serving growing communities like those on the Capricorn Coast, but meeting regional needs requires sustained cooperation between government and industry, and improvements must extend beyond coverage maps. A signal advertised on paper does not always translate into a dependable connection inside a home or across a remote property. Regional Australians contribute enormously to our economy through agriculture, resources, tourism and small business. They should not be treated as second-class citizens when it comes to telecommunications and emergency preparedness. Temporary disaster roaming is a welcome step, but it must be the beginning of a lasting commitment to stronger infrastructure, not an excuse to delay it. A regional postcode should never put someone's life at greater risk simply because they cannot make a phone call. I commend the motion to the House.

I always enjoy speaking on motions that have a strong regional flavour because, despite the fact that I represent an outer suburban electorate today, my heart can't help but remain in the country around Broken Hill where I was brought up and where I spent many years working on sheep and cattle stations. While people in the city in the early 2000s were getting used to mobile phones—we hadn't even heard of them out where we were—I used a GPS, which was a little yellow brick that sat on my motorbike, and, if it wasn't for that, I think I would've still been out there and they would've still been looking for my bones. Meanwhile, people in the cities didn't know what GPS actually meant. Communications have come a long way over the last 20 years. Now people almost take for granted that they've got mobile phone coverage in a lot of the areas where they didn't even know what a mobile phone was 20 years ago.

I also appreciate how vital communication is in a disaster. My mum used to live in Oxley in Brisbane, and during the 2010 floods her house flooded. That was the first of the big natural disasters that we've had in my lifetime. That time was traumatic for so many reasons. One of them was because communications went down. When a friend, who was a refugee from the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, told me that this lack of communications, where people couldn't get in touch with family anymore, was exactly like it was in a time of war, that really brought home for me how desperate a situation is when you can't find out whether your family members are safe or not. As it was 2010, so it was in 2022, when we had the floods that hit the Logan region. My mum's house flooded again and much of South-East Queensland went under water again, and the communications network went down. It really did underscore that we are coming to a time when our technology really should be above that. It shouldn't be so hard for telcos to provide batteries or backup or extra network coverage. It shouldn't be beyond them to provide that now.

In the time that I have in this place, I want to emphasise what drives me the most, and that is that, in our country, over the last 30 or 40 years, we have seen a move away from government playing a central role in our economy. Telecommunications was one role. Privatisation, economic rationalism and unfettered free trade are the things which have really decimated working-class communities. When we had a telecom which was publicly owned and was interested in the public good, the outcomes that we achieved were much better than the outcomes that we get today. Telecommunications is not a nice-to-have; telecommunications is a must-have. It is essential to the operation of families, friends and social contact, and it is essential to the operation of the economy as well.

I think that the telcos need to do so much better. It's not just in a disaster that people find it hard to make a phone call. There are so many suburbs in the electorate of Forde—stretching from the northern Gold Coast and Upper Coomera to Boronia Heights at the other end of the electorate, in western Logan—where, on a good day, people have to stand on their driveway with their elbow bent at 90 degrees in order to get reception to make a telephone call. It's just not good enough.

So the government really is making sure that it puts these telcos on notice that they need to do better. But, practically, it is also doing what it can at the moment to make sure that people have the support that they need. There is a $1 billion investment into regional telecommunications, new towers and batteries. Increasing that investment is going to go a long way towards fixing some of the problems that regional communities have. The government is actually getting on with the job of replacing the copper network with high-speed broadband so that people can make communications through that. There are also agreements with satellite providers to cover areas where fixed NBN services don't get cover, which is not just out the back of Bourke but also in some areas of Forde.

To that end, while I see the good intentions of this motion, I seek to see it opposed.

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.