Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have spoken in this chamber before about the terrible situation of the Pinery bushfires, and in 2015 I and my electorate started the year with bushfires in Sampson Flat and devastating bushfires through One Tree Hill in the Adelaide Hills, and we ended the year, very sadly, with the fire in Pinery and Mallala, which had its epicentre, really, in places like Wasleys, Hamley Bridge, Owen and the Pinkerton Plains. When you went out to these communities just after the fire, you saw the intensity of the fire. It was literally like a moonscape out in these communities. The fires had burned so hot that everything was gone—fence posts, fencing and every bit of crop. Quite often the loam had burnt out of the soil and there was nothing but sand left at the side of the road. So it really was quite the dystopian vision. And obviously there were very devastating losses of stock and to farming communities and farming families, and, tragically, there was loss of human life and there was injury.

Today I rise to present the petition by the community of Wasleys in South Australia regarding poor mobile phone coverage, which they have had to endure prior to this issue, but of course not having mobile phone coverage during the period of the fire did present a number of issues. There are many people who have spoken to me—including Mo Shepherd, who is a pillar of the community out there, and Stella Bliss, who is the principal petitioner in this petition—about the fact that not having very good mobile phone coverage exacerbated some of the evacuation issues that were experienced on the day. Often messages were not received at all. Sometimes they were received late. And, tragically, receiving messages late, in an untimely fashion, with a fire like this—a fire which burned so quickly, and had a front, at one point, of 50 to 60 kilometres, and which changed direction, and burnt with an intensity that had not been experienced in living memory on the Adelaide Plains and in the mid-north—exacerbated issues. Certainly it opened all of our eyes to the interaction between mobile phone and internet communications. Obviously we rely on those things in all of our communities, and we rely on them to give us timely information, but in this situation we learned that there were some issues with that reliance on technology.

So I present this petition, which has been approved by the Petitions Committee.

The petition read as follows—

This petition of the community of Wasleys, South Australia draws to the attention of the House: inadequate mobile phone coverage within the township of Wasleys which resulted in a crisis situation due to poor mobile phone coverage during the Pinery bushfire of 25 November, 2015.

We therefore ask the House to: provide funding for the upgrade of telecommunications infrastructure for the township of Wasleys under the Federal Government's Round 2 of the Mobile Black Spot Programme.

from 769 citizens

Petition received.

See this speech in context