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

I commend the member for Mayo for this motion, and I endorse the words of the member for Monash. The ABC is a highly efficient and greatly trusted community service. Both a 2018 Roy Morgan survey and a 2019 study by the University of Canberra found the ABC is Australia's most trusted media brand. As a former university academic, I can say: you don't need a university to tell you that. We just know it.

There were three major fires in Indi: the Green Valley, or Walwa fire; the fire around Dinner Plain and Falls Creek; and the fire which started near Abbeyard. Collectively, these fires burnt nearly 600,000 hectares of my electorate of Indi. In what was a tense and frightening summer, it was the ABC's emergency broadcasts that calmly and clearly kept us all up to date on what was an ever-evolving and terribly frightening situation. On behalf of my constituents, I would like to thank all of those at ABC Goulburn-Murray who worked tirelessly for weeks to keep us informed. I'd also like to thank the emergency services communications personnel working across the various incident control centres who liaised with the ABC to ensure the broadcast information was current, concise, accurate. So in times of trouble we know that, come what may, keep calm and tune in to the ABC. We all know the importance of maintaining a radio and fresh batteries in our emergency kit, because when the power goes down and the phones stop working, we have the ABC to keep us up to date. It's just there. Always. Right?

During the peak times of this summer's fires, the people of the Upper Murray recently experienced what life is like when the ABC is not there. Shortly after the Walwa fire began on New Year's Eve, power and mobile phone reception was lost. Soon, the local ABC radio transmitter was also damaged by fire. This left most of the surrounding area—including the Corryong and Walwa valleys—without their local ABC station. No fire updates. No communication of evacuation orders. No localised road closure information. No phone. No reception. No power. No ABC. Silence, stillness, disquiet.

Eventually, ABC Radio broadcasting was restored, and for the people of the Upper Murray it was like emerging from the jungle after the war. It was restored thanks to the efforts of our New South Wales neighbours at ABC Riverina, who picked up the mantle. ABC Riverina, your ABC became our ABC. Pronunciation of Victorian town names by ABC Riverina left some residents scratching their heads. And while many found this initially pretty humorous, it also underscored, as the member for Monash pointed out, the importance of local knowledge in emergency broadcasting.

Many people listen to emergency broadcasts out of the corner of their ear, tuning in only when they hear the name of their town or towns nearby. Without local broadcasters and their knowledge of the area, crucial information can be lost in translation. The outage demonstrated the precarious nature of the reliance of our most important infrastructure on mains power—infrastructure such as the ABC transmission tower and mobile phone base stations. It highlights the vulnerability of the most fundamental services in rural and regional areas; a vulnerability that is made all the more obvious now by the warnings of longer, hotter and drier summers, and more intense and frequent bushfires. That was vulnerability brought home with a knockout punch this summer.

Adaptation to what is now an inevitable 1.5 degrees of global warming means we must prioritise and fund additional transmission distribution services, services which can ensure the ABC transmitter can operate with renewable energy technology. The technology is there; it can be done immediately. There would be no need for backup diesel fuel generators, with all the problems they entail, and no need to wait for mains power to be restored.

It's undeniable that the ABC has been successful in achieving the efficiencies governments have demanded of it since the 1980s. But the ABC receives no additional funding for emergency broadcasts. Maybe that was okay in times when emergency announcements were a rare event. But situation abnormal is now a new normal, and we must not expect the ABC to divert funds intended for regular programming to cover these costs. The ABC emergency services broadcasting must receive specific funding as part of our national disaster framework. But, more than that, the role that our ABC plays in the very fabric of our culture is of such importance to our very way of life as we recover from the hideous black summer of 2019 that the time is long overdue for the reversal of the three-year $83.8 million indexation freeze. As the people of the upper Murray know, we are literally lost without the ABC.

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