Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009 is a piece of legislation that the coalition supports. The Liberal and National parties will cooperate and support the bill and do what we can to bring about the goals of this bill, although the parliament needs to be realistic about what this bill actually does. The bill is a key input to an early warning system, examples of which are being trialled and developed in the different state and territory jurisdictions. This bill will not of itself bring about a nationally coordinated early warning system to deal with disasters and emergencies, but it is a key input. It is a key input in that it makes a very important database available to those who are developing and implementing those systems. It does that by amending the Telecommunications Act 1997 to allow access by an emergency management person, as authorised by the Commonwealth Attorney-General, to the information contained in the integrated public number database. The IPND is not something that many people would be aware of. It is actually a bringing together of telephone numbers and their addresses for billing purposes, both for fixed line and mobile services. It is available from Telstra and is managed and supervised at this time by Telstra. It has a very important role in enabling communications competition and access to a single integrated telecommunications system, recognising that there is a range of service providers and users.

That database contains very crucial information. At the moment, the law provides for access to the database primarily for law enforcement authorities, and state and territory governments can access it. There is a narrow definition under which access can be provided. At the present time, as I mentioned, it is largely used for law enforcement purposes, but it has been used in part and on some occasions for the purpose for which it is being facilitated today. A couple of things need to be said. Firstly, this database is key. Access to it is crucial but it is a key input to the goals that this bill seeks to pursue. Secondly, the idea that it can be accessed is one that we all support. We also recognise that the range of circumstances for which access can be provided will vary, and that is certainly something that will be discussed at greater length.

The other thing that this legislation does is extend the lawful scope of the reasons for which the database is accessed beyond a fairly narrow definition at the moment—that is, to lessen a serious or imminent threat—to a broader definition of an emergency which enables its use for warning purposes. The Attorney-General’s role, as the Commonwealth go-to person in relation to gaining access, is to make sure that there is a legitimate need for an emergency service responder to have access and that the proper safeguards are in place to make sure this valuable database, which is a very crucial database, is not used for other purposes, either within the agencies themselves or by secondary disclosure. There are criminal penalties of up to two years imprisonment for inappropriate disclosure, which I think is entirely appropriate.

The thing that we need to talk about, though, is how it will be used. The integrated public number database, as I said, is a crucial input to an emergency warning system, but there is work to be done to make an early warning system operational. As many in this parliament know, and as members of the public are aware, this has been a subject of some debate for a number of years. What is at the heart of this is just how to use it. Since 2004, when the previous government, through COAG and other avenues, thought about making sure that this database was available and that work progressed on the establishment of a nationally consistent early warning system, there has been some discussion and some disagreement about what that system should look like, how it is managed and how it is paid for. What we in this parliament all agree on, though, is that this system is needed. I believe we all support the idea of a nationally consistent approach, and we all believe that those involved should get on with it. In my view, and from discussions with the Attorney-General, there probably is a pile of documentation in Commonwealth and state departments that you could barely climb over about the difficulties in getting what is essentially a perfectly simple, straightforward idea into operation. There is a need for, I would say, mutual adjustment, greater collaboration and a greater urgency in overcoming a number of technical and, in some cases, not terribly significant difficulties in giving effect to the goals that this database seeks to pursue.

I believe that there is goodwill on all sides of this parliament and across the country to get on with that work, and I urge officials and those in positions of authority to go about that collaborative work to make it happen. The Commonwealth is rightly ensuring that it cannot be seen to be holding up that work, and this bill seeks to make sure that a key input is available. But more work is required. I endorse the remarks in the second reading speech, delivered by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, pointing out the urgent need to get on with the implementation and the bringing into operation of an early warning system. The bill canvasses a number of things—and quite rightly so—within the Commonwealth jurisdiction. I have touched on the issue of having the database available, the need to broaden the circumstances under which it can be lawfully used and the way in which privacy and other important safeguards are put in place. It also takes account of what we can learn from the use of the database by requiring those who exercise the database to activate some kind of telephonically based emergency warning to report on their experiences both to the Attorney-General and to the Australian Communications and Media Authority. That second element with the Australian Communications and Media Authority recognises that the telecommunications infrastructure is at the heart of bringing this idea into operation. The way in which an early warning system is developed and activated can have enormous bearing on the way in which our telecommunications systems function. In fact, the telecommunications infrastructure itself needs to be taken into account in the design of those systems.

The Liberal-National Party strongly support this bill, and we offer our assistance, our cooperation and our support for the goals it seeks to pursue. But it is not just about the work of this parliament. Earlier, I touched on the history of this matter and how it dates back to COAG discussions in 2004. Even at that time, the idea of having the database available was overwhelmingly supported by those whom the restrictions involved, but it was also recognised that there was some work still to be done on implementing a nationally consistent system. The COAG documentation from the April 2004 meeting recognises that natural disasters were investigated—the way in which we as a nation could respond to them—and, in large part, this was prompted by bushfire mitigation and management reporting after the horrendous fires in Canberra. What we have seen is that these bushfire threat warnings were recognised as being able to add something to the tool kit available to the emergency responders and that the goal of having some kind of standardised emergency warning system was something that should be pursued. The structure of that system, though, needed much more development, and the expert input was welcomed and taken on board.

We have seen some discussion of the way in which various government agencies would bring their input to the task—the way those responding to threats would bring their expertise to recognising where a danger may exist—and then what the nature of the warning should look like. We have heard how the Bureau of Meteorology and other agencies had input that was also crucial in the formulation of responses, including not only the need to activate a ban and its character but some standardisation of the advice that is provided so that people receiving it know what to do. There was a shared commitment to move forward through the Australian Emergency Management Committee to develop draft guidelines to use for a standard emergency warning signal when lives and properties are threatened. Some time has elapsed and the Attorney-General—in fact, attorneys-general from both sides of this parliament—has shared with me the recognition that quite an amount of interaction followed from that day.

Where we had got to in 2008 was a need to really move things forward. The proposition of a nationally consistent community emergency warning system was again recognised as being the desirable way forward, and some of the differing points of view from state and territory agencies were again aired, the issue being that we really needed to get on with it. As late as October 2008, COAG again signalled that there was some urgency in moving forward and again referred to a nationally consistent telephone based community emergency warning system. That nationally consistent system is the goal. This bill makes available a key input to achieving that goal, but we in this parliament should recognise that more work is required and give our support and our encouragement to those state and territory and other officials who are involved in the development of that work. There are some differences in views across the continent about what that system should look like and how it should work. But we all share the view that we need to get on with it, and this bill before the parliament represents a clear statement that all that the Commonwealth is able to do is being done and that we need to collaborate with other jurisdictions to achieve the goal of a nationally consistent early warning system.

The devastating bushfires in Victoria are a tragic reminder of the havoc that can be wrought by nature. We are firmly of the view that all steps should be taken by all levels of government to reduce the risk of such devastation occurring again and to make sure that people are as well prepared as they can be to deal with the disasters, emergencies and risks that may confront them. We on the coalition side again express our deep sympathy to the victims of the bushfire crisis and reassure the Australian public that we will do all we can to assist the communities to rebuild and recover.

In addition, we need to make it clear that there is a bipartisan commitment in the Com-monwealth parliament to get on with the work of putting this emergency warning system in place. Since these most recent horrific disasters there have been further public statements in support for the idea of a national early warning system and its important role in communicating to people not only the risks that they may be exposed to but—hopefully—the behaviours that we feel those potentially affected should undertake. This bill does not go into the detail of that system, but I put on record the coalition’s view that developing that system and making it operational is something we all need to work collaboratively toward.

We know that there have been some examples of systems being trialled in jurisdictions across Australia. In my own state of Victoria—and I should recognise that Victoria has been one of the strongest advocates for a nationally consistent warning system—that sentiment has been put into effect by trialling a fixed phone line system in 2005 and by more recent testing looking at other technologies. I know that Western Australia has also been actively pursuing a system which the Western Australian government believes suits its purposes. Through those trial exercises a number of obstacles have been identified—they can and need to be overcome.

One of the things that we are also mindful of is the recent hot spell in South Australia, where again we saw an example of the system being utilised. The South Australian government collaborated with at least one of the carriers, Telstra, to send a one-off heat stress message that was distributed by SMS. Many people in this parliament would be aware that extreme heat events can cause the risk of heat stress or heat injury which can be fatal or extraordinarily debilitating. A message was put out to mobile phones via SMS in South Australia as a community service and as a public health initiative.

In that exercise Telstra collated data about mobile phones that had reported to its base stations over the preceding couple of days. That was one way of collecting data not linked to the physical address for which a service is billed but actually trying to take account of the mobility of the Australian community and the mobile phone technology which may see someone in a far different part of this vast country or in another part of the state, well away from where the billing address may be recorded for their mobile phone. The system actually soaked up those numbers and then used that collection of mobile phones reporting to Telstra’s base stations to send out this public health message. That seems a good idea. What we do know though is that in some cases people were well outside South Australia. There were reports of heat stress warnings being received by people in other countries, and there was one example that I am particularly familiar with where that message did not come through until seven or eight hours later and was received in the middle of the night when most of the heat stress risk had passed.

These are some practical examples that need to be recognised and factored into the planning for a nationally consistent system. But this bill itself does not claim or seek to set up that system holus-bolus; it seeks to ensure that a crucial input is available, which is this IPND—a master telephone database for telephony devices, both landline and mobile, linked to their billing address—and I have touched on an example of where that may present some shortcomings.

The coalition has been actively pursuing the early warning system and has, as I illustrated earlier, sought to give effect to that goal through COAG. But the national system remains the goal, notwithstanding the good work and the progress being made by individual states and territories. The idea of recognising the different telephone technologies is something that needs to be addressed, particularly as we saw with these recent bushfires in my state of Victoria, where often there are areas frequented by visitors—daytrippers and the like—whose billing address for their fixed line or their mobile service is well and truly away from the areas of concern. Indeed, I recounted some of the story of a personal friend, David, in the parliament earlier. He was at his farm in Yarck and feeling very isolated in that the mobile phone system would not carry voice calls. We were sending him information via text message, and that would work its way through, but the congestion on the mobile phone system seemed to be an impediment. That is one of the reasons why ACMA needs to be involved in this exercise. Having a mass broadcast message go out over the telephony system risks clogging up that system for emergency 000 calls, and ensuring that the 000 emergency response calls can still find their way through what may be a very congested telecommunications system is something that needs to be taken into account in a design sense and also in making the idea operational. That is why I welcome and recognise ACMA’s valuable input in that role.

The other thing that we need to talk about is different kinds of messaging. This system is often characterised as an electronic doorknock or a reverse 000 system—or a reverse 911 system, as it is described in the United States. If you are in your home and you have a fixed-line service and the infrastructure supports the use of that fixed line then it will serve some purpose. But, as we have seen with recent events, particularly in high-fire-risk areas where there may be shortcomings in the telecommunications system anyway, relying on a single technology and hoping that it has the reach and the range that is needed is something that certainly needs to be revisited. That is why there is a need for the collaboration that I referred to earlier, not just between the governments of the Commonwealth, states and territories and their agencies but between the many other service providers, including the ABC, whose valuable contribution has been referred to by colleagues in this place as part of the condolence motion.

The other question to touch on is what constitutes an emergency. We have had vivid examples in recent weeks of fire threat, and people would of course automatically see that as a circumstance that would warrant a warning notification. Floods, cyclones and the like are other examples. I note that other countries’ systems—for example, codeRed in the United States—actually go further to talk about hazardous chemical leaks, missing children, issues around explosions or even an ongoing criminal event that represents a risk to people. Those systems can then be used for other purposes. That is why there is a need to have a conversation and sort out the differences between the states and territories over just what constitutes the kind of emergency that warrants the notification and what that notification would look like so that the receivers of that information actually know what is expected of them in light of that advice.

I draw from my involvement in chairing the Australian delegation on the Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system. We went to Thailand just days after that horrendous tragedy and saw not only how important it is to get the technology right but also how important it is to get the art of communication right—that is, communication conveying meaning. The recipient needs to know what to do and how to make sense of the messages they receive. That was seen as equally important as getting the message out there so that the community’s behaviour was informed and activated by the message. So any kind of comprehensive system needs to take its audience into consideration so that when a warning is put out people know what it means. If there are escalations in warnings, people need to know what each one represents. To support that notification system we need public education and advice about what they mean.

We can look to other areas within our own country—for example, the very extensive system in downtown Sydney. That functionality enables voice communication and the like and very explicit and situationally relevant advice for an area of this vast continent. That degree of sophistication is helpful, but it obviously has with it some very significant cost implications. Trying to get a nationally consistent system that fits the purpose for our continent and the circumstances in which we may need to exercise it needs to be worked through very carefully.

I would again like to acknowledge the Victorian Emergency Services Commissioner, Bruce Esplin. He has been very consistent about the need for a nationally consistent system and the need, as recognised by the Attorney-General, for a national dialogue to bring about the practices that would accompany that system. I recognise the Victorian government’s ongoing work and commitment to this goal—a goal which we at least have clarity on through this bill today.

Even as recently as the last few days in Senate estimates we have again seen a reaffirmation that a more integrated national approach to emergency management or a national emergency plan to deal with catastrophic disasters would optimise efforts and address fundamental gaps such as the lack of an effective arrangement to deliver community warnings. Again, there is this national consistency theme emerging and a recognition that the telecommunications network is a part of that. In the government’s second reading speech in support of this bill, it has hung out the carrot that, if such national consistency can emerge, additional resources will be made available to help put in place those arrangements. That is something that the opposition welcomes. Again, we reiterate our encouragement to those involved in the detail and in the dialogue of setting up a nationally consistent system. We urge them to move forward thoughtfully to achieve that goal.

The other issues that emerge are about operation management. In recent weeks I have read with interest how in Georgia in the United States questions are being asked about why a system like the one described, which was in place in the counties affected by a tornado, was not actually activated. Those issues around the operation and management of the system are very important.

The other issue is the technology that is utilised—and we have talked about that briefly and the need for the IPND to be a key input—and the need to look beyond the billing address link to the fixed-line and mobile service and to recognise that mobile phones may be a long way from their home. That is something that needs to be addressed in the design of the system. My friend and colleague the member for Gippsland in his contribution on 23 February touched on just how important reliable information is to people faced with the dangers of an emergency like the bushfire that caused such devastation in his electorate and how there is a need to integrate that with other communications technologies and devices. The member for Mayo in his contribution on the condolence motion again talked about the urgency of getting in place a nationally consistent early warning system and just what kind of conditions might lead to its activation. My friend and colleague, for whom the parliament shares a great admiration, the member for McEwen also made reference to the need to get on with developing and implementing this system, and quite rightly drew attention to the capability of the communications infrastructure to deliver the messages that are put out over that system.

I wonder whether it is timely for the government, given the difficulty it is having with the National Broadband Network tender, to revisit the OPEL project, which I think would add something in terms of the capability of the communications system in the areas that are currently underserviced by telecommunications infrastructure. I think that the OPEL project would be an important step forward in making sure that the hardware at least is in these areas to support the implementation of the system.

Finally, in the few minutes I have available I want to touch on the other part of the bill. The bill includes a second part beyond the IPND’s use for emergency management systems; it will be available for some of the call-routing technologies that are currently used in the phone system. This is for location-dependent carriage services where the location of a caller is recognised and then, because of that location, the call is routed to a particular destination. Currently, that behaviour is going on but there is some uncertainty about the lawful basis for it, in that there is a licence provision saying it is appropriate but not an explicit legislative provision to authorise its use. The bill has a part that clarifies that point. The legislation respects the fact that the current arrangements provide that unlisted, silent and mobile numbers are not part of that arrangement. That respect will continue, but the bill does clarify those points.

With those remarks, I again emphasise the coalition’s support for this bill. The Liberal and National parties are very keen to see an emergency management notification and warning system operationalised in a nationally consistent way across the continent. We offer our support to the government and whatever assistance we can provide. We urge those involved to overcome some of the territorial issues, technical debates and jurisdictional impediments. We need the best of all of us to get this system in place and get it in place urgently. We all recognise the benefits that would flow from it. I commend the bill to the House.

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. I welcome the bipartisan agreement that we have in this House on this bill because of the importance and the nature of its composition, particularly in light of recent events concerning the bushfires in Victoria and the floods in Northern Queensland. The Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009 amends the Telecommunications Act 1997 to allow information contained in the integrated public number database, known as IPND, to be disclosed for the provision of telephony based emergency warnings and for the supply of location dependent carriage services, known as LDCSs.

Emergencies by their very nature are unexpected. Not everyone is listening to the radio, watching TV or surfing the internet. Calling people is the most direct way to contact as many people as possible to provide the information they need in a time of emergency. The integrated public number database is an industry-wide database of all residential and business phone numbers, both listed and unlisted, and associated subscriber information, including name and address information. The IPND was established and is maintained by Telstra as a condition of its carrier licence. Given the personal nature of the information contained in the IPND, such as telephone numbers, names and addresses, the access to the information in the IPND is strictly limited under the Telecommunications Act. This bill takes privacy seriously.

Section 276 of the Telecommunications Act effectively prohibits the disclosure or use of the IPND information by carriers, carriage service providers or their contractors. An exception to this prohibition permits the release of IPND data on a case-by-case basis, subject to Telstra, the manager of the IPND, coming to a belief on reasonable grounds that the release is reasonably necessary to prevent or lessen a serious or imminent threat to the life or the health of a person. This information is fair, reasonable and responsible. This is not only for a serious emergency; it will allow for emergency warning systems to be tested. This will allow emergency management organisations to be ready to issue telephone based warnings in response to smaller emergencies, such as chemical spills, and larger disasters, such as the recent Victorian bushfires, the floods in Queensland or cyclones in Western Australia or the Northern Territory. In times of emergency, we need to be able to communicate and contact people. Often time is the issue, so a quick response to a situation can be of great benefit to our emergency service workers for the safety of the rescued and also the rescuers.

Information obtained from the IPND may only be used for the purpose of providing warnings about specific emergency events. It is anticipated that these messages will be recorded voice messages providing appropriate advice to telephone subscribers about the nature of the emergency and any recommended actions that are required. A very important issue in this, however, is the protection of the millions of names, addresses and telephone numbers that are listed in the IPND. These will be both listed numbers that are in the telephone book and the unlisted numbers of people wishing to keep their identity and location secret for a range of personal, safety and professional reasons. I stress that this bill has strong privacy requirements and reporting obligations, and penalties of up to two years imprisonment for any unauthorised use or disclosure of the data. This means those who receive information from the IPND and then misuse it—for example, by using it to locate someone for a personal reason or selling the information to a telemarketer—are breaking the law and will potentially go to jail for up to two years.

The government will know when a communication event occurs. Whenever an emergency warning is activated using the IPND information, emergency management persons will be required to report to the Attorney-General and the Australian Communications and Media Authority, known as ACMA, as soon as practicable after each disclosure occurs. Details of these reports will include the nature and the location of the emergency, the number of telephone numbers that were disclosed, the date the disclosure occurred, the number of persons to whom the information was disclosed and the reason it was justified. The intention of these reporting requirements is to allow for any unauthorised use or disclosure of the IPND information by any person to be identified as soon as possible and to enable enforcement action to be undertaken.

In the light of recent events, there has been a lot of soul-searching, although, even with the best intentions in the world to contact people—via telephone, via radio, via the internet—unfortunately it does not guarantee that there will be no loss of life. But we can truly say that, by being prepared, giving fair warning and doing everything we can, we have done as much as possible to prevent any loss of life and limit damage to property.

I was privileged this week to have a presentation from the Bureau of Meteorology. They showed me the satellite photographs of 4 February, looking down on Australia from space, and you could see the huge plumes of the Victorian fires. That was three days before Black Saturday. It is pleasing to know that the Bureau of Meteorology really is owned by the Australian community. I was pleased to find out that there are over 7,000 volunteers across this nation who regularly and willingly supply weather details to the bureau on a consistent, regular and reliable basis to help the bureau in their forecasting and prediction of weather events. That really is the spirit of this nation. When we think about the volunteers who have gone to the Victorian fires—those who have come from overseas and those who have come from all over Australia out of human compassion, kindness and motivation to help their fellow Australians who have suffered so much—it truly has been heart-rending and moving.

The sad thing is that there were certain areas that did not have phone coverage. I know—and I know it is in the hearts of members on both sides of this House—that we are going to do everything we can to rectify that. It is pleasing to know that so many volunteers have mobilised, and part of that mobilisation is the communication through media. I am privileged to know a member of the emergency services here in Canberra who today has given up the opportunity to go to Queensland for his nephew’s 21st birthday party. He is going to spend four days with his volunteer colleagues fighting the fires, which are predicted to get worse this weekend. That is the dedication—that is the heart—of the Australian spirit that is embodied in our volunteers who mobilise selflessly to give help and to help others.

As I said previously, even with the best intentions and the best warning systems in the world—and God knows we need them—we cannot prevent some disasters, like earthquakes, causing widespread devastation. Of course, when we say earthquakes, here in Australia we think of Newcastle. There are many lessons to be learnt there. Also, when the tsunami hit, even with all the warning buoys that are out in the ocean that monitor temperature and wind and wave movements, even with all of those warning systems, it was still difficult to prevent so much loss of life. I recall that, up in Queensland, in the seat of Dawson, a number of years ago a warning was issued to the Premier at the time, Peter Beattie, that there had been an earthquake under the ocean and that a tsunami-like event was going to hit the coast of Queensland. Needless to say, that put everybody on high alert, but the event did not happen. It is better to be warned and for the event not to occur than to have no warning at all.

We as a government and as a nation need to do some serious cost-benefit analysis in investing in our warning systems and services, particularly investing in the Bureau of Meteorology. With the Bureau of Meteorology, along with all the systems that we have available on the internet and the radio, I can honestly say that we have tried and done the best we can to give the best warning. I fully support this bill.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As previous speakers have informed the House, the coalition supports the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. It will bring benefits to the community by giving people warning of pending disastrous events. However, I have to say that, on a scale of one to 10, there is other legislation that this parliament must address that would rate higher and would have prevented the loss of all of these lives. Perhaps we can get a signal out to people. I hope they will be better than I am at responding immediately to all the SMSs that I receive. I often have to catch up with them two or three days after the event, which in this case would not have done my health much good. But the real question is: should we be warning people of an event that guarantees death and destruction of property or should we be taking steps in this parliament to see that it does not happen? To raise this issue at this point in time is just part of the conspiracy of state based authorities and their vertically integrated fire suppression groups. Once there used to be the bush fire brigades, the fire brigades in the urban areas, and environmentalists over there somewhere. Now that has been vertically integrated and, what is more, in the vertical integration, the environment departments run the shop. They know nothing about putting out fires; they are not even very approving of putting out fires or addressing the fundamental issues. I have with me some very comprehensive information and media comments, over decades, that address this problem.

Having now got through the tragedy of the fire, the valedictories in this place and the memorials, the defensive structure, the smokescreen—excuse the pun—is up to protect the bureaucracies whose public policy has failed, and failed thousands of people, and to divert public opinion away from the one and only thing that will fix the problem. It is interesting that suddenly we are talking about communications. There is nothing wrong with that, but why should we have to be able to inform people about a wildfire—a ‘nuclear’ event—if we have taken provision to make sure it cannot happen?

Then we get into building by-laws. We should remember that a lot of the houses that were blown away on this occasion, and on the occasion some years ago here in Canberra, had survived previous bushfires. Bushfires are, admittedly, part of the Australian ecology. But the houses did not burn down before and they did not blow away. I watched a replay here in the parliament of the ABC’s Q&A program. A historian from Marysville, a lady of some capacity to observe and know, said that there were no flames in this instance in Marysville; everything went black and the houses started blowing up. It was not a case of the fire jumping from this tree to that tree to something else and then catching a house on fire; the houses blew up. There is only one reason for that: the deliberately created fuel that was in the surrounding forests. It created a ‘nuclear’ event, and the heat preceded the flames.

We are talking about building systems and bunkers. We are talking about everything. This is very carefully orchestrated by those who do not want to take the blame and who do not want to change their policy. It is quite interesting that we are talking about building codes all of a sudden. Of course we should talk about building codes, but we do not have to go over the top if we have a safe forest environment. Some people had protective bunkers and survived, but some had them and died. On the matter of arson, of course it is to be condemned, but we will catch the last arsonist the day we will catch the last drug dealer. It is a fact of the problem; it is a tragedy. Opposite my house there is some open country, with only a row of houses intervening. Last week a bloke went out on a hot day to mow his lawn and he started a fire, which took me by surprise. Is he an arsonist because he chose to mow his lawn at lunchtime in a bit of spare time? Not one word do we hear.

Fran Bailey, the member for McEwen, got up in this place the other day and said, ‘We have got to have fuel reduction,’ and the Prime Minister wobbled all over the place about it. Let me tell you, in the Canberra fires so did the then Prime Minister. The states get them frightened. The states have made bad mistakes that have killed people, yet they are already putting up—excuse the pun again—a smokescreen so as not to do anything else. Consequently, the parliament should be dealing today with legislation that obliges the states and private forestry owners—everybody affected—to keep their forests a safe environment.

It is going to cost them a lot of money if, all of a sudden, they have 80 bulldozers working somewhere. Russell Broadbent said to me last night that the fire front in Victoria was 270 kilometres long and that if the weather reached the intensity that is predicted it would be goodness knows how long. We were never allowed to touch a tree, yet there are 80 bulldozers working in what is left of the Victorian forests. Four hundred thousand hectares are dead and any metre of that soil, I can tell you, will have been sterilised. There will be no seeds left after these intensive fires to allow regeneration.

‘Save the forests,’ they tell us. ‘You have to save them from those dreadful foresters; they cut down a few trees.’ The damage that has been done to the health of the Victorian forests in the last fortnight could not have been achieved by men with chainsaws in a century. Suddenly it is okay to push over trees all over the place for containment lines. The spotting in the last fire was preceding the flames by 20 kilometres, so what sort of a containment line do you need for that? They are always talking up their containment lines; they will not talk about the fundamentals.

I refer the parliament—and I hope those present will get a copy and read it—to Peter Clack’s book Firestorm: Trial by Fire, which is the story of the Canberra fires. It tells it all. Above all, it tells us how the first integrated bureaucracy came to be formed, here in Canberra. A Liberal senator was substantially responsible for it, and you can work out who it was if you like. The president of the country fires section said:

When Humphries became minister with the Liberal Party winning government in 1995, Jeffery tried to undo the amalgamation. ‘I warned him this was going to happen. I begged him but he wouldn’t listen.’ Before the collapse in the council’s role—

that is, the rural firefighting council—

rural landholders had radios, pumps and other equipment that were part of the suppression force. They were discarded and phased out.—

because the environmental groups got control of the system. He went on to say:

The organisation—

meaning the Rural Fire Service—

had to be independent of the bureaucrats, but it went downhill. The way they have ignored the Bush Fire Brigade, they have used parks people over experienced bushfire captains. When I wanted to burn off, a parks officer rang me up and said she wanted to come out and talk it over. It held us up for an hour. It meant it got very hot and we nearly lost half the place.

In 1961 in Western Australia we probably had the first of these ‘nuclear’ events, because European forest management policy was much the same as has been promoted in recent times by green activists. The government of the day did not have to go seeking preferences from minor parties and they introduced the first program of what is known as prescribed burning. For years and years approximately 20 per cent of the forest—whether it was used for forest harvesting or whether it was a reserve—had prescribed burning. The undergrowth was burnt out in a cool burn in exactly the same way Aboriginals had done it for centuries. After the war and with the advent of green activism the campaigns started: ‘You can’t have smoke blowing from these fires. People will get asthma.’ I bet a few of those who died would wish they had only had asthma. The campaigns started and what happened is just as is described in the book—the Perth bureaucracy and the environmental bureaucracy took over.

Some years ago a firefighter and forest manager said to me: ‘We are experienced people, we have our 20 per cent per annum planning for prescribed burning in the forests of WA and we wake up on the perfect morning with all the indicators right for a cool burn. But can we go out and light the fire? No.’ It is five o’clock—they are early risers down there—but they have to wait for the boss to turn up in Perth at nine o’clock. They say, ‘Please, sir, can we start a fire?’ And he says: ‘Well, have you checked this? Have you checked that? Have you checked something else?’ Suddenly it is lunchtime and, to quote Mr Jeffery here in Canberra, it is too late, too dangerous. Consequently, that 20 per cent in Western Australia has dropped to eight per cent.

We are told that it is all too hard—that is another greenies’ defence. ‘Yes, we do not disapprove, but it is very difficult, you know, and it has got to be done scientifically,’ and I will get back to the science in a moment. The reality is that in New South Wales—I have quoted this in parliament previously—the forestry department, in the areas for which they remained responsible, were achieving 20 per cent of cool burns each year. As this was transferred to National Parks and Wildlife in New South Wales, they got that down to 0.5 per cent. Look at the bombs that you would be aware of, Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, that have occurred in New South Wales. Kings Park has been burnt so often it cannot recover.

The reality is that all of the criticism of prescribed burning is an ass. The member for Canning reminded me to check my records of a very good piece of Western Australian research using the grass tree. It has a very technical name but we mostly call it a black boy. They are very ancient trees. Some are hundreds or thousands of years old. They grow very slowly. These people went and looked at the rings in one of these ancient trees; they actually ground off one side of it. They are called black boys because they respond to every fire and their debris, their dead leaves, burn off. It leaves a ring on the trees and you can measure the fires. And you think the Aboriginal people did not know the science of our forests. A very interesting article came into my possession. Josephine Flood states in her book Archaeology of the Dreamtime:

One of the Aborigines’ most important artefacts was the one that is largely invisible to the archaeologist: fire. Much of the vegetation encountered by early white settlers in Australia was not natural but artificial: an Aboriginal artefact created by thousands of years of burning the countryside … Aborigines never put out their fire.

That was confirmed, as I will point out, by Governor Phillip. In December 1642, at the north end of Storm Bay, Tasmania, Abel Tasman wrote:

Amongst the trees, two were remarked whose thickness was two, or two and a half fathoms—

a fathom is six foot, nearly two metres—

and the first branches from sixty to sixty-five feet above the ground … the country was covered with trees; but so thinly scattered, that one might see everywhere to a great distance amongst them … Several of the trees were much burnt at the foot …

It was a parkland environment. Why were the trees so big and so healthy? Because they had space. In this campaign of ‘save the forests’ we let them grow closer and closer together, and anybody knows that if you have got to stir up the fire in the lounge room you push the logs together. That is the other contributing factor. William de Vlamingh sailed up the west coast of Western Australia, right opposite Perth, in January 1697 in the heat of summer. He wrote:

No men were seen but they observed many smokes …

He went all the way to Geraldton, at the northern end of my electorate, and all the way up. In January, the Aboriginals were carrying out burning. Captain Cook, one day’s sailing north of Cape Howe, in the Bega area, wrote:

In the afternoon we saw smoke in several places by which we knew the country to be inhabited.

           …         …         …

After this we made an excursion into the country which we found diversified with wood, lawns and marshes; the woods are free from underwood of every kind and the trees are at such a distance from one another that the whole Country or at least part of it might be cultivated without being oblig’d to cut down a single tree.

I could go on. I mentioned that Governor Phillip made similar remarks. That was the nature of Australia and that was the nature of our forests—forests that became a huge economic resource in the early years of colonisation. Jarrah was cut down in Western Australia to pave the roads of London and of course was used for sleepers under half the railway lines of the world. We were told that if you do that you destroy the biodiversity of the forest. The forest was in perfect health when we arrived. Eventually in Western Australia we learnt the lesson of returning to the Aboriginal practices, which are still being stared down. And this is the threat that we are not addressing.

Back in my period as Minister for Forestry and Conservation, an article about fires appeared, on Monday, 23 April 2001, stating:

The Australian Conservation Foundation attacked Mr Tuckey’s stance, noting that native trees were naturally fire retardant and protecting them was the best means of encouraging local fauna.

I bet the people around Marysville think they are fire retardant! I add that, at the time, I seriously thanked the Conservation Foundation, because in future all we had to do was get a heap of woodchips and dump them on the fire and it would go out, because they are retardant! What body with any credibility in Australia could say that? As I have said, they are ducking and diving now because their policies murdered people, and what have they done? They are saying: ‘Yes, I heard Flannery on the television the other day. Yes, I agree with hazard reduction, but it is very difficult.’ It was not difficult for 300,000 Aborigines—without bulldozers, without helicopters, without anything. They could burn in the middle of summer. Why? Because they constantly maintained that situation.

This government has got to legislate to control all owners of forests so that they maintain those forests as safe environments. The member for McEwen made the point: until they do it, give them no money; give them nothing. The families of the 200-plus people who are dead and the thousands of people who have lost their homes deserve better than having us dancing around the edges on this issue. No fuel, no fire. Then you do not need special houses, then you do not need bunkers and then you do not need to be warned, because the fire is no threat to you personally. They will still exist and they will exist at a level that is pretty impressive, but it will not take people’s lives or blow their houses away, and normal protective suppression measures will do. In that fire, the estimate on the index was 100. Firefighters have got to get out on that index at 2.5. So any of that is a waste of time. The tragedy of me having a ministerial council and being told by state ministers that they were going to do nothing— (Time expired)

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. Before I get into the substance of the bill, with your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I welcome students in the public gallery from St Pius X Primary School in Dubbo. We really hope that you enjoy your visit to parliament. You are hearing in this chamber a very important debate relating to the establishment of an early warning system for natural disasters. Such a system has obviously received some prominence given the tragic bushfires which occurred in Victoria a few weeks ago.

There has been considerable media attention on the idea of putting in place an early warning system whereby people who reside in an affected area might be rung and provided with a warning about whatever the emergency is and instructions about what they ought to do in relation to that emergency. From the outset it should be said that the Victorian bushfires and the tragedy of that event ought to provide a significant inspiration for all of us in relation to dealing with this issue and to ensuring that this measure, along with every other measure that can be put in place to ensure that a tragedy of that kind never happens again, is implemented as quickly as possible.

The idea of an early warning system is not a new one. It was first kicked around the halls of the Commonwealth government back in 2004. When this government came to power it was a matter that we wanted to pursue with significant priority. In 2008 we referred it to the Council of Australian Governments. The states, the territories and, of course, the Commonwealth spent much of last year trying to reach an agreement about such a system.

The reason we need to have an agreement about such an early warning system is that a number of areas of government fit into it. It is within the sphere of the Commonwealth government to legislate and regulate telecommunications, and the law surrounding telephone numbers is within the purview of the Commonwealth government. On the other hand, emergency responses are largely, although not exclusively, the responsibility of states. Indeed, within states and territories there are very different rules, procedures and agencies which handle emergency responses. So it is actually quite a complex public policy landscape in which we need to work in order to develop the early warning system that we are describing.

It is very important that we work through the issues and reach an agreement about how a system would work. Were we to put in place an early warning system that we had not got right and to suddenly put a significant number of calls into an affected area, there is the potential that we could bring down the telecommunications system and, with it, the 000 number, which would be very counterproductive. So we actually do need to work through the details of what is a pretty complex scheme, and that was being done throughout last year.

There is also complexity at a Commonwealth level. It is the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy who is responsible for the regulation of the telecommunications system. But, to the extent that the Commonwealth does deal with emergency responses, that is handled in the Attorney-General’s Department. So the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the Attorney-General were both working throughout last year on how we could engage at a federal level with the implementation of an early warning system.

In November of last year an agreement was reached about how to go forward in implementing an early warning system across our country. Since that time, the Attorney-General, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the states and territories have been working on the details of how the system would operate, which leads us to the introduction of this bill into this House today.

In order to describe the bill, it is important to explain at the outset the broad basis of such an early warning system. The integrated public number database was established by Telstra and is maintained as a condition of its licence. This database contains all the telephone numbers in Australia, both listed and unlisted. It also contains the names of the people to whom those numbers relate, as well as their addresses. This is clearly very sensitive information, so the Telecommunications Act as it stands now provides for very strict rules to ensure that this information is not disclosed for any improper use and that the privacy of this information is strictly maintained. One exception to that currently exists under the act, and that is where Telstra is of the belief that it is reasonably necessary to disclose some of the information on the database in order to prevent or lessen serious or imminent threats to the life or health of a person.

The bill that we are discussing in essence seeks to broaden that exception to apply to not only situations of emergencies and natural disasters but also the situation of testing and building the system for emergencies, which stands to reason. It is important that you do that so that, in the event there is an emergency and you need to deploy the system, it is ready to deploy. The system might apply to very small emergencies—for example, a chemical spill in a very discrete geographical area—or it might apply to much broader emergencies, such as the Victorian bushfires that we experienced a few weeks ago.

That is a very basic description of how the system would work, and the specifics of the bill are as follows. Under this bill, the data on the integrated public number database will be able to be disclosed to a state or territory emergency service organisation to enable them to instigate a telephone based warning. As I said at the outset, as the arrangements and the agencies from state to state vary considerably, the way in which the bill is constructed is to empower the Commonwealth Attorney-General by legislative instrument to specify which organisations can be the recipients of this data. It may be under this bill that the organisations that receive the data will use it individually or they may work jointly across state borders, depending on the nature of the emergency at hand. Clearly, under this bill the data which is provided to these organisations may only be used for warnings for a specified emergency event. What we are talking about will usually be an automated voice message being rung into a particular area to let people know what the emergency is that is affecting them and what they ought to do in response to it.

There are very strict provisions as part of this bill to protect the privacy of the information which will be disclosed in such an emergency. As I said at the outset, we are talking about very sensitive information—both listed and unlisted numbers. The reasons people might have an unlisted number can vary, but the consequences of their unlisted number becoming public in any way can often be very serious. So anyone who receives information from a database under this bill and then discloses it without authorisation or misuses it in any way will be subject to very strict penalties. Indeed, they will be subject to penalties of a custodial nature. If you receive information as part of this early warning system and you misuse it then you could go to jail.

Whenever an authorised disclosure of information from the integrated public number database occurs under this bill, a report is required to be provided to the Australian Communications and Media Authority. That report must detail the nature of the emergency which was the subject of the warning, the number of people who received that warning and what information about them was provided to the organisation that put the warning in place. Having that strict reporting regime provides an evidentiary base to enable prosecutions to occur if there is ever a misuse of the information. If it turns out that information has leaked from the integrated public number database and there is no report of that then that will immediately alert the authorities that something wrong has occurred and the investigation will be able to commence, leading to a prosecution. That reporting regime is a very important part of the bill. Emergency management persons who are the recipients of this data will also be required to provide annual reports to the Australian Communications and Media Authority as well as to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Importantly, the bill also provides a requirement that reasonable steps be taken to ensure that both the disclosure and the use of the information from the database will not affect the normal operations of the telecommunications system. This goes to a point that I made at the opening. It is very important that, as a number of inbound calls to a particular region may occur as part of a warning, this does not bring down the system and with it the 000 number, preventing outbound calls from people within that area to the 000 number. Again, this is a very important component of the bill.

The bill is principally about the early warning system, as I have described, but it does do one other piece of housekeeping. Currently, there is a practice whereby some data from the integrated public number database is provided to location dependent carriage services. These are services which provide for the automatic routing of calls to a particular office of a company based on the geography of where that call was made. The kinds of companies which use this particular method are, for example, pizza chains and cab companies. Which office you are connected to will depend on where you are ringing from. This practice is not explicitly dealt with under the Telecommunications Act. It is implicit within the act that that limited use of the database can occur in order to allow this service to occur. This bill will make it explicit in the Telecommunications Act that the use of the database in this way is allowable.

Returning to the main thrust of this bill, the bill will provide the legislative basis at a Commonwealth level for the implementation of an early warning system for emergencies and natural disasters within Australia. I think it is, along with a range of other important public policies, a significant legacy to occur. It is not just from the Victorian bushfires, but I think they ought to be an inspiration to us in dealing with issues of this kind. Certainly the Victorian bushfires make it clear that early warning systems of this kind are so important. It is so important that we develop them. That is why this bill is so important, and it is fantastic that it has bipartisan support in this place. I very much commend the bill to the House.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join the member for Corio in his support of the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009 and acknowledge that the coalition wishes to cooperate with the government to secure the passage of the legislation as soon as possible. We have all been struck by the images of disaster and the impact of the bushfires across Victoria. We have had some impassioned speeches from members of all sides as they have reflected on the significance of this event where more than 2,000 homes were lost and more than 200 people perished. Many people have spoken in the aftermath of this epic tragedy about the speed and the magnitude of these fires and the lack of warning they had of the fire front approaching them. I think it is important that we as members of parliament do whatever we can to facilitate this bill as soon as possible. I do not see it as a silver bullet or a solution to all the problems we face in relation to the future management and prevention of bushfires, but it is another tool we will be able to use to hopefully reduce the impact of these bushfires in the future, particularly the impact on human lives.

The bill does not particularly canvass the proposal of the early warning system, but it is freely acknowledged that it is seen as an important first step in ensuring that state and territory emergency services providers have access to the information that they require to develop the telephone based warning system. The bill amends the Telecommunications Act 1997 to allow access by an emergency management person, as authorised by the Attorney-General, to information contained in the integrated public number database. It is believed that this will help to facilitate the communication of warnings in emergency situations, such as the bushfires which we have just experienced.

Prior to the 2007 federal election I understand the coalition put the issue of an early warning system on the COAG agenda. Emergency agencies have argued for a national system, although differences between the states and territories over a period of time have delayed the establishment of such a system. I think it is a sign of the goodwill of political leaders on all sides that they have put aside any partisanship on this issue and are moving forward in a manner which I believe is constructive and which will have some practical outcomes for the communities which have been affected not only by these bushfires but by the reality that there will be bushfires in the future, which will threaten our homes and our lives.

A number of technical issues remain outstanding with the database. I will not go into the details now; I think the member for Corio has covered them well. The circumstances under which the IPND can be accessed for a warning will be determined, as I said, by the Attorney-General. It is anticipated that ‘an emergency’ will be defined under existing state and territory legislation.

The bill also provides measures to protect personal information contained in the database, including that subscriber names may not be disclosed by the authorised user or by secondary disclosure. These are important considerations with a system of this magnitude. I endorse the position put by the bill that criminal penalties of up to two years imprisonment will apply for misuse of the data, consistent with existing provisions of the Telecommunications Act. Regardless of the passage of the bill, the coalition does note that the regulations will permit state and territory access to the necessary information immediately, and that is as it should be.

In relation to the broader significance of this bill as a precursor to an early warning system, I would like to make a few comments and feed back to the House some of the information I have received from the fire front and from people at community meetings. Typical of the feedback I have received is an email from a family in Drouin West in the neighbouring seat of McMillan. The family wrote to me and, without divulging the family’s name, I will quote from the email:

I find the need to write to you expressing concern over the lack of warnings available to residents, especially rural residents. Normally, I am at home with my 4 children, and my husband is at work. When I am at home I do not normally have the radio on as I am busy with the children. For the same reason the television is not on. Except for the fact that a neighbor, who normally has no contact with us, bothered to pick up a phone, because they had a member of the family in the CFA and had early warning, there is no way I would know of the danger until it was too late. I’m sure you can understand, that with 4 children (two with a disability), I do not have the luxury of looking out the window to see if there is a fire coming and on this particular day the smoke was going up, before being taken away so even that was not a clue at the time I needed to evacuate. Smoke was of course an issue as the fire became closer but by then it would have been too late to leave.

The email goes on:

There needs to be a faster and more efficient communication system. One that covers the deaf and blind, the elderly, the disabled, the stay-at-home parents, the farmers out in the paddock ... everyone. Please, let this be dealt with urgently.

That is very much feedback from the fire ground, if you like, of a mother. It is probably very typical of a situation in a rural community. She was flat out on that day, 7 February. She had no chance of monitoring the situation and probably had no real inkling of the impending danger in the Drouin West area. I have had similar comments from people in the Gippsland community that they simply did not feel the imminent danger of the fire front and that it was not until the wind changed they realised they might be in a spot of bother. By then, for some, it was too late. Many did flee and successfully got away from the fire front.

The commentary from this mother really reflects the situation we are faced with, where there is an expectation in the community that there will be action on these issues. We need to be mindful that, with that expectation, there is an element of residents becoming more aware—education focused, perhaps—of the circumstances they are living in. We have seen a rapid increase in the number of people relocating to the tree-change areas and the sea-change areas of my electorate in particular. We welcome them with open arms. But we need to ensure that if they have come from a suburban environment they are well aware of the challenges and the potential threats of bushfires during the summer season. We need to be mindful of that in the future.

I have spoken briefly about the technical aspects of this bill, but I think the practical applications of any early warning system will need very careful consideration by all concerned in the implementation phase. It must not be seen as a single solution to the problem. At best, it will be a minor part of a much bigger problem. There are three elements which contribute to these major fire events: a point of ignition, hot windy days and fuel. Quite simply, we will always have points of ignition, whether it be from idiots who light fires, from accidental activity on a farm or from a lightning strike. Similarly, we will always have hot and windy days where the fire risk is off the scale. We cannot do anything about those two circumstances; they are part of the great country we live in. But the one area we can have an impact on is the fuel. We can have a direct impact on the level of fuel and the degree of the intensity of the fires when they do occur.

I fear that we have talked a lot about this issue for many years—decades in fact—and have failed to grasp it properly. The common-sense approach, and the practical feedback from people on the ground, is that we must do more fuel-reduction burning. I have heard many impassioned speeches from members of parliament, but also from residents and emergency services agencies, saying there needs to be a greater prescribed-burning regime, and I refer specifically to the Victorian situation. The high-fuel fires, on extreme weather days, are simply impossible for us to defend. We must do more to reduce the intensity of these fires and buy more time for people. By the time we implement an early warning system, I fear that the horse will have already bolted. Once the fire has started, we are really playing catch-up from then on. The opportunity for us is at the beginning of the process, by reducing the amount of fuel in the environment.

From a Victorian perspective, the chief fire officer, Ewan Waller, is someone whom I not only regard as a personal friend but also hold in the very highest esteem professionally for his career and the contribution he has made to the Victorian public service. I feel a great deal of empathy for Ewan in his position as the chief fire officer responsible for the prescribed burning regime in that I do not think we are providing him with the resources required to carry out the job that is expected of him. Over the past decade in Victoria we have seen a pitiful attempt to reduce the fuel load. We have only burnt in the magnitude of 30,000 to 40,000 hectares per year. I must acknowledge, however, that there has been an increase in the past 12 months to something in excess of 100,000 hectares, which is getting closer to the community expectation of this agency in terms of its fuel reduction effort. I believe we must provide more resources to the agency and to Mr Waller for the work he does to ensure that he can burn on a greater number of days. I completely reject the argument being put that there are so few days on which we can burn safely in Victoria. I believe that there would be far more days on which we could burn if we put resources on the ground to assist in that process. We are going to need to accept that there is an element of risk. If you are burning more frequently, if you are pushing the envelope, so to speak, there will be occasions when there will be escapes, and we need to be tolerant of that and we need to raise the community’s understanding that it is for the good of the community that we have these prescribed burns to reduce the level of fuel in the environment and that it is in their own interests, for the protection of their properties and their families in the future.

That is the feedback that I am receiving from residents on the ground. It has been a constant message for many years, and I believe there are opportunities for us to provide more resources to the agencies and also to engage more with our local CFA brigades in the off season. I fear that we rely on these men and women of the Country Fire Authority in a crisis situation but we do not really assist them or engage with them during the off season, when I believe they are equally as important. It may be an anathema to a lot of people, but there may be opportunities to provide some training wage, some sort of subsidy, directly to the CFA volunteers involved if they are doing this prescribed burning work. There is an expectation due to a strong sense of duty within our CFA volunteers that it is purely a voluntary service. We have a small army of people in Victoria. There are, I think, about 58,000 CFA volunteers who have the skills. They have been trained up, they have the practical knowledge, they have fought on many fire fronts and they also have skills that we could be using during the fire off-season on preventative measures. There may be opportunities for employment associated with that. This would not tarnish their reputation at all as the heroes of our bushfires in terms of their voluntary commitment. However, I think if we are going to expect these agencies to make commitments to these long-campaign fires, it is unrealistic to expect the business community to be relieving their volunteers for all of this work and to expect our volunteers to carry the high significant personal and economic costs. I think there are opportunities to improve the resourcing of our prescribed burning campaigns in conjunction with the trained staff we have within the CFA. In any case, we have a significant problem with the ageing nature of our CFA volunteer workforce, and we need to do more to encourage young people to be involved in the future.

I am sure that the royal commission in Victoria will consider these and many other issues, including the merits of the early warning system which is the substance, I believe, of the bill which is before us today. Just as I referred to the practical issues involved with prevention of bushfires, I believe there are going to be a lot of practical issues that need to be considered as part of our discussion of the early warning system. As I referred to earlier in relation to the correspondent from the seat of McMillan, I do support in principle that there should be better information flow in this emergency situation. That is a key concern for people. They need to know what is going on, and it becomes very difficult for people once the emergency starts. From the Gippsland experience, one of the critical aspects of the last bushfires was that we lost access to our regional ABC radio. It was not across the whole electorate, but in certain patches the transmission went down when the tower at Mount Tassie was exposed to the fire front. As our emergency services broadcaster, we had become accustomed to listening to the ABC as a first point of information. When that transmission tower came under attack, a lot of people were without direct information on the fire front. The telephone based early warning system would complement the ABC emergency services broadcast process, but it would also be exposed to similar threats in making sure that the message gets out to the people who need it the most. Unfortunately a lot of our rural and regional areas are in quite rugged terrain and the mobile phone coverage, for example, can be patchy at best. So there will be issues there in making sure that the people who need the message the most actually receive it. There are going to be practical measures that I am sure will need to be fully discussed in the implementation phase.

The timing of the warning is something that I think will need a great deal of reflection by those who are charged with the management of any system which is introduced. We are going to need a situation in which someone who is close to the fire front will be informing the incident control centre, which can be difficult. There will be issues about who makes the decisions about when to send out a warning and when it is too late to be advising people to leave. They will be significant points of discussion as we move forward with this issue. We need to avoid, of course, the situation of the last-minute rush which proved so fatal in so many of our communities, but I believe it is going to be a very heavy burden of responsibility to fall on someone’s shoulders in relation to these practical issues of who makes those calls in relation to the time to leave and giving information to people about the best course of action. So I do support the early warning system in principle but I think the protocols for the use of any type of system will need to be established very early—and we do not want to be overplaying this as a solution to the bushfire crisis. Just as people do not expect to have a fire tanker at their door, they must not expect a text message giving them precise information on the time to leave and the road to take to safely escape. We cannot create a situation where people become dependent on information which may not even come in some circumstances and is beyond the control of the emergency incident control centres.

I do believe that an early management system does have the potential to save some lives and, if it saves any lives, it is well worth doing. But it should be part of a suite of much bigger reforms. As I said earlier, once the fire has started we are actually playing catch-up from that point onwards. The information and the warnings that are delivered during an event are always going to be important but they must never replace the practical and common-sense steps that we all need to take in terms of preparing our properties, reducing the fuel loads and keeping our roads clear in the event of fires. As I flagged in the condolence motion a week or so ago, the issue of leaving early or defending a well prepared home is going to be one of the pivotal questions as we go forward in our hopes to minimise the impact of bushfires and prevent the loss of life. I think the experience of the past couple of weeks in Victoria has given our community a very harsh dose of reality in terms of our capacity to deal with these fires in situations where we have had such a long build-up of dry weather and fuel on the forest floor, and I think we have run the risk of underestimating the potential of these fires and perhaps overestimating our own capacity to deal with them on days when the fire scale is completely out of all proportion to what we normally expect.

It has given us all a very good sense of perspective of what is important in our lives. We have already seen, with the current fires occurring in Victoria as we speak, that there seems to be more of a readiness for people to leave early, to pack the few possessions they want and to acknowledge that their lives are more important than staying to defend their property. I think we are going to see more of that in the future, and we are going to need to accommodate those people if they do make the decision to leave early. There will be people leaving en masse from some of these suburban hinterland areas. There is a real balancing act to be managed here in that in certain circumstances I am very confident of people’s capacity to defend their properties if they stay and defend, but on days like we had on 7 February I doubt that anyone could manage to defend a property if they faced the full front of the fire.

I have spoken in the past about the need for a national database of every known firebug, with strict reporting provisions which would require these people to report any change of address and subject them to high levels of scrutiny and police surveillance if required. It is an issue that I feel very strongly about, and it would allow authorities to keep a check on these people during the days of extreme danger when firebugs tend to be at their worst. The most serious offenders could even be required to report to authorities on days of total fire ban. It is very hard for our fire authorities to manage lightning strikes and the accidental ignition of fires, let alone the constant threat of criminal activity during the fire danger period. I have written to the Prime Minister and sought his support for this practical measure which I believe could help to reduce the incidence of deliberately lit fires in the future. Again, it is not a silver bullet. It is just another tool to help our emergency services personnel, particularly to help our police detect these offenders and keep an eye on them on days when I fear they are at their worst. You can say a prayer for the emergency services personnel in Victoria faced with the conditions that are expected tomorrow. They will require all the good fortune we can wish upon them. We would rather see an inch of rain than the conditions that are heading their way tomorrow.

As I said at the outset, the coalition wishes to cooperate with the government in relation to this bill. A telephone based early warning system, I believe, has the potential to assist our communities to remain safe in these emergency situations. Allowing access by an emergency management person to information contained in the integrated public number database is a positive move but it should not distract us from the hard work, the practical work that is required to prevent these bushfires and minimise their impact in the future.

Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to participate by speaking on the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009, especially as, in part, it relates to potential communications difficulties that are likely to be experienced during national disasters such as the horrific bushfires we experienced in Victoria on 7 February, Black Saturday, and in particular the impact in my electorate of Bendigo, as we have experienced the worst disaster in our history as a result of those firestorms. When I spoke last week in the debate on the condolence motion for the victims of the bushfires in Victoria, I mentioned the tragic death of one person and the total destruction of 59 homes in the Bendigo fires. The Victorian Department of Primary Industries has provided me with its assessment of farm losses in the fires at Redesdale, and I will speak about these briefly before speaking to the bill.

The fires affected 85 rural properties around Redesdale and almost 6,500 hectares of land were damaged. Most of this is grazing pasture, but of note was the impact on two commercial olive-growing operations at Barfold, where more than 300 hectares of olive trees were affected. Most of the livestock death toll was sheep, with more than 900 accounted for so far, and another 420 sheep are reported as missing. Fortunately, though, there was no loss of human life in this fire.

The full cost of the recent fires in Victoria is still being calculated and, of course, the fire season is by no means over yet, as one of my staff can attest, having spent most of Monday on alert at his property near Daylesford. Among the many matters that will be investigated by the forthcoming royal commission is the effectiveness of the warnings that were, or were not, issued to residents in the fire-affected areas. We do not expect our volunteer and professional emergency services workers to operate without timely, accurate and relevant information about the threats they face, and we should not expect homeowners to make life and death decisions about when to leave their properties, or what action to take to defend them, without having access to the same sort of information. Indeed, our emergency management organisations have said that rapid and appropriate responses by the public are critical to restricting the impact that emergencies have on our communities. The public cannot be expected to respond appropriately to an emergency without an effective warning system. Emergency management organisations have asked for a telephone based warning capacity to supplement other warning systems, such as radio, public address systems or television alerts. At this point, I will pay tribute to the efforts of ABC radio, in particular the staff at ABC in central Victoria, during the recent fires in my electorate. The required information was provided in a calm, efficient manner and it was accurate and comprehensive, and I am sure the community very much appreciate those efforts; they were outstanding.

Telephone based emergency warning systems have been the subject of discussions between the Commonwealth, states and territories since 2004. Until July 2008, no agreement could be reached between the states and territories on the use of the integrated public number database to make warning calls to all landlines and mobile phones in a fire threatened area. The IPND is the most comprehensive and accurate Australian public number database available and its information is continually updated. It is an industry-wide database of all residential and business phone numbers, both listed and unlisted, and other subscriber information, such as names and addresses. The IPND contains around 50 million Australian telephone numbers and other information such as whether a service is a residential or business number and the type of telecommunications service delivered by each number. Telstra maintains the IPND as a condition of its carrier licence, and all carriers and carriage service providers are required to provide subscriber information to populate the database. At the July 2008 meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, the Rudd government secured the agreement of the states and territories that emergency access to the IPND was a priority and that policy agreement between the states and territories was required by December 2008. This was duly achieved.

This bill represents the Commonwealth’s fulfilment of its part of the agreement with the states and territories to introduce legislation to facilitate access to the IPND. Individual states and territories will retain autonomy to decide when and how best to warn their citizens of emergencies and which telephone based warning system is most appropriate for their needs. The Commonwealth Attorney-General has consulted with the states and territories in developing a model for access to IPND information that will meet their needs. Given the sensitive nature of the information contained in the IPND, access to this information is strictly limited under the Telecommunications Act. 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. However, in light of the Victorian bushfire emergency, the government has also sought advice from the Solicitor-General on an interim measure to allow access.

Based on this advice, the government has made a regulation under the Telecommunications Act 1997 enabling interim access to the IPND. This will enable immediate access to the IPND by individual states and territories who wish to implement a more limited system as soon as possible. But this is not a long-term solution and not a substitute for the amendments to the Telecommunications Act contained in this bill and the planned future access arrangements for the IPND. For example, privacy protections included in the regulations cannot be as strong as those included in this bill. Rigorous privacy protections are essential due to the sensitive nature of information contained in the IPND. The bill provides the Attorney-General with the powers to specify by legislative instrument who can use IPND information in the event of an emergency and what circumstances should be considered to be an emergency.

Emergency management personnel will only be permitted to access the data in the following circumstances: in the event of an actual emergency, in the event of a likely emergency or for testing purposes—that is, to test whether in the event of an emergency the alert would have reached the people that it needed to. The systems to deliver emergency warning messages are not covered by the bill, and their implementation will be the responsibility of the Attorney-General and the states and territories as part of managing emergencies and disasters in their jurisdictions.

Access to the IPND will be provided through a new secure database that provides real-time access to up-to-date telephone numbers while protecting the identity of individuals. The Commonwealth government will provide $11.3 million for this purpose and a tender to build the database will be issued shortly. Under the COAG agreement, states and territories can retain autonomy about the warning systems they choose to implement, and they are then responsible for funding them.

Whatever system or systems are 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 can only communicate with fixed landlines and mobile telephones on the basis of billing address only, rather than the location of the handset. This may mean some individuals in a threatened area will not receive a warning on their phone, and some outside a threatened area could receive irrelevant warnings. It is also possible that issuing mass alerts may have a detrimental impact on the telecommunications network. It is obviously important that calls to 000 can still be made when an emergency warning has been issued, and there is a requirement in the bill that reasonable steps be taken to ensure that the use of the IPND information does not adversely affect normal network operations. For example, this could involve staggering the calls over several minutes, rather than sending them all at once. To help address this, 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. The government has advised the states and territories 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 to be owned and operated by the states and territories.

This bill also contains safeguards to protect people’s personal information. Use or disclosure of IPND information in any situation which is not an emergency as defined by law in the state or territory in question will be an offence. Given that the IPND information includes unlisted numbers and subscriber details—for example, names and addresses—the bill imposes penalties of up to two years imprisonment for misuse of IPND information. In addition, any agency that issues an emergency warning using the IPND information will be required to report each incident to the Attorney-General and the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Agencies will be required to report on the nature and location of the emergency or disaster, the number of telephone numbers disclosed, the number of persons to whom the numbers were disclosed and why. These reporting requirements are intended to allow identification of any possible misuse of IPND information quickly. Agencies responsible for issuing alerts will also be required to report annually to ACMA and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on a similar basis.

This bill will also tidy up some of the uncertainty surrounding the operation of location-dependent carriage services. These are services that automatically route calls to the appropriate store or branch location of a business, depending on the caller’s location. Taxi and food delivery services are some of the businesses that use this type of service. Currently, the Telecommunications Act does not contain express authority for disclosure and use of information in the IPND for the purpose of providing LDCSs on a wide scale. Telstra’s carrier licence does allow it, as the IPND manager, to make IPND information available for the purpose of providing LDCSs. The bill clarifies the Telecommunications Act by explicitly allowing carriers and carriage service providers supplying LDCSs to access listed public number information in the IPND.

The bill addresses key privacy concerns around the release of this data. For example, disclosure of IPND information relating to unlisted numbers is not permitted under the new amendments. Information from the IPND may only be disclosed to carriers and carriage service providers, and only that information necessary to provide an LDCS may be disclosed. In addition, a secondary disclosure and use offence has been included in the bill to further protect against the improper disclosure and use of information provided for an LDCS system.

Returning to the primary purpose of the bill, it is important to remember that telephone based emergency warning systems are only a supplement to, and not a replacement for, 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. The introduction of this bill by the Rudd government is still only a step towards making telephone based emergency warning systems a part of Australia’s disaster response capability. It is an important step, but it is not the silver bullet. There is much work that needs to be done, and I am sure that work will be done.

This bill will enable the states and territories to access information from the IPND in order to implement telephone based emergency warning systems, should they chose to do so. It is drafted to allow the states and territories the flexibility to develop and operate data management and emergency warning systems either individually or jointly. I commend this bill to the House.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this particular piece of legislation, the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. There are a number of issues here that most members have canvassed, but I think some of those issues are worth repeating. Obviously any warning system that can assist people in times of disaster is very worth while contemplating. I understand that there may be some people—maybe not in this place but in the community—who do still have some issues with this legislation in terms of the privacy provisions. But I am informed that, under the way in which the legislation has been structured, the Attorney-General will keep a very close eye on the various agencies—the state and territory agencies that are actually given access to the database. So I do not share those concerns that maybe some people in the community would have.

I am also told that when an emergency does take place and the database is triggered the numbers are triggered and not the names of the persons holding the number, so there will not be any disclosure of who those with private numbers happen to be—they will get the message either through the normal system or through the SMS system. So I would just say that I do not have a problem with the legislation at all. Given the tragedy that has just occurred in Victoria and the possibility that a better system—an emergency warning system—may well have saved some lives, I think we should look very seriously at these arrangements.

Obviously COAG was looking at this issue some time ago. I think they agreed at the time that it was going to be fairly expensive and procrastinated or whatever. But now it has been brought to a head and it is good to see it coming before the parliament. I would not envisage that there would be any issues with this particular piece of legislation. As I said, this issue has been brought to the parliament very quickly, and so it should be, on the back of the Victorian bushfires. I think it is appropriate and I would just support some of the comments that the member for O’Connor made earlier today and in the Main Committee a few weeks back in relation to the broader debate about the severity of these fires and other emergencies that may occur from time to time as well and the need for a database such as this one to be triggered. This also goes to the heart of the issue as to how this particular fire became so ferocious.

I think scientifically we are well aware now that if you get various circumstances such as low humidity, very dry conditions, wind, very hot days and an amount of fuel in the understorey of a forest then you have the preconditions that will eventually lead to a wildfire. Irrespective of how that fire is started, whether it be by nature or by arsonists, the preconditions for those fires will always be there if we do nothing. There is a Victorian royal commission to take place. I have absolutely no doubt that they will revisit many of the decisions that were made in the past. I have a file with me, which I will not bother going right through. If people are interested in looking at the various commissions and inquiries—state based inquiries in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia; and in Victoria again and again—they will see that there has been any number of inquiries. The recommendations that have come back time and time again include fuel reduction as one of the main objectives to reduce that precondition—not for bushfires, we will always have bushfires, but rather for firestorms of the nature of that which occurred in Victoria the other day.

I particularly relate to an inquiry I was on back in 1994 in the New South Wales parliament. After some very severe bushfires in New South Wales that parliamentary committee was formed and we went out and spoke to the people. We came back with a whole range of new information and recommendations, some based on communications—not strictly this type of database that we are talking about today but nonetheless communications between the various agencies: the police, the SES, the fire people and whoever else was involved. There were real issues—the various agencies could not talk to each other because they were on different frequencies. Some of those things have been patched up and fixed. In New South Wales there was an enormous injection of money into fire sheds, fire trucks et cetera.

One thing that was not done adequately in my view was the reduction of fuel. There were recommendations in that particular inquiry and there have been recommendations in every inquiry since the 1939 Victorian episode, where there were heavy recommendations. There were recent recommendations in 2002 after the Gippsland fires. I know the Independent member for Gippsland East, Craig Ingram, made certain recommendations by way of submission and highlighted that even the targets being set by the Victorian government at that time had not been met at all. In fact I think that on average only about a third of the reduction targets being set at government level had been reached.

I do not think that is good enough, and I think we have to learn from this. I am pleased to see that the Prime Minister has taken a pretty prominent position on this, and he made the point at the mourning ceremony on Sunday—and I raised this in question time on Monday—that we should learn from the past, and that successive governments had, I think his words were, ‘let the communities down’. I think that is a significant point, and probably one of the most significant points that were made during that ceremony.

The other very important point, in my view, was made by an Aboriginal lady who welcomed the group gathered at the Rod Laver centre. She made a point about the fires that occurred in her area—she came from Healesville. Auntie Joy Murphy, I think was her name; her people originated in that area and she made the welcome on behalf of the Wurundjeri people. She made the point that, traditionally, her people would have burnt the land to ‘cleanse’ and to ‘renew’ it—I think they were the words that she used—on roughly a seven-year cycle. The other important point she made was that the fire that occurred in Victoria the other day was not natural; that it was, in fact, ‘torture’ to the land.

There is a significant point in this. And, while I know we will all have arguments about environmentalism, carbon emissions and a whole range of other things, if we are serious about trying to stop tragedies like the Victorian one occurring, I think we have to learn a little from the Aboriginal people and the history of the evolution of the vegetation in this country. We are trying to deal with the vegetation now by just ignoring it, and saying, ‘Oh, it’s natural’—if 40 or 50 tonnes per hectare of fuel builds up in the understorey—‘for that to burn.’ The Aboriginals did not allow that to happen. In fact, the type of bush that has developed over the last 40,000 years has really developed because of fire—but low-level fire, not wildfire of the nature that we saw the other day.

We came along in the last century and assumed that we were best to preserve and to let nature take its course, in the build-up of debris. But that is not natural. What we are doing has resulted in these very bad fires—and they have occurred in the Blue Mountains before and in other parts of New South Wales. And when they occur we actually do torture the land, and not in a natural sense. To go back to a natural sense of the land we would have to know what the land was like before the Aboriginals came, and I do not think anybody really knows that—or those who do make statements do not seem to suggest that it was very similar to what we have today. So I think we have to recognise the role that the first Australians played in the evolution of our landscape and learn from some of the technologies that they put in place, because it is not only the trees and the bush and the flowers that are being impacted on here, it is also the animals, which have learnt to live with and have evolved in that low-fire regime.

Towards the east of my electorate we have the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park and others, and there are a number of them with landscape which, in some parts, is not all that dissimilar to the part of the Victorian countryside that was burnt the other day. Historically, however, after the Aboriginal people, the pastoralists who leased that country used to do low-level burning from ridge to ridge, in the cooler months of the year, so that those fires would always burn themselves out. So when and if there was a particularly bad year, in terms of dryness, low humidity et cetera, and a fire did break out, there were these natural barriers that had been created in the times where there was a low-level risk.

So I would make a plea to the government—and particularly to the Prime Minister, because I think he did demonstrate the other day a genuine willingness to actually do something about this issue—to return to that low-fire regime. I know that the member for O’Connor was pilloried for the comments that he made. Well, I support what he said. And he did not say to anybody that all trees should be removed; I do not think he said anything of that nature. But if we are going to live in this nation and we are going to let people live in areas where there are trees—and I plant hundreds of trees every year; I am a bit of a tree lover—we have to make sure that the sort of disaster that occurred the other day cannot happen again. Humans can fix that problem; it is a fixable problem. And this regime that I suggest fits more with our landscape than the one that some people, particularly in the last 30 or 40 years, have said is the natural one for the landscape and the one that we should be going back to.

I highlight again the Blue Mountains near Sydney. Some of the fuel tonnages in parts of the Blue Mountains mean that a tragedy will occur in that area. It is not a matter of ‘if’; it will happen. There are areas there where nothing has been done. Why am I particularly concerned about that? It is mainly because it is near a capital city, and if it is near a capital city, it gets plenty of attention when something happens. If it were out in the middle of nowhere and only two or three houses burnt down then Channel 9 would not particularly care. So that event will occur in the future. And if we are serious about actually addressing this issue—and I think there has been due warning on this by many people in the parliament—then there are mechanisms that should be put in place to come to grips with those sorts of fuel loads.

There are other issues that I will briefly raise in relation to the bill we are passing today. This database will be very important, and I applaud its introduction. There are other things that we really do need to look at—not just in terms of a Victorian royal commission, because royal commissions have been held and have gone, and very little has happened. I would suggest that the royal commissioner could probably put that commission together very quickly and on a very low budget because it has all been written in dust covered books, inquiries and documents in the past, and the recommendations will be no different at all about what needs to be done. But the royal commission should look—as did the 1939 Victorian royal commission, as did a number of others—at the issue of bunkers in the high-risk areas where even with fuel reduction there may be circumstances where people will not be able to leave the area in which they live, particularly if there is a narrow dirt track that is surrounded by trees. And that is another issue that maybe we should look at. A lot of those people died the other day because there was not a road for them to drive on. If you allow the trees to grow right up to the verge, obviously, one only has to fall and you cannot get out. We have to look very closely at those areas, particularly at bunkers, where in that circumstance people could go to ground. Wombats do it. They do not race up the road and try and get away; they know where the protection is.

The other issue I would like to touch on—and a number of members did touch on this issue in their earlier addresses—is the role that the Australian Broadcasting Commission played in alerting people in those communities to what was happening as it was happening. We have seen it time and time again in all of our electorates. We recently had a flood in Tamworth where the newsreaders, Richard Standley, David Evans and others—the manager, Jennifer Ingall, for instance—all got up well before dawn and were on the radio telling people what was happening. A major cloudburst had occurred and a flood was coming down at a massive rate, and they were there to alert people. I note that the ABC’s budget is being looked at again, and I would support their budgetary requirements because I think they have shown on a number of occasions that they have probably saved many lives by being there and informing people. They have also placated the concerns of many individuals by just being there and telling people what is going on and by having the capacity through talkback et cetera to receive messages from people on the ground and let the broader community know exactly what is happening.

In conclusion, I applaud the legislation. I support the legislation. I say to those who are a little bit concerned about the privacy issues that they should look beyond those issues and look at the value that this sort of emergency database can give in terms of protection of the wider community.

Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for New England for his contribution to the debate today. I share with him many very similar views, particularly about how our Indigenous communities pre European settlement managed the bush. I think there are a lot of lessons that we can pick up from those Aboriginal communities. I also share his views about the very important role that the ABC played in trying to alert the community to events in Victoria three weekends ago.

It is with a mixture of feelings that I speak to the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009 today. Firstly, I am proud to be a part of a government that is able to react with such speed and commitment in times of crisis. But, of course, it is after an event of catastrophic proportions, an event that has shocked our entire nation. This bill is about saving lives, and it is of utmost importance to rural and regional communities around Australia. It is also of utmost importance to my own community, the federal seat of Corangamite. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this bill will be more important in my own seat than in just about any other region in Australia, but I will get to that in some detail in a moment.

First, here is some of the detail of this bill. The integrated public number database, the IPND, is a centralised database of all telephone numbers in Australia, including unlisted numbers. This bill will amend the act to allow the IPND information to be disclosed for use in issuing state and territory government initiated telephone based emergency warnings. Given the sensitive nature of information contained in the IPND, such as telephone numbers, names and addresses, access to this information must be and will be strictly limited and protected under the Telecommunications Act. This bill is about dealing with emergency situations. The legislation is intended to assist in the implementation of telephone based emergency warning systems by state and territory governments. The bill is drafted so that it allows for states and territories to develop and operate jointly data management and emergency warning systems. The bill also includes a number of very important privacy safeguards.

This bill also provides the Attorney-General with powers to make legislative instruments to do a couple of things: firstly, in consultation with the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, it provides powers to specify to whom the IPND information can be disclosed; secondly, the Attorney may also determine the circumstances in which the IPND information could be used—in practice this is likely to be in an emergency, as defined by the relevant state and territory legislation for telephone based emergency warning systems. Significantly, this bill imposes penalties of up to two years imprisonment for the misuse of the IPND information database.

I want to say a few things about the relevance of this bill to my seat and to my community. Within Corangamite we have one of the highest levels of fire threat anywhere within Victoria. The Otways region has a high-level threat because of both the numbers of people at risk and the public and private assets that are at risk. It is also important due to the assets of great significance to our regional economy. Within my seat we have the Otways Ranges and the Great Ocean Road. Along the Great Ocean Road we have many coastal towns: Port Campbell, Apollo Bay, Skenes Creek, Kennett River, Wye River, Fairhaven, Moggs Creek, Aireys Inlet, Anglesea and Jan Juc—just to name a few of the coastal communities that are extremely vulnerable to fire attack. There are also small hinterland towns, including Forrest, Beech Forest and Deans Marsh. There are tens of thousands of people who are vulnerable to fire attack living within these towns. After briefings late yesterday between the education department bosses in Victoria, the Parks Victoria heads and CFA leaders, a host of visitor areas and tourist hotspots throughout the Otways National Park and along the Great Ocean Road will be declared no-go zones tomorrow because of the unprecedented extreme fire weather conditions expected. There is no other region in Victoria where so many people are centralised in such high-risk areas. This bill potentially will give them early warning of fire and, hopefully, a greater chance of getting out alive.

In addition to my constituents, I have many friends who also live in these communities. The advent of the recent, terrible fires has given me cause to think hard about what is the best way to warn people. I think this is one of the best ways possible. Given the speed at which fires can travel and their increasing ferocity unless we have more proactive individualised warning systems people in these communities will have little chance. Relying upon passive measures for early warning—such as occasionally checking a website, turning on a radio or watching the TV—is not very safe at all, especially given, as I say, the speed and ferocity that fires can travel at. I believe the ability to send a message straight to people’s mobiles or home phones is very important. It is also a much more proactive, faster and more efficient way of sending a warning, and that is exactly what we need in an emergency situation. Three weeks ago, I was watching the news unfold on the Sunday morning and I recall one family—who just got out with their lives—who spent that Saturday evening watching a DVD, not knowing the disaster that was unfolding around them. Very clearly, the matters in this bill will give people in such circumstances a much greater opportunity to escape with their lives.

I also want to make some broader comments about the Otway Ranges and the issue of telecommunications and fire vulnerability. I have been concerned about telecommunications in the Otways, particularly in relation to fire risks. One of the legacies, I believe, of the previous coalition government in telecommunications in Corangamite is very poor coverage in many parts of the Otways. It is a sad fact that the overwhelming effort, over the period of the previous government, in telecommunications was about selling off telecommunications to the private sector. The coalition pursued an ideological agenda in telecommunications—as they did in a number of other areas—rather than provide services and apply equity principles to all Australians. We have seen very recently how this can, in fact, put lives in danger. I am not one to get too partisan. I believe that this is not the time to do so, and I will not go any further.

I am very pleased to see that the opposition is supporting these provisions, but I do have to say there have been quite clear consequences for people in my seat due to the lack of commitment by the coalition to telecommunications in the bush. The fact is that it was only after the Telstra privatisation legislation polled so badly and looked in jeopardy that the coalition offered a sop to the bush and regional and rural Australians. The lack of action over so many years whilst the coalition was in government has had a clear impact on telecommunications in this nation. It is a sad fact that some of the highest risk areas in the Otways actually have the worst telecommunications services in Victoria. I believe that that is the coalition’s legacy within my seat. It is true that mountainous areas are, by nature, difficult to cover by telecommunications. But it is equally true that if you are concentrating on improving services rather than pursuing an ideological agenda then you are more likely to get the things done that matter to people. Telecommunications coverage in the Otways should be better than it is today and I believe that this government will improve them. This is something I have been speaking to the minister about, and it now needs to be addressed to enable implementation of this database.

I wholeheartedly support this bill. We cannot pass it soon enough as far as I am concerned. It is indeed one of the most important things we can do to provide early warning against bushfires and floods in the future. There are clear advantages in using data sourced from the IPND for telephone based emergency warnings. The IPND is the most comprehensive and accurate Australian public number database available and information is updated on a continual basis.

Individual states and territories will also retain autonomy to decide when and how best to warn their citizens of emergencies and impending disasters and which telephone based warning system is most appropriate for their jurisdiction. The bill is drafted so that it allows states and territories the flexibility to develop and operate data management and emergency warning systems either individually or jointly. Emergency management organisations have proposed a telephone based warning capacity to complement existing warning systems, such as radio, public address systems or television alerts. The experts are recommending this, there seems to be universal support for this measure, and I certainly recommend it to the House.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition is supporting the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. Before going into the body of my speech, I would like to join with other members in complimenting the ABC in particular on the work that they have done in the bushfire circumstances, and they are well-known to us for similar activities in my area in cyclone periods. In fact, when we get a cyclone, generally the radio station at the eye of the cyclone and one either side of it go onto 24-hour local broadcasting. So their efforts in Victoria are in keeping with the best traditions.

It was not always so. We had an inquiry some years ago on the committee that I chaired that was then known as the transport and communications committee. We conducted a very far-reaching inquiry into regional radio. One of the things we detected in that inquiry was a very poor response to emergencies. Before we had even tabled our report, the ABC, commercial radio and I forget who the third party was got together and tried to get a protocol together because they could see this train coming down the track that would be quite critical of them. One of the things that has caused that is the excessive networking, out of hubs, of country radio stations. Sadly, that has not been totally corrected. Despite what the coalition did during their previous term in office in requiring newsrooms to be manned and so on, there are still a lot of liberties being taken in that field. But that is not the purpose of the bill today, so I will not dwell on it.

The bill before us today will broaden the access to the integrated public number database, the IPND. It will take it beyond its present scope so that emergency services agencies around the nation can make mass outbound phone calls to listed and unlisted numbers to let people know of developing life-threatening situations. We have talked a lot today about cyclones and there have been one or two references to floods, but it goes a lot further than that. A cyclone is one of the most damaging of all things and it can take many lives, as we all know from the Cyclone Tracy circumstance in Darwin. We have also seen in our region, though Australia has been spared it in living memory, the danger of a tsunami. I would think that this service would be at its most heightened in the event of a tsunami. We have seen other things overseas and we need to get ready for them. We are building gas plants. I know that Central Queensland, possibly Gladstone, is going to have a major gas plant. We all remember the dreadful circumstances in Bhopal in India where whole communities were subjected to chemical intrusion. If that were to happen, heaven help us if it did, people would need to know how to get out of a chemically affected area in the best way possible.

I for one support this legislation. I realise that, as some speakers have said, there are some worries about privacy. I do not think they apply, but all I would say to that is that, if any state or territory were to abuse this power that the Commonwealth is passing on to them, they should be taken off the list. If it were used for any other purpose but a genuine emergency, I think that the Commonwealth should come down on that state or territory very heavily. The measures give the Attorney-General the power to determine under what circumstances the IPND can be accessed for a warning. It is anticipated that an emergency will be defined under existing state and territory legislation.

A telephone based early warning system is just plain common sense. I think we have seen enough examples in recent times in our own country and overseas, as I just mentioned, that clearly illustrate how important it is to have various agencies of government able to do this. Emergency service agencies have argued that a national early warning system is needed and the matter was put before COAG in 2007 but for various reasons it was not progressed. We can never be absolutely sure that a more sophisticated or extended IPND might have made a difference in recent circumstances but I make the observation that if it saves one additional life then what we are debating today will be all worth while. Allowing the integrated public number database to be used for such purposes is the right thing to do, because it gives the state based emergency services more flexibility in responding to situations.

If we have learnt one thing from the tragedy of the Victorian fires it is that information is power—power to decide whether to stay and defend one’s property or power to decide to leave and, more importantly, to leave early. In the event of a broad scale, rapidly developing emergency situation such as a bushfire, most if not all avenues of information become lost in one way or another. We saw in Victoria where the power grid went down and people were left with absolutely no power options. We also know that a lot of phone systems—although you often have one handset on a bypass—work on your landline power, and, if you do not have power, that can make things very difficult.

This underlines the liability of mobile telephone black spots. If there is simply no mobile coverage, one option—a potentially lifesaving option—is not available to people. Topography and geography play a big part in dictating the quality of coverage. In other words, if you are in an area that does not have mobile coverage and your electricity lines have gone down or your phone line has gone haywire because of heat or for other reasons, you are totally isolated. I for one would like to see an audit of black spots, particularly in areas like the Central Highlands of Victoria. We need to have an audit of that. Ninety-eight per cent coverage is very good, but we are not talking about landmass here; we are talking about real people—and I think the strategic placement of some additional towers might be in order. I hope that the royal commission will look very carefully at that.

Australia is the size of the United States, yet we have only one-thirteenth of their population. So we have to cover these things strategically as best we can. We do pretty well, but the wake-up call was in the last fortnight and we should respond to it. Mobile coverage is taken for granted by a lot of us. I have a son who lives in Brisbane. He is 3½ kilometres from the Brisbane GPO—you cannot get much closer than that; that is almost inner city Brisbane—yet he does not have mobile coverage. So there are black spots everywhere. When they are in strategically vulnerable areas, I think we have to be right on the ball.

Back in 1997 the coalition government established Networking the Nation, which to date has been the most ambitious communications and infrastructure program ever attempted in this country. The whole program was designed to improve availability, accessibility and affordability and to use the communications service to close gaps in communications access between metropolitan and non-metropolitan Australians. After its cessation in 2005, more than $230 million had been invested in almost 800 projects. Funding went to not-for-profit agencies such as local councils, regional development organisations and local government associations, and around $73 million was invested in building telecommunications infrastructure. Of this, half was for mobile phone towers and related equipment. An evaluation of the NTN program showed that, during its operation, it funded 267 telephone installations and provided mobile phone coverage to 1,000 settlements across regional Australia—with almost 60 per cent of those sites being in remote and very remote areas. From that, about 280,000 people—or up to four per cent of the population of Australia—were able to live within proper mobile phone coverage.

I have a number of telecommunications towers in my electorate. I was listening to the member for Corangamite. I know he is a new member—and he is a good mate of mine—and I say to him: you have to be on the ball with Telstra, Optus and other agencies and with your communications ministry, because these things do not always fall in your lap; you have to be an agitator. I have a lot of towers—in Agnes Waters; in 1770, which is located between Bundaberg and Gladstone; in Baffle Creek, which was on a high mountain, like the member for Corangamite was talking about; in Miriam Vale; in Woodgate, south of Bundaberg; and in Moore Park, north of Bundaberg. Many of these, I might add, are now in the electorate of the member for Flynn. Nevertheless, I worked very hard to get all those towers, and I am sure the member for Corangamite can do likewise.

So we have achieved some outcomes for people living in isolated areas. But, as I said before, there is no silver bullet. All the things we are talking about today are incremental. I challenge members sitting in the chamber—though there are not many in the House at present—to write down the SES number. Can you at this minute write down the SES emergency number? It has been on television day after day over recent months. I cannot; I tested myself in the office and found that I cannot write it down. What I am advocating, hand in hand with this extension of the broadly based emergency coverage to the states, is that we have the right education program. If that is not in place, the system does not work.

During our inquiry into communications, I recall we were discussing emergencies. Someone gave evidence of, I think, a central western New South Wales town—probably not far from where you live, Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz. I do not remember exactly what happened. I think a tanker or something had turned over on a highway and someone rang the local radio station, which just happened to be on network at that time. So he rang the hub station in Sydney, saying ‘There has been a great emergency here; can you break into the programming for the town or, if you can’t do that, can you put it on your network?’ The girl at the switch said, ‘Oh, no, we cannot do that. Just ring up your SES; they will look after you.’ We have to get much more sophisticated than that. There has to be an emergency protocol in every country town, especially with commercial radio—I have no worries about the ABC in that regard—and, to some extent, with television. We need this IPND system as well. We need a communications awareness program. We need to put all of those things together. As part of that whole umbrella of activities, we also need to make sure that we are strategically putting in telecommunications towers.

As I was researching this, I was very impressed with some information made available from Ericsson, which I thought might be of interest to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ericsson has a type of mobile tower that allows them to set up a temporary mobile transmission area. During the recent fires and in collaboration with Telstra, Ericsson provided fixed wireless terminals to the Country Fire Authority—the CFA—to restore voice and data services to areas affected by the blazes. I think that that is quite commendable. That might be something that the royal commission looks at: if you cannot afford to put a tower somewhere, could you perhaps make available to the local Country Fire Authority a mobile tower that they could operate? It might be on an old four-wheel drive or fire truck that can be taken into an emergency situation and put on a hill that covers a whole valley where there might be a number of fires. There are a lot of innovative things that we could do, and I commend Ericsson for their work on this. Their human resources executive, Tristram Gray, said:

Once transmission was restored, they—

they being the CFA and the community—

were able to communicate the direction the fire was moving and to respond effectively. Not only that, but the people in the community were able to maintain communications with each other.

The other thing that we saw from these fires was the inability of people at times to contact their relatives.

The other thing that I would like to see the royal commission do—and it is an adjunct to this—is to require phone kits in areas of high risk to carry two batteries. When we got our first mobile phones we always got two batteries and that was a very sensible thing. I know that the life of batteries has increased dramatically since then—I acknowledge that—but nevertheless there is nothing worse than being in a situation and having your battery go. It happens to me from time to time and I know how embarrassing it can be, but when it is life and death stuff then it is a different matter. Again, if power lines are down and you cannot recharge, you are doubly vulnerable. Another thing that I would like to see the royal commission consider is for there to be some way in certain vulnerable areas of Australia to encourage telephone companies—and whether this should be subsidised or not I do not know—to provide a second battery for people’s mobile phones at the time of purchase.

That is my contribution. I think this is a good measure. I do not think that it is the total answer or the silver bullet, but I think that it will go a long way to making Australia safer in emergency situations such as fires, floods, cyclones, tsunamis, chemical spills and the like.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2009. A nationally consistent early warning system is certainly necessary. This was made very apparent to all Australians during the recent bushfires in Victoria. I take this opportunity to offer my deepest sympathy to the victims, their families and the communities that have been so badly affected. I also offer my sincere gratitude to every individual, group and volunteer who has in any way helped in fighting the bushfires, as well as those assisting each of the communities both during and since this crisis.

As a coalition, we support measures to do whatever it takes to assist communities to rebuild and recover but also to put in place preventive and management measures. A nationally consistent early warning system is just one part of this process. This bill amends the Telecommunications Act 1997 to allow access by an ‘emergency management person’, as authorised by the Attorney-General, to information contained in the Integrated Public Number Database. The IPND was established in 1998 to create a centralised, comprehensive database for use by the telecommunications industry and a limited number of other organisations with community protection functions. I understand that there are a number of technical issues that remain outstanding with the database itself, but the emergency agencies have argued that state and territory access to the IPND would provide greater flexibility for them to respond to emergency circumstances. It is time to move this early warning system process forward, with all levels of government involved.

People throughout my electorate in the south-west of Western Australia understand very well the threats and challenges of bushfires and the need for effective communications before, during and after the actual fires. We have had three serious bushfires in recent months: in Bridgetown, in the Dunsborough area and in the Balingup-Mullalyup area. The Bridgetown fires were by far the worst. Bridgetown is situated in the Darling Scarp and there are significant bushland reserves and plantations as well as farmlands there. Rugged, steep country provides extremely challenging terrain to fight bushfires. More than 6,000 hectares were burnt in the Bridgetown fires—5,126 hectares of private property, 1,764 hectares of pine and blue gum plantations and 713 hectares of reserve. Five homes were also burnt in Bridgetown townsite, as well as vehicles, sheds and farming equipment.

As in Victoria, significant numbers of local and regional groups, agencies and individuals were involved in fighting the fires and assisting the community following the devastation. Four hundred personnel in total, of which 150 were volunteers, were part of that process. Twelve local government authorities provided assistance and four water-bombers were deployed. Again, like Victoria, the local community worked vigorously to help itself and those most affected by this fire.

I recently attended a community concert to help raise funds for those who lost their homes—and this was not the community’s first major bushfire. Bridgetown held a community debriefing after the December 2003 Greenbushes-Bridgetown fires and they identified a range of improved processes and measures to manage any future bushfire threat. As you would expect, effective communications with the community were a priority then. One communication problem they experienced at that time was being able to provide early and constantly updated information. At the time, the emergency radio station was the ABC and that was networked out of Melbourne, and it was impossible to get messages to air.

Changes have been made since, but there was a problem again during the most recent fires in January this year, when the ABC was unable to broadcast on its regular frequency. Where community members were located at the time meant they could not receive current and updated information—critical information when you are in a fire or out on a property—relating to road closures and the progress and location of the fire as well as wind changes. The ABC was broadcasting on alternative frequencies every half hour, encouraging those who could hear the broadcast to contact their friends and relations in the fire affected areas to let them know of the change of frequency for that information. This certainly was a problem for many of my constituents, particularly as so many of them were unable to access mobile reception and landlines at the time were burnt or down.

Nannup’s ABC coverage comes from Karratha, which is 1,800 kilometres away. I presented a community petition to the parliament last year seeking transmission from the Bunbury ABC service. I was particularly disappointed at the department’s response, which effectively was that there are many towns like Nannup across Australia and, if the service to Nannup were upgraded, it would have to do so elsewhere. That showed a concerning lack of understanding of the problems in regional areas like those I represent in the south-west.

On 7 and 8 February, there was a bushfire in the Dunsborough area near Bunker Bay—115 hectares were burnt and 300 guests and 70 staff were evacuated, and the fire was controlled just 20 metres from the 105-year-old Cape Naturaliste lighthouse. Again, it was local volunteer firefighters on the front-line. On 14 February, the most recent bushfire occurred in the south-west in the Balingup-Ferndale area—the same rugged type of country—where 1,800 hectares of pine plantation were burnt, as well as private property and farming equipment. Again, 200 firefighters were involved, using heavy machines, tankers and water-bombers as part of the fire suppression effort.

We know that bushfires in the south-west will continue to be a threat and they will need to be managed by these local communities as well as local and state government agencies and bodies. The consistent issue, however, is the communications problem. Bridgetown, Nannup and Balingup have poor to no mobile coverage in certain areas. During the recent fires in Bridgetown, with the landlines burnt and limited 3G mobile reception available, the shire was told by the Telstra reps on site that Telstra would increase the power of the network signal during the fire to improve reception availability for affected residents and crews. The question put to me since by the community members was: if the signal can be increased in an emergency, why can’t it be available all of the time? Why can’t they have this service all of the time and why can’t they receive that early warning signal? That consistent access problem is an issue. We have had reports since that, during the time the signal was increased, people throughout the area who normally cannot and still cannot use the 3G network were able to do so. They also want to know why this service is not available all of the time. I was really pleased to hear the previous speaker mention the mobile tower option. That certainly could be an option in the future in this south-west area.

There has been a subsequent fire between Balingup and Nannup. Some residents on the Balingup-Nannup Road have to drive seven kilometres to find reception on any given day, let alone during a fire. During the actual fire, this put them at severe risk. I have had phone calls from badly affected local people who said they did not know whether they could get out or where the fire was. This is clearly a public safety issue. I am also told that Telstra may have negotiated an additional tower site in Bridgetown, but there are associated costs preventing this tower going ahead. I will continue to ask questions about this issue, particularly regarding public safety in this fire-prone area.

This demonstrates the need for effective, efficient and timely communications during emergency situations. It is a critical issue—a life-threatening issue. People in fire-prone areas can be totally isolated from critical information about the fire itself, about physical barriers and about constantly changing road closures. I note that a recent report in a regional newspaper indicated that the WA state government has indicated a likely increase in prescribed burning.

I support this bill, particularly as it is believed it will assist in managing emergency situations. As has been similarly mentioned here today, this is just one part of a comprehensive response to the bushfire threat in Australia.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to 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.