Press conference - Perth, Western Australia

MICHELLE ROWLAND, MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Good morning. I’m delighted to be joined this morning by Minister Jenny McAllister, our Federal Minister for Emergency Management, and our most excellent colleague Minister Don Punch, the Minister for Regional Development.
 
We have a very important announcement today that goes to the Albanese Government’s understanding of the importance of working across Government to deliver better connectivity solutions, but also working with our state and territory counterparts to do the same. I’m very pleased to announce that today the Commonwealth and State Governments will together be contributing a total of $16 million towards RRAMP, the regional connectivity program that will deliver better mobile services across major highways – in the case of Western Australia, the Albany Highway and the Great Eastern Highway – making sure that underserved areas like towns, and in-vehicle coverage have access to better connectivity. We know how important mobile services are - they're relied on by people in terms of not only their day to day living and transactions, but particularly in times of emergency and access to Triple Zero during collisions when people need to be in touch with their businesses as well.
 
I'm very pleased that in collaboration with the Cook Government, we are able to deliver this jointly. We will also be focusing on innovative solutions in terms of satellite backhaul, for example, delivering multi-carrier coverage and ensuring that we have extra resilience in terms of the infrastructure that is delivered.

I'm very grateful to the Cook Labor Government here in Western Australia, and particularly Minister Punch, who has been at the forefront of understanding the needs of Western Australian communities and the importance of mobile coverage, irrespective of where people live or work in this great state.
 
DON PUNCH, MINISTER FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Thank you very much, Minister Rowland. In a state as big as Western Australia, telecommunications are incredibly important, both from a lifestyle point of view, a business point of view and an emergency management point of view.
 
It is fabulous to work with Minister Rowland and the Albanese Government to get a great outcome for Western Australia, supporting our Great Southern, our Wheatbelt and our Goldfields regions with improved mobile access along Great Eastern Highway and Albany Highway. This is a great example of the work that we've been doing to find innovative solutions for addressing our blackspot issues in a state as big as Western Australia, and it comes on the incredible collaboration we've had with the Albanese Government in relation to telecommunications, including in the areas of broadband particularly, and accessing broadband in remote Western Australia, where collectively we've been able to invest over $156 million. This today is a great announcement, and I am looking forward to the rollout.
 
We'll be calling for applications from the telecommunications companies to roll this out, and we're looking for innovation. We're looking for collaboration. The Cook and the Albanese Governments have collaborated for this outcome, and we expect to see those providers collaborate wherever possible to provide the best outcomes for Western Australians. I'll hand over to Minister McAllister to give you an overview of the emergency management outcomes from this announcement.
 
JENNY MCALLISTER, MINISTER FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Thanks very much, Minister. It's terrific to be here with Minister Punch and Minister Rowland talking about the significance of connectivity to Western Australia, but also to emergency management.
 
In the digital age, I think we've all become aware of how significant communications access is during an emergency. If you think about a person who might be in a flood or a fire or at risk of these perils, they might be using their phone to check the Bureau’s website. They might be waiting on a text message from their local emergency services organisation, they might simply be checking in on a friend or on a neighbour, or in the worst case, they might be dialing Triple Zero looking for help for themselves, their family or someone in their vicinity.
 
Telecommunications is absolutely critical, and unfortunately Australia is experiencing more and more disasters. We need to think more and more carefully about the resilience of our communities in all sorts of directions. Since July 2022, around half of the local government areas across the country have experienced a disaster of one kind or another, and many of them more than once. This is an area where we continue to work together, and it's incredibly important that we do it collaboratively. It's an area of shared concern for Minister Rowland and myself, and it's an area where we understand that we can get great results when we collaborate with our state and territory partners.
 
It is an absolute delight to be here today talking about this investment in improving connectivity and resilience in the communications system in regional Western Australia. We know that in an emergency, sometimes every second can make a difference, and we want consumers, drivers, road users and the community at large to understand that in an emergency, they can be confident in getting the access that they require to get service and connectivity.
 
ROWLAND: Happy to take questions.
 
QUESTION: Can you tell us what the rollout will look like, and, I guess, the number of mobile phone towers that would be needed to address the issue?
 
ROWLAND: Sure, there's probably two components there. The first is that this will be open to tender, so we will be inviting carriers and other infrastructure providers to put forward their ideas. In some cases, terrestrial towers can cover distances that are greater than others, depending on the type of technology that is deployed. The key thing here is that we want to encourage multi-carrier rollout. We know that depending on the carrier that people might be with, it could be the case that they don't have access to towers, depending on the place that they're in at any particular time. So having multi-carrier solutions, and that being a design feature of the guidelines to apply, will be absolutely key.
 
What will also be key in this is around building resilience. For example, whether there will be backup generation. That kind of power supply sometimes can be the difference between life and death, and can keep that tower on the air for even a couple of minutes, which can make a big difference. In terms of the number of towers that will be required, again, this is going out to tender. We're asking the market to come up with innovative solutions, and depending on the type of backhaul that is used, that can mean that there could be less towers that are required. But again, we want the market to come up with these solutions, and let us know what they've got. There's $16 million on the table, and we want value for money here that's going to deliver improved connectivity and coverage.
 
QUESTION: Sorry, you might have touched on this before, but were there particular rural and remote areas you're focusing on?
 
ROWLAND: We're looking in this case at the Albany Highway and the Great Eastern Highway. That's some hundreds of kilometres where we've got underserved areas. There are also areas that do have a high level of tourism at any given time, and these are areas where we want to improve in-vehicle coverage as well as terrestrial coverage.
 
QUESTION: We're dealing with a pretty high road toll in WA this year, and a lot of those are on country roads. ​Can you talk to how reducing those black spots might help with road crashes?
 
ROWLAND: Certainly, and I'll hand over to Minister Punch as well. We do know that in times of emergency these days, people don't look for the phone on the side of the road. They actually want their mobile immediately, and rightly so because in times of disasters and crashes, that can be the difference between life and death. I'll hand over to Minister Punch who I know has done a lot of work in this area, and that's one of the key reasons why Western Australia is collaborating with the Federal Government on this, to prove precisely that.
 
PUNCH: Thank you very much, Minister. Western Australia has a lot of very long highways through remote regions, so access in an emergency - access when people are desperate to get help is critically important. That is one of the drivers of this particular project. The Albany Highway and Great Eastern Highway are very well travelled. They go through a whole range of communities but a whole range of different terrains as well, including hills and slopes where signals are often difficult to get. This is about making sure that we can try and fill those blackspots using innovative technologies so that people, when they need help, can get help quickly.
 
QUESTION: Were you a part of the Road Safety Summit yesterday?
 
PUNCH: No, I wasn't.
 
QUESTION: Do you know if reducing black spots is part of the solution to helping reduce our road toll?
 
PUNCH: Look, reducing black spots is really important in getting a response when an accident is happening. The critical issue from the road safety point of view is driver behaviour and making sure that we are doing the very best to encourage our drivers to drive safely on WA roads.
 
QUESTION: Do you fear this will, given our state is so vast, do you fear this will only scratch the surface in how much action is needed on our roads?
 
PUNCH: Well, there’s $16 million on the table in this round, and I'm very hopeful that will trigger the kind of collaboration and innovation we want to see between providers. So, looking at the opportunity to pilot innovative solutions to address what is a very remote area in Western Australia, some of those Wheatbelt areas and down to the Great Southern, are a long way from help. If we can pilot this there and see successful outcomes then there's every possibility we can encourage industry to start looking at other areas of Western Australia too.
 
QUESTION: Can I ask a question just about Bunbury? The city of Bunbury, I think, has estimated the damage from the tornado that came through to be $1.4 million. Does that figure surprise you, and how is everything going in terms of the recovery there?
 
PUNCH: Yeah. Well Bunbury was subject to two storm events in very quick succession. The first thing I want to say is the incredible work of volunteers and first responders in responding to something that had a huge impact on a small community. The damage bill doesn't surprise me, there were a large number of buildings that were severely damaged and some were destroyed, some homes were destroyed. There has also been quite a lot of damage to public infrastructure. So, it does take time to recover that infrastructure and it does have a cost associated with it.
 
I do want to give a big shout out to the city of Bunbury, and, to all the people involved in the recovery program, they have done a fabulous job.
 
QUESTION: Minister McAllister, just on the Victorian storms, what can be done to make power more reliable so communities aren't left without power for two or three days after a storm?
 
MCALLISTER: We've seen some very difficult weather conditions across eastern Australia in recent days and, indeed, two people have lost their lives, and this will be a very difficult time for their friends and their families and our thoughts really go out to those communities.
 
We have also seen our first responders doing a fantastic job up and down the East Coast, working in communities, many of them volunteers dealing with some very difficult circumstances. That situation is in fact ongoing in Tasmania.
 
As of this morning, there were flood warnings still in place and of, course, we are asking the community to observe warnings, stay in touch with the advice that authorities are providing and keep in touch with their friends and families, because the situation has not yet resolved. And fortunately, conditions are easing and that process of restoring services is improving.
 
We cannot eliminate risk from our communities, but what we can do is prepare for it. One of the things that the Commonwealth Government can do is to provide a coordination capability at times when the state capability is over extended. But the truth is, we do [inaudible] information between different parts of the system. I know, for example, that New South Wales is providing SES personnel into Victoria to help them with the cleanup. These are terrific examples of collaboration between our agencies, and one that the Federal Government here need to acknowledge.
 
QUESTION: Just on the issue of power, though, two or three days after a storm without power, is that an acceptable amount of time, or is there something that can be done to help reduce that?
 
MCALLISTER: I know that in some cases it's been difficult to get personnel in place because of the conditions. Safety comes first, always, and for the workers who we rely on to restore power, we don't want to put in harm’s way while the event is ongoing. Power companies do work hard to restore services as quickly as they can, they do that in collaboration with the authorities and emergency leaders and local communities. I'm confident that everyone is doing everything they can at a really difficult time to get services up and running.
 
QUESTION: Some local councils are saying that they're increasingly having to dig into their own pockets to help with the natural disaster recovery and clean up. Is that something that the Federal Government would consider putting more money towards to help those local councils out?
 
MCALLISTER: The Federal Government has well established relationships with state Governments to provide support to communities in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. And in fact, they're structured in such a way as to allow that money to be committed quite quickly and with minimal processes so as to give communities certainty that funding is on the way.
 
We'll always look for improvements, of course. We work closely with the New South Wales Government, for example, and councils to unlock funding and support. We are very confident that we have good and well standing, long standing relationships in place with the states and territories to provide support to local government when a disaster hits.