COMMUNICATION NETWORKS —
STORM DAMAGE — MARGARET RIVER
398. Mr D.T. REDMAN to the Minister for Emergency Services:
I
refer to last week's storms that smashed the west coast and left
Margaret River and Walpole communities without power.
(1) Is the
minister aware that this outage led to the mobile phone networks of both
communities going down, severely impacting emergency service response?
(2) Is the
minister also aware that Margaret River Senior High School could not directly
contact parents to pick up their children when the school's water
services shut down due to the power failure?
(3) What plans does the minister have to build
resilience into the communication networks of such communities?
Mr F.M.
LOGAN replied:
I thank the member for the
question.
(1)–(3) The storms were quite invasive in Western Australia,
washing away foreshores, as we saw in the midwest and in Fremantle, and
there was a whole series of other damage with roofs ripped off and powerlines
brought down. Mobile phone towers being affected as a result of the power being
temporarily disconnected in Margaret River does happen. Margaret River would
not be the only place where that would have occurred. Of course, I am unaware
of the impact on Margaret River Senior High School. It is up to the local
member to raise that issue with the appropriate minister and how the school
notifies parents when these things occur.
Last
Friday, we had what we call a MCPEM, a Ministerial Council for Police and
Emergency Management meeting for
police and emergency services ministers, and the very issue of building
resilience was raised. I am pleased to see that the federal government
will provide $31.5 million for addressing the issue of resilience, particularly
for mobile phone towers. I raised the issue with the federal minister, Hon
David Littleproud, that both the member and certainly members of the Nationals
WA have raised with me about the impact on mobile phone towers as a result of
bushfires and other outages, particularly when it comes to batteries and
battery backup. As I have raised personally on a number of occasions with
Telstra, its failure to do proper maintenance on those towers and replace those
batteries when they diminish in power may be an issue. I am unaware why that
mobile phone tower went out, but I will certainly raise that with the
Department of Fire and Emergency Services, or with Telstra—I presume it
is a Telstra tower, but it could be Optus. The good news is that funding from
the appropriate body, the federal government, which is responsible for telecommunication, will eventually be forwarded to Western
Australia for building resilience in mobile phone towers.