INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS PM AGENDA WITH DAVID SPEERS

Monday, 17 August 2009

Subject: Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Interim Report

SPEERS: I spoke a short time ago to the Federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland.

McCLELLAND: It's a very solid report. It's a commonsense report and it lays out a framework, specifically for the State Government, but also areas where the Commonwealth Government can value add and show leadership in emergency management.

So unquestionably it's going to inform implementation of policy and practices.

SPEERS: One of those areas for the Commonwealth Government is the idea of an early phone alert system. Now is this system going to be in place in time for the coming summer?

McCLELLAND: It will be switched on for trial in October, we're told and operational in November. At this stage it will, however, only be to billing addresses and households. It won't target the location of people where they actually are on their mobile phone.

SPEERS: Is that because of technology?

McCLELLAND: This is because of technology.

We're contributing to research to develop this capability in Australia. But at this stage, it will still be to billing addresses. A big advance, but not perfectly there yet.

SPEERS: So, for people who might be visiting fire prone areas, or danger areas, they're not going to receive any sort of alert on their mobile phone?

McCLELLAND: If they live outside the area, or their billing address is their place of work, they won't receive a targeted warning. I think there will be compensation for that by making the alerts more general this fire season, so that we can cover as wide an audience as possible. But that's still important work we're doing.

SPEERS: And you don't know how far off that might be, that location based alert?

McCLELLAND: The Victorian Government is in charge of calling for a Request for Information from the market – I think it's called, the technical phrase – as to who may be capable of providing that service. So we're waiting to see what comes in, in the next few weeks.

SPEERS: Now what sort of emergency events would trigger an alert? I mean obviously bushfires, but are we talking about other natural disasters as well?

McCLELLAND: Well, the system could operate, with sophistication, to the point where if a child had been abducted, for instance, you could issue alerts to an area around a school to look at that.

But certainly fire, flood, unquestionably will be of use. Not the total answer. I mean there are black-outs in coverage and the report has indicated sirens and other modes of communication need to supplement. But certainly, as one of the tools, it will be very significant.

SPEERS: What about some other areas in this report? The sharing of information by emergency services across borders and with Commonwealth emergency agencies as well. What are you doing about improving those lines of communication?

McCLELLAND: We've been working through the Ministerial Council on Police and Emergency Management.

There are a range of areas where there needs to be more work done and that is common communication platforms, common command and control protocols, management structures, the interaction with emergency call services and so forth.

There unquestionably needs to be work and we're doing work in those areas. But again, the report will add additional impetus to that work.

SPEERS: Do you concede that this was a problem during the Black Saturday fires in February?

McCLELLAND: I think it is fair to say that those who were called from interstate and indeed overseas made a valiant effort. But there were some communication problems. There were some communication tools that didn't work through the smoke, for instance, UHF and VHF and the technicalities of that and different communication channels. There were different command and control procedures as well. These things, if they're standardised around the country will obviously make our unified response far more effective.

SPEERS: Finally, the triple 0 emergency call system, this was obviously swamped during the time. Are there changes, any improvements that can be made in that area?

McCLELLAND: We have that as a special item on the next meeting of the Ministerial Council on Police and Emergency Management. But unquestionably, we can work out across the board best practice, across the board timeliness, time of response, and across the board search capability. In other words, it may be for instance, if there's a crisis in Victoria, then the centres in New South Wales or South Australia pick up the excess with the same information available.

SPEERS: That doesn't currently happen?

McCLELLAND: Excess capacity goes over to Centrelink, but I think there's an argument for calling emergency responders to enter the picture to cope with that search capacity.

So, I think at a national level we can better manage that search capacity and again, the report confirms that I think.

SPEERS: All right, Robert McClelland, thank you.

McCLELLAND: It's a pleasure.

[Ends]