KEY POINTS:
- Labor has announced a revamp of the nation's disaster alert system.
- People will soon receive alerts in the language their phone is set to.
- The system will also enable emergency services to communicate across state borders.
People waiting to learn if they should flee natural disaster zones will receive alerts in their native language, in a bid to protect "particularly vulnerable" multicultural communities.
The federal government has announced a revamp of Australia's natural disaster alert system, which it says will rapidly send warnings to any device located in the path of a bushfire or flood.
And a new system - the Public Safety Mobile Broadband - will give first responders coverage to communicate with colleagues across state lines, after a royal commission following found a patchwork of state responses lacked coordination and put lives in danger.
Mobile devices will be briefly overridden, regardless of what network they are connected to, forcing information and alerts to flash up on the screen.
While the current system only has the capacity to send mass alerts in English, its replacement will ensure they automatically appear in the language a phone is set to.
Alerts will be automatically sent to any device in the path of a natural disaster. Source: AAP
"What we found is that multicultural communities in disaster areas sometimes are particularly vulnerable, because they don't get the warnings in a language they can understand," he said.
"This cell broadcasting system will fix that. So again, it's an important step to keeping all Australians safe."
Labor said the technology will mean alerts can be targeted to areas as small as a 1km radius, including to devices which had not signed up for them.
Senator Murray Watt said the changes would help "particularly vulnerable" multicultural communities. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
It will ensure users are not dependent on text messages, instead overriding phone settings - including silent mode - to display a clearly visible alert.
Mr Watt warned the current system had been prone to overloading during natural disasters, when hundreds of thousands of texts were sent at the same time.
"The biggest complaints from Brisbane residents [during recent floods] was that they just weren't getting the warnings quickly enough," he said.
"Part of that was about the training of the operators ... But it also showed that the system just couldn't cope with a large number of messages being needed to get out into a confined area in the same time."
A new system - the Public Safety Mobile Broadband - will give first responders sufficient coverage to communicate via video and mobile data with colleagues across state lines.
Mr Watt said deficiencies in the current radio-based system had been exposed during the Black Summer bushfires, with emergency services often using different frequencies depending on what state they were in.
"This makes a real difference on the ground in a disaster situation ... We had different firefighters from different states fighting fires together, but their radio systems didn't speak to each other," he said.
"That put their lives in danger, and it limited their ability to help Australians as well."
Both changes were recommended by a royal commission after the Black Summer Bushfires, which warned "the fires did not respect state borders or local government boundaries".
The measures will also be complemented by a centralised taskforce to drive public mobile broadband capability, while a national public awareness campaign will also be developed.
