TIM WATTS MP
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CYBER SECURITY
MEMBER FOR GELLIBRAND
SPEECH
COMMSDAY SUMMIT 2020
TUESDAY, 7 APRIL 2020
*** CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ***I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I record this video, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation - and also acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we would have met, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - and pay my respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
This is my first CommsDay Summit as a speaker, though it's far from my first as an attendee. That was back in Sydney in 2005 - which seems even longer ago today than it might have a few weeks back.
Congratulations to Grahame Lynch and Commsday for agilely adapting to these historically strange times - proceeding with this Summit sends a much-needed signal of confidence and optimism.
The world won't be the same after the pandemic.
That includes Australia.
This moment is epochal.
When the history is written, there'll be another BC - Before Covid.
We are already seeing changes in the relationship between the citizen and the state unheard of outside times of war.
Restrictions on freedom of movement, government directed production and military supported supply chains, government wage guarantees and government spending at a scale that we haven't seen since societies around the world were mobilised for war.
We are in a time of anxiety and uncertainty, but also possibility.
We are being forced to reconsider long-held assumptions and confront the importance of things that we have long taken for granted.
One concept that those of us who have lived through this period will never look at in the same way is "national resilience" - how well we plan for and respond to external shocks, and how well we can rebound from them.
Over the past four months, the nation's resilience has been tested by two very serious crises.
We have seen bushfires spread across the continent with an intensity and duration not experienced in living memory.
And then just as the bushfire threat subsided, a new threat emerged in the form of a global pandemic.
What's been obvious to all Australians during this time is how critical communications infrastructure is in times of crisis.
Labor acknowledges the efforts of industry over this difficult period.
We commend their leadership, management and staff for their sustained efforts which continue to this day.
Over this period, Labor has consulted broadly with carriers about the bushfires and challenges experienced, and what this meant for the resilience of our telecommunications system.
These conversations did not reveal a systemic shortcoming in process or coordination.
If anything, what they did affirm is how seriously this sector takes its responsibility during times of crisis.
At the peak of the bushfires, it seems up to 180 mobile sites were impacted across Telstra, Vodafone and Optus.
Approximately half of these sites were not operational because power had been lost and technicians could not access the mobile tower, while the remaining half were kept up and running through backup diesel generators, which often required periodic refueling.
I expect more accurate data will become available, but it's clear the primary vulnerability of communications networks over the bushfire period was a loss of mains power supply, compounded by the subsequent challenge of then needing to access sites to refuel backup generators.
Labor supports steps by industry and Government to examine what can be done here.
We do see merit in examining whether capabilities of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and RFS, where safe and appropriate, can be better utilised through State Emergency Control Centres to help access mobile sites for generator refueling.
Labor would also like to see Vodafone integrated into these State Emergency Control Centres. Vodafone operates one of Australia's three major mobile network, and strengthening co-ordination across carriers is essential.
The accumulation of even modest improvements makes the overall task of industry less difficult than it already is - and they deserve our support.
There is a common adage that communications is an essential and critical service.
We need to be careful not to overstate this, but there remain parts of the government machinery where this has not found full or consistent expression.
To give an example, in 2018 the industry made a request to be included in the Federal Government Liquid Fuel Emergency Essential Users Determination, which sets out the industries which get priority access to fuel.
This surely should have been straightforward, and yet, it was not granted.
From what I understand, Angus Taylor has been asked to reconsider this decision in light of the recent bushfires.
That's welcome.
Looking forward, there are ways to emerge from this with a better framework than we have right now.
A starting point is having nationally consistent recognition by Federal and State governments that telecommunications, whether during bushfires or pandemics, is an essential service.
A formal declaration would flow through all levels of government and remove any ambiguity as to what institutional expectations are.
This should not be seen as a criticism of the Government, but rather a suggestion on how we can improve the strategic framework that contributes to our national resilience.
We had barely finished the Parliamentary condolences for the victims of the Black Summer bushfires, before we were confronted with a new challenge to our nation's resilience.
The Covid-19 pandemic has stress tested nearly every part of our society and our economy - and our telecommunications sector is no different.
As the spread of this virus accelerated, governments around the world have ramped up social distancing measures.
The CityMapper Mobility Index - which measures the percentage of a city moving compared to usual - showed that activity levels in Melbourne on March 2 were sitting at around 110%, where 100% is the baseline.
By this week, it was 15 percent.
In New York City, it was seven percent. In Barcelona, just three percent.
So naturally, more Australians are working from home, more children are studying from home, and more people are staying at home in the evenings.
While much of the nation is suddenly working from home, and essential government services like healthcare and income support shifted to online delivery in a time of social distancing, our communications infrastructure has creaked under the load.
When the economic impact of the crisis hit, the millions of people on hold to Centrelink created such congestion that many others were unable to make calls and suffered drop-outs.
With a whole nation staying home to save lives, the Communications Minister has been compelled to ask Netflix to reduce the quality of its streamed content as the NBN has creaked under greater demand.
This call for voluntary rationing of bandwidth was echoed by Telstra CEO, Andy Penn.
This wave of data had economic, as well as technical, consequences.
It was reported in mid-March that peak NBN demand - which typically occurs around 9pm in the evenings - was just shy of 12 terabytes per second, with carriers purchasing around 12.5 terabits per second of CVC capacity.
If peak demand were to exceed the amount of CVC capacity purchased by retailers, it would present retail broadband providers with a decision to either incur greater wholesale costs or to tolerate greater levels of network congestion.
This is why Labor called on NBN to consider temporary CVC relief to retail providers in the event speeds became congested.
Labor welcomed the subsequent announcement that NBNCo would provide retail providers a temporary CVC boost, and the Shadow Minister acknowledged the initiative taken by industry, the Minister and NBNCo to examine these issues early on.
It's not often you will hear a Labor O
