Australia’s National Messaging System is now more than three years behind schedule, with a question mark remaining over how the system will operate, and whether it could fall victim to similar outages experienced by the 000 network this year.

Federal Nationals Senator for New South Wales, and Shadow Minister for Emergency Management, Ross Cadell, said a lack of clear answers from staff at the National Emergency Management Agency at Estimates on Wednesday should sound an alarm ahead of another high-risk weather season.

Deputy Coordinator-General, NEMA, Joe Buffone, said the new system “does rely on the telecommunications networks,” following an exchange about the recent Optus outage.

When asked about the compatibility of mobile devices in receiving alerts, Mr Buffone was less forward in his information, saying “I don’t have the exact… We don’t have a percentage.”

Just last month, Optus suffered its second major outage that impacted access to the 000 network, with more than 600 calls failing to connect. This outage has been linked to three deaths. Senator Cadell said he was concerned the new system was not being appropriately tested and could experience similar impacts as the Optus outage should a piece of critical
infrastructure be offline.

“The National Messaging Service was promised to be delivered in 2024,” Cadell said.

“Here we are 18-months down the road with a solution no closer to implementation.

“The people of Australia deserve straight answers on when, and the surety to know the new system will work when they need it, not just when the Government launches it.

“What are the fallback measures if something fails? What redundancies are in place?

“By putting the National Emergency Messaging system in the hands of the same telecommunication giants who can’t connect 000 calls, we’re asking for disasterfication.”