Power Outages, Telecommunications

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:18): My question is to the Premier. How many South Australians currently have no access to the 000 service in South Australia?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:18): There is a relatively small number of people who are affected by the outage in the telecommunications infrastructure. The privately provided telecommunications infrastructure, which is Telstra and Optus, those networks are by and large supported by backup generators or battery-operated boosters to the mobile phone towers. In circumstances where there are pockets, cells if you like, of those mobile phone towers which also overlap with areas where there are power outages, then the combination of those two things could render some areas of the state without access to 000 calling facilities. What the message is that we are sending out to those areas, and this is changing—

Mr Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is called to order.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: I am advised this is a smaller number than the number of people who are affected by the electricity outage, but nevertheless it's difficult—

Mr Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is warned.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: It's difficult to know the precise numbers because one does not know what the reach is of a particular mobile phone tower—

Mr Tarzia interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Hartley is on his final warning.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —or the people who are within that region. The message that we are sending to people who are finding it impossible to make a 000 call is to find their way to an emergency services centre and seek assistance there. We are taking all possible steps to support the telecommunication providers to support their mobile phone towers so that they can provide their service.