Question Time

Public Safety Management

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (Leader of the Opposition) (14:23): I seek leave to make a brief explanation prior to addressing a question to the Minister for Emergency Services regarding public safety and communications.

Leave granted.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: There have been incidents, verified by the SAFECOM CEO, of several people not receiving alerts for their correctly registered watch zone on the Alert SA app. In three of these instances, the app was up to date, the watch zones and notification settings were correct, but notifications did not eventuate. According to the developer, the app had gone into hibernation mode after a period of non-use, such as over winter and when there were no alerts. The solution, which worked, was to delete the app and reinstall. The concern is that users of the app may be unaware if their Alert SA app is not displaying alerts on their phones. My questions to the Minister for Emergency Services are:

1. Can the minister confidently assure this chamber that the Alert SA app is, in fact, alerting all users of incidents that occur in their correctly entered watch zones?

2 What has the government done to advise Alert SA app users that they may not be receiving notifications in correctly entered watch zones?

3. How will the government inform members of the public that their notifications on the Alert SA app are not being received, and how users may be able to fix the problem?

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (Minister for Emergency Services and Correctional Services, Minister for Autism, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (14:25): I thank the honourable member for her question. As it is day seven, I am having lots of briefings so I am happy to look into this a bit further because the safety of our community is paramount. Just as background, since Alert SA was launched in December 2019 I understand it has been downloaded over 441,000 times, so this is an alert app that is utilised, but I am happy to look into the details that you have raised today.