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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-02-03 Daily Xml
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HEATWAVE TEXT MESSAGE

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:34): My question is also to the Minister for Health. Can the minister advise whether his explanation of the SMS text message to householders last weekend is correct or whether the Premier's office's version is correct or whether both were wrong?

When recipients of the message rang the identified phone number they heard a recorded message state that the message had been sent in error and that they could complain during business hours. On Monday, the following statement from the Premier's office was read out on ABC Radio: '...the decision to send out those texts was not made by the government, it was made by a police officer.' Two hours later, on Radio FIVEaa, health minister Hill said that it was a government decision. He said: 'We'll learn from this and if we were to do this again to identify people of an emergency situation then it'd be much better to have a different number.'

The Hon. R.J. McEwen: Who the hell do the police work for?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (15:36): As the minister for agriculture said, who the hell do the police work for? I think they work for the people and the government of the state. I am very pleased to try to give the information—

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the member for MacKillop!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I am very happy to give the deputy leader the best information I can in relation to this issue, because it did create some interest and comment in the media over the course of yesterday.

The facts are that the police decided to send out a message to South Australians. They had spoken to Telstra. Telstra agreed to send out the message, I understand, as a community service announcement. The government generally was wanting to communicate the message, which I essentially referred to in my last answer, about which the deputy leader had made some comment as well. We wanted to get the message out to as many people as we possibly could that they should look after vulnerable people, particularly young people and infants, but especially elderly people who might live by themselves.

As a result of the deaths that we had seen in previous days, we were mightily concerned that that message was to get through to the general public. We had a whole range of media and a whole range of processes to deal with that, which the Premier has outlined. A whole range of individuals and services were being rung, but we wanted to get the message out to the general public. Of course, we took out advertisements in the paper.

The police communications unit, which is responsible for communications in emergencies, I understand (I might be wrong in that, but I think that is generally the way it works), decided to send out a message and they drafted the language of that message. They were, as I understand it, obliged by Telstra to provide a telephone number. They chose to use the telephone number of HealthDirect. Unfortunately, HealthDirect was not aware that that had occurred and, when the message was sent out, despite the fact that the message said, 'Do not ring', a number of people chose to ring—a relatively small number out of the total number who were contacted. HealthDirect then lodged a message saying that that should not have been the case, and so it was.

The point I made on the radio when I was asked about this was, 'Look, this exercise occurred.' There were many benefits to it. A lot of people got the message and, anecdotally, we have heard many people say that it was a great thing to have done—it is a pity that it was at 11 o'clock at night, but it was a great thing to have done. I must say that, as part of the health department's planning in relation to such issues as potential bird flu pandemics, it is a system of communication that we might wish to use in the future, because of the compelling ability to get to so many people so quickly.

There are obviously a number of lessons that we have learnt. One of them, I think, would be to be careful about the time of day that you send it. You make sure that you have a telephone number as a return phone number if people want to ring back which is not a HealthDirect call number or an emergency call number, and it probably would have been better if a statement had been made in advance that this was going to happen. But they are the things that you learn in the process of trying to do good things in a difficult situation. The police were trying to do the right thing in a difficult situation. I think that many people in South Australia who got the message appreciated the fact that they were given some helpful advice and an expression of concern; and if it helped to save just one life then, clearly, it was worth doing.

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