Tsunami warnings miss the mark

The tsunami alert on Wednesday night was instructive in a number of ways.

I first picked up the news of an earthquake on twitter and then followed the subsequent tsunami alerts for a number of hours. Being concerned about family & friends living on the coast, I gave them a call (to a fair bit of derision I might add, the State of Origin was on!) and watched as steadily the tsunami warning system and the mainstream media started going awry.

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre issued Lord Howe Island with a land alert at 9:07pm advising people to move to higher ground. The advisory said the next update would occur at 10:07pm. Apparently low lying areas on Lord Howe were evacuated. Marine alerts were also issued for Norfolk Island, NSW, Vic and Tassie shortly after. All warnings said they would be updated in one hour from the time of the alert.

Meanwhile, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii (part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US) had issued alerts earlier  for New Zealand and were the first to cancel all tsunami warnings at 10:47 UTC (8:47pm EST).

Mainstream media had started picking up on the alerts, with Channel 7 the first I believe to break into its programming for a news break. Newpapers like the Courier Mail got up and running and after the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre cancelled their warnings, the Courier Mail declared that all alerts had been lifted for Australia. That wasn’t the case.

At 10:07pm I watched for the scheduled update on the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre site for Lord Howe. Nothing happened. The scheduled times for updates for NSW, Norfolk Island, Vic and Tassie came and went. The national update due at 10:27pm didn’t appear.

The twitter folk started broadcasting that the Victorian warning had been updated, but it wasn’t on the main Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre page. I managed to find it eventually, buried on the Victorian Weather & Warnings home page. Other updates for NSW and Tasmania started to appear on their state home pages, but the main JATWC page still wasn’t updated.

Finally around 10:40pm, the JATWC site was updated, maintaining marine alerts for NSW, Vic, Tas and Norfolk Island and the land alert for Lord Howe. Reports started drifting in of a 30cm tsunami (?!) at Port Kembla and another report at Spring Bay in Tassie.

It became obvious that any danger had passed, given the time of the earthquake and that the warnings had said any tsunami would occur around 9:45pm. The alerts were lifted a couple of hours later.

The whole episode was instructive in a number of ways:

• The Australian Joint Tsunami Warning Centre failed to provide timely information. If there was a credible threat (particularly to Lord Howe which was on a land alert), updated information was late and ultimately inaccurate. Interviewed the next morning on ABC 666Canberra, a spokesman for the JATWC said that the warnings were indeed late and there had been no change to the alert status. However, if the alert status had changed they would have published an updated warning. This wasn’t evident on the alerts and so people were only aware the alerts were late. They had to assume the status hadn’t changed and were not aware that “no news means no change of status”.
• There appeared to be no integration or coordination with the warnings issued from the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre. The official interviewed by Alex Sloane on 666 appeared miffed that there were two different sets of warnings being issued, that people might pick up their information from different sources and that this might be confusing.
• Mainstream media had no more access to information than the web-connected community. That the media failed to analyse the information and provide accurate reporting of the event is an indictment on the fourth estate
• twitter served a very clear purpose as a vehicle to provide real time accurate updates and information. There is an excellent opportunity for emergency agencies to provide timely, focused and cost effective information using twitter.

The tsunami alert provided a stark confirmation of the way the web failed to provide accurate information during the Black Saturday bushfires earlier this year. As Robert Manne points out in July’s  The Monthly magazine, on Black Saturday, the Country Fire Authority website in Victoria was not updated with accurate, timely information. CFA communications units on the ground failed to check if their urgent information releases had actually made it on to the site. People relying on information from emergency agencies using the internet as the focal point for communications were placed at greater risk because of the lack of timely, accurate information.

The situation with the tsunami alerts was reminiscent of this situation. People will increasingly use the internet as a key source of all available information. They will attempt to dissect, analyse, read and publish the information any way they can. The sooner governments acknowledges this fact, and make effective use of the communications tools available, the less likely a lack of timely, accurate information will place the community at greater risk during a natural disaster.

Territory Rights

Further to my comments a couple of weeks ago about the quashing of laws in the ACT and Northern Territory by the Federal Government, I notice Civil Liberties Australia has written to the PM requesting the Government “rectify the unequal and inequitable treatment of its Territorian citizens before Australia Day 2009″.

Dr Kristine Klugman, President of CLA argues that equal rights for Territorians are not contained in a number of Constitutional clauses and as such do not exist. For example:

• Lesser rights to water, relative to the rights of residents of Australian States, of residents of the ACT and NT, as spelled out in Clause 100 of the Australian Constitution:

(Extract from the Australian Constitution):
Nor abridge right to use water.
100. The Commonwealth shall not, by any law or regulation of trade or
commerce, abridge the right of a State or of the residents therein to the
reasonable use of the waters of rivers for conservation or irrigation.

• The absence of a right to equality of treatment in relation to disabling and/or discriminatory legislation by the Commonwealth – or by States – to residents of the ACT and the NT:

Rights of residents in States.
117. A subject of the Queen, resident in any State, shall not be subject in
any other State to any disability or discrimination which would not be
equally applicable to him if he were a subject of the Queen resident in
such other State.

• The absence of giving – in relation to the citizens of the NT and ACT – full faith and credit to the laws, public Acts/records and judicial proceedings of the legislature and judiciaries of the ACT and the NT, by comparison with the laws, public Acts/records and judicial proceedings of the Australian States:

Recognition of laws, &c. of States.
118. Full faith and credit shall be given, throughout the Commonwealth to
the laws, the public Acts and records, and the judicial proceedings of
every State.

• The inequity of citizens of the ACT/NT being ‘double ruled’ – by comparison with residents of Australian States – by being subject to the laws of the ACT/NT and, in addition, to any special laws or executive decisions imposed solely on the ACT and/or NT, and not on the States, by the Australian Government:

Government of territories.
122. The Parliament may make laws for the government of any territory
surrendered by any State to and accepted by the Commonwealth, or of any
territory placed by the Queen under the authority of and accepted by the
Commonwealth, or otherwise acquired by the Commonwealth, and may
allow the representation of such territory in either House of the Parliament
to the extent and on the terms which it thinks fit.

We clearly have an agenda for reform here. The constitutional rights of the people in the Territories need to addressed, not to mention the inequity in parliamentary representation. But that’s a matter for another post.

Of Dogs and Cats and Carers…

News that the Federal Opposition is crying out about the Rudd/Rein family’s dog and cat at The Lodge is laughable. Add to this the negativity around having a carer on staff to assist with looking after the PM’s youngest son and a pattern emerges.

What do you do when the PM has the highest approval rating ever recorded by Newpoll?

What do you do when the Opposition Leader is Mr 9%? The lowest figure on record?

Whine about cats and dogs and carers.

The PM’s family has a right to have pets. They have a right to have a carer.

I suggest the Opposition focus on what good governments need – a strong Opposition with an alternative policy platform who engage on important issues affecting the nation.

Australia 2020 Summit Website

The website for the Australia 2020 Summit has been launched here. It gives everyone an opportunity to be involved, including contributing a submission (due by COB Wednesday 9th April) and as a participant (nominations due by COB Monday 25 February 2008.

The 10 Summit Topics are:

• Australian Economy – future directions for the Australian economy – including education, skills, training, science and innovation as part of the nation’s productivity agenda
• Infrastructure – economic infrastructure, the digital economy and the future of our cities
• Sustainability and Climate Change – population, sustainability, climate change and water
• Rural Australia – future directions for rural industries and rural communities
• Health – a long-term national health strategy – including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population
• Communities and Families – strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion
• Indigenous Australia – options for the future of Indigenous Australia
• Creative Australia – towards a creative Australia: the future of the arts, film and design
• Governance – the future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens
• Australia’s Future in the World – Australia’s future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world

Australia 2020 Summit

The Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday of a summit of 1000 of the nation’s “best and brightest” thinkers on April 19-20 is an exciting and refreshing approach to policy development in Australia.

The Australia 2020 Summit will feature groups tackling specific issues including productivity; infrastructure and the digital economy; population, sustainability and climate change; rural Australia; health; families and communities; the future of indigenous Australia; the arts; the structure of government; and Australia’s future in the region and the world.

The approach is to focus on long term planning rather than short-term outcomes that are traditionally driven by the electoral cycle. The Summit is a bold attempt to generate a reform agenda that is inclusive and outcome-based, rather than just being a talkfest.

I believe the Summit has the potential to fire the Australian community’s imagination and I encourage people to take advantage of the opportunity to engage with our leaders to help develop long range policies and programs for Australia’s future.