Emergency warning systems to get national upgrade

Emergency warning and alert systems will be upgraded to improve communication during natural disasters.

A new national messaging system will be able to send warnings to the mobile phones of people near emergencies in real time.

The upgrades have been announced ahead of next week's federal budget.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the system would allow emergency crews to send out alerts that weren't reliant on text messages, which could suffer delays during events such as bushfires.

"In times of natural disasters and other emergencies, access to the highest quality communication services can mean the difference between life and death," she said on Tuesday.

"What this will enable is getting real time updates to Australians, irrespective of where they are, about particular disasters and actions they need to take."

The system is not expected to be in action until the end of 2024, with public awareness campaigns to be rolled out ahead of the launch.

The exact cost of the system has not been revealed due to commercial negotiations with providers.

As part of the system, messages can also be sent in languages other than English to provide official information to multicultural communities.

The messages would be sent in the language in use on people's mobile phones.

"In some 20 countries, this technology is having real results. That is why this government is implementing these measures here, because we believe that Australians and our first responders deserve the very best of this technology," Ms Rowland said.

Emergency Services Minister Murray Watt said the upgrades were needed because some people were not receiving vital information fast enough during emergencies.

He said this could be because messages were not being sent to the right area, or people were using certain phone providers.

"One of the biggest complaints (from disaster communities) is that they just don't get emergency warnings fast enough. That's what this national messaging system is designed to fix, we'll be able to override phone systems," Senator Watt said.

"The problem we have with the current system, which is SMS-based, is that it doesn't take a very big disaster for that system to become overloaded. "

Emergency crews are also being bolstered in the budget, with $10.1 million to be spent to set up a public safety mobile broadband task force.

Senator Watt said the mobile broadband system would provide crews with fast voice, video and data communication that could be interchangeable across jurisdictions.

"At the moment, the systems that are used by our first responders are radio-based, and they don't speak to each other depending on what state they're in," he said.

"We saw in the Black Summer bushfires that we had different firefighters from different states fighting fires together, but the radio systems didn't speak to each other, and that put their lives in danger."