Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

It is a tragic circumstance. We have to remember why we are even discussing this. Sadly, four people passed away during an Optus outage, and we are still seeking answers. If there was a gold star for confused tactics today, it would have gone to the Minister for Communications. She is still saying she didn't know about the outage until the Friday, although one of her answers may have suggested she did in fact know on Thursday, but we have an email that was revealed in Senate estimates that actually said her office did find out on the Thursday. Yet she still comes here and declares that we've got it wrong. Her office doesn't have it wrong, the department doesn't have it wrong, ACMA, who is involved, doesn't have it wrong, and certainly she doesn't have it wrong.

She also disclosed that she did hold a press conference on the Saturday and then left the country even though there was a crisis unfolding. And where did she go? She went to New York. Sounds great, doesn't it—the Big Apple. She said she delayed her flight, though. Thanks, Minister, for delaying your flight. You certainly delayed the action that was required to address this serious issue. She also seems a bit confused about whether she should apologise or not and says that she shouldn't meet with the families, because that would be disrespectful. In what world is it disrespectful for a government minister representing the crown not to meet with families who have been devastated by such an outage, such a horrible circumstance that no-one would want to happen in this country in 2025? The minister is lacking empathy—even the press gallery knows; it's no hidden secret—and she's lacking knowledge about the time that she received this notification.

This goes back to 18 September, where there was an outage that impacted 600. Then four people died, and the Optus CEO got up and promised—and the Optus CEO should not get off free here—Australians that he would do everything in his power to hold his organisation to account and find out what went on. Then the minister got up and promised Australians that she would do the same, and then she appointed ACMA, the regulator. But ACMA is actually part of the problem because the emails also reveal that ACMA received notification of the outage on the Thursday but didn't alert the minister's office and the minister. So it's like no-one is talking. No-one can read an email. No-one can pick up the phone when there is a major outage that is impacting so many Australians.

But this is not news. We could see the warning signs. This happened in 2023, when there were no deaths. There was a review, and there were 18 recommendations. We only found out yesterday that a custodian has been in place inside the department of communications since March this year. What was that custodian doing during the outage? What have they been doing during this time? Why didn't they prevent this from happening? Now we've been dragged in here to pass legislation quickly so they can do something in the future but couldn't do it this time. It just doesn't make sense.

We had about 24 hours to review really important legislation to save lives, even though the government has been sitting on this for a year and a half. Now it is urgent and we had to review it overnight. Yet the minister came in here and said she couldn't review recommendations—there were about four of them—in 24 hours and that wasn't fair on us and so we should just pass the bureaucracy. That is what it is. It is bureaucracy within a department overseeing another department. It is pretty much insane. We will do it in the interests of the Australian people, but we wanted to do it better, and we offered the government that today. We offered the government some strengthening of their legislation. All of us on this side came together. People contributed to this on our side because we care about Australians and we want to get this done.

We asked for a triple 0 register so the public can have transparency when outages occur. That's pretty fair enough. I think Australians are always shocked when there's an outage, but it happens more often than not. So a register makes sense. What did the government do? They said no. We asked for the triple 0 system to be put on the critical infrastructure list. We have water, energy and sewage. But when someone's wanting to call triple 0 in their time of greatest need it's not critical? The minister got up today and said: 'That is not important. Why are we even considering that it should be critical infrastructure?' So they said no to that too and that it seems okay that the reporting in their legislation is every six months. Well, something really bad has happened. People have died. We want it every three months and we want the outcomes to be made public.

Finally—and this was a doozy in question time—it's fair enough that Optus has its penalties increased—doubled, in fact. That's fair enough, when people have died. We want $20 million as a fine for each breach. That's fair enough, I think Australians would be calling for that too. But the minister came in here and said: 'What are they doing? We're passing a bill that says $10 million. It was from the beginning of September. You should be coming on board with this because we are already doing it.' This was before the catastrophic outage when four people died. These telcos should be held accountable. Obviously $10 million is not enough to stop this kind of thing happening. I think every Australian would be very happy with $20 million and they would expect it. They would expect us to be putting extra things in place to ensure we are doing anything we can do, pulling every lever we can pull, to make sure this never happens again.

It's inexcusable that the government voted down these commonsense amendments. The minister walked away from our amendments. She's walked out of this chamber now. She's walking away from Australians in their time of greatest need. She also said no to a committee. It's fair enough that we have asked for a committee, for the government, the opposition and crossbenchers to come together and examine this and, most importantly, invite Australians impacted by triple 0 outages to tell their stories. Isn't that what all of us are meant to do—represent our communities from right across Australia? The shadow minister for regional communications has been telling those stories about the regions and how much they're impacted. Those people should have a chance to tell their stories. We should be listening to them from the top of Australia to the bottom and from east to west. But no. The government does not want parliamentarians to hear about the struggles of Australians when they're trying to call triple 0. They don't want to hear from emergency services about what they're going through on the ground, and they said no to this too. Commonsense options from us are presented to the government, and the minister walks out the door. Maybe she's flying overseas again on another junket. When a crisis unfolds, it seems like a standard thing to do.

It is really concerning that the minister walks away from Australians in their greatest time of need and that she places the blame purely on a company when the government, as a regulator, has a big job to do. She appoints ACMA, the regulator, as the investigator when they are part of the failed process. How can the regulator investigate themselves? What is going to be the outcome there? Where's the transparency?

The minister is still saying, even though we have evidence from Senate estimates that her office was aware of an outage on the Thursday, that she knew nothing and that there were welfare checks made. How can you not follow up when you're being told that welfare checks are being made or think that that's not important? When she was asked again today, 'Have you called the families of the victims?' what did she say? 'It's not up to me to do that. That's not my job. It might make them feel uncomfortable. It is an extraordinary time. I'm a new minister. I don't know how to pick up the phone and call people in their greatest time of need.'

So many things went wrong over the last three weeks—firstly, Optus and the outage, where people couldn't make those very important calls. But it does not stop there. We have exposed major faults in our most essential telecommunications service. Every single Australian should be able to pick up a phone and call triple 0 in their greatest time of need. There is nothing more important for a government to do than to protect its citizens, and what this government and this minister are doing now is letting every single citizen down.

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