Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Every Australian relies on triple 0. This essential service is not one that any Australian ever wants to call, but every single one of those calls should be connected, every time. It is the most critical service of Australia's telecommunications system.

I know so many in this place have been in that situation, as I have, where you do have to call triple 0 because a loved one or just a fellow Australian citizen is in a time of need. I remember having to make that call to triple 0 for my young son, Leo, when he was having a horrible allergic reaction to some food. That's when we discovered that he had severe anaphylaxis. But we were so fortunate. That call was connected, paramedics arrived and he got the public health care that he needed. That is what every Australian should expect when they call our emergency services. It connects Australians to emergency health, fire and policing services. I think in this debate it is worth pausing for a moment to thank all of those who make those services work—the emergency communications officers who are there at the end of the phone line, the paramedics, the firefighters and the police officers. I want to say a big thank you to every Australian worker who is behind Australia's triple 0 service. They keep Australians safe. Every day, hundreds of Australians rely upon that service, which is saving lives, protecting livelihoods and maintaining social cohesion.

That's why I share the Australian public's outrage at the conduct of Optus. Optus should be rightly criticised in this place. They have failed. Optus's failures resulted in a loss of life. It was completely unacceptable that they failed their customers in this way. Hundreds of calls were not connected, and it came after previous failures that severely eroded trust, including this parliament's trust, in Optus, because Optus failed to manage their network and they failed to comply with the law.

Now, for the benefit of the opposition, I want to read some of the quotes from the Chief Executive Officer of Optus. This is what the Chief Executive Officer of Optus, Stephen Rue, said:

On the first night of the upgrade, the steps taken on past successful upgrades of a similar nature were not followed.

That's Optus admitting their failures. Further, the CEO went on to say:

This issue occurred because there was a deviation from established processes.

Again, that's Optus acknowledging that they had failed. And then, further, the CEO said this:

Regardless of where a process is conducted, the issue was that a process was not followed. And to be very clear, the accountability for that rests with Optus.

I think, if that's the CEO of Optus acknowledging the accountability rests with Optus, maybe those opposite could spend a little bit more time demanding proper accountability from the CEO of Optus and the providers of Optus.

I just sat through the remarks of the member for Lindsay, and I thought I'd just address some of the interesting contortions of fact that were in those remarks. Firstly, the member for Lindsay acknowledged that the minister gave a press conference on Saturday 20 September. It is very clear from the speech we saw from the member for Lindsay that she neither watched nor read the transcript of that press conference.

Then we had the member for Lindsay undermine ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority. The member for Lindsay walked in here, in her MPI, and said ACMA was 'part of the problem'. Right now, ACMA is conducting an investigation into what went wrong. To have the member for Lindsay come in here and undermine the authority is a very interesting choice for the opposition leader to have allowed to be made.

Then we had the member for Lindsay acknowledge that the custodian has in fact been in place since March. Again, you wouldn't know that from some of the remarks in the other parts of the speech from the member for Lindsay nor the questions we've seen from those opposite.

Then, apparently, legislating to put further protections and further obligations onto the telecommunications companies wasn't good enough for the member for Lindsay. We saw the opposition in this chamber just a few minutes ago complaining that they had only had 24 hours to read the legislation. Either they want us to act on the first day of parliament since this failure from Optus—that was the choice that we made. That was the choice the government made. We came here in the first sitting of the parliament to act—to legislate. If that's not what the opposition want to do, they should just come out and say so.

In fact, what the member for Lindsay said—I wrote down this quote and reflected on the idea that the government wanted to legislate within the first sitting day of parliament and that those opposite complained about only having had 24 hours to read the legislation. I've read the legislation. A number of people on this side have. If the member from Lindsay can't read it in 24 hours, that's interesting. She said that this requirement was 'pretty much insane'. I don't think that it is 'pretty much insane' for the government to want to strengthen accountability.

The member for Lindsay also—and credit to her on this—did acknowledge that, previously, the minister had already introduced legislation on penalties for telecommunications companies. I think it was an MPI speech that will not stand the test of time.

I want to reiterate. Every telecommunications provider has obligations. This week, the minister had those companies here in this parliament and outlined the existing legislative obligations on those companies, the basic human decency that every telecommunications customer should expect and our expectations as government that Optus, Telstra and TPG Telecom ensure their services are complying with current laws and ensure they are ready for the coming disaster season. But we're comfortable going further, and that's what these laws—which the shadow minister, the member for Lindsay, said were 'pretty much insane'—are about. As the minister said when introducing the bill:

… while telco outages may occur, the law is clear: carriers must always make sure that triple 0 calls still connect by being redirected to alternate mobile towers or infrastructure.

I think it's clear everyone in this place wants accountability from Optus. That's what the Australian public want—for Optus to do their job. That's what the investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority—undermined by the member from Lindsay just now—is about, and it will look at Optus's compliance with emergency call service regulations and related rules. And, as ACMA has said, these are the same rules that ACMA found Optus breached in 2022 during a nationwide outage.

I think it's important to note in this debate that these regulations and rules already exist. There is the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2019, is the Telecommunications (Customer Communications for Outages) Industry Standard 2024 and Industry Code C536: Emergency Call Service Requirements. They already exist. I outline that because it's important to note that this is about ensuring that things that Optus should have done but did not do are thoroughly investigated, even if those opposite seek to undermine this investigation, which I think is a very interesting choice to have made.

We learnt two things about the opposition today. First, we learnt from the opposition that they are determined to let Optus off the hook for Optus's failures. We are seeing excuse after excuse for Optus from those opposite. Second, we learnt from those opposite is that they are obsessed emails that have been in the public domain for weeks. We saw, in the final questions from the Leader of the Opposition, questions based on opinion not on quotes.

Again, I think even the opposition would agree that Optus should have told the government on Thursday afternoon. That did not occur. We also want to make sure that we enforce existing laws to telcos. Again, this is about making sure that the existing laws are enforced—something that those opposite are seeking to actively undermine.

Some of those opposite were here in May 2018. That's when an outage happened that affected some 4,000 calls. Did we see any legislative change from those opposite at that point? No. There was not a single legislative change when there was a failure on their watch in 2018. They had a choice, and they chose to do nothing. The Albanese government has a decidedly different approach. We on this side hold Optus to account, and I believe the opposition should start doing the same.

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