Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Coming to this place in 2022, one of the things I've been most surprised about, perhaps naively, is the level to which people in this chamber see it as appropriate to play politics with the tragedies of others. I think it's something that makes the general public think less of us as politicians—that, even in the case of a tragedy, instead of focusing on addressing the issues and ensuring it doesn't happen again and instead of working together for the betterment of the community and the country, some in this chamber seek to make personal gain, to point score and to undermine. We've certainly seen that this week and now here again.

The Optus triple 0 failure, for over 600 Australians, was a catastrophe. For at least three individuals, their families and their friends, it was literally life or death. In this country, we expect that, when Australians dial triple 0 in an emergency, they can rely on the call being answered. We are privileged. This is one of those expectations we don't even think about, until it doesn't happen. Australians are unfortunately very aware of the recent failures of the Optus services with regard to the triple 0 function, and it just isn't good enough.

Reliable telecommunications are an important part of modern life, and, for the companies involved, a very profitable enterprise. In 2025, Optus's earnings before interest and tax were $446 million, an increase of 55 per cent on the previous year. Their earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation rose by 5.7 per cent in the same year to $2.2 billion. With that level of profit, it's not too much to require them to abide by their legal requirements to provide a reliable essential service to their customers.

It's quite simple. Australian citizens in distress have a reasonable expectation to have access to emergency help. They dial triple 0. That call is answered—police, fire or ambulance. There's no room for ambiguity, delay or failure. That is a social contract telecommunications companies providing these services on a profitable basis have with every customer. The existing regulations require telecommunications carriers and carriage service providers to ensure that emergency calls are successfully carried to the emergency call service at all times. Thanks to changes implemented under this government, telcos are legally required to inform the government of any failures. Under those opposite, when they were in government, there was no requirement for telcos to advise of breaches.

Less than a month ago, approximately 600 emergency calls in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory using the Optus network failed to connect. We're aware of at least three deaths associated with the outage in South Australia and Western Australia. As we debated the bill earlier today, it is their deaths, possibly avoidable—we may never know—that should be foremost in our minds. But, on top of that, around 600 more people tried to call triple 0 and were not able to get through. And you can only imagine the sense of rising panic when people in their worst time tried to call for assistance, not getting through. Most people don't call triple 0 lightly. It is the last resort. When it fails, when you can't get help, it's hard to know what to do next. You're on your own in a situation that is your worst fear. Investigations are ongoing via the communications watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and we keenly await their results. We understand anecdotally that it was only when the South Australian ambulance service contacted Optus to report a significant drop-off in triple 0 calls compared to their normal call load that Optus recognised there was a problem and acted to resolve the issue.

There is no doubt the fault lies with Optus. It was their system that failed. Either there was either no backup or checking, or that system failed as well. Sadly, this is just the latest in a series of issues Australians have had with Optus, including a major data breach in 2022, a national outage in 2023 that impacted internet, fixed line and mobile services, including EFTPOS, for more than 10 million Australian customers and businesses for more than 16 hours, and now this. These failures are of Optus and Optus alone. They must do better, and they should not be let off the hook for it. It really wasn't good enough, and Australian citizens paid the price for the failure. While the government awaits the findings of this investigation, I recognise the minister introduced the bill, which was passed earlier today.

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