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

This is the question that the minister should be answering—it can't be right. These first alerts, although lacking in detail, said that services were down in South Australia and Western Australia and that welfare checks were being conducted. Calls to triple 0 had been impacted. The minister's office was notified directly by Optus. This was the first warning sign; it was ignored.

The minister has spoken strongly of the need to rebuild trust and confidence in the triple 0 network, so Australians can have faith that the service will work. Let me tell you, on behalf of the thousands of Australians who have contacted me about this, when every single player in this catastrophic event—Optus, ACMA as the regulator, the department of communications and the minister and her office—has failed to fess up about what they knew when, this is not rebuilding trust. Like rubbing salt in a wound, the minister has tasked ACMA as the regulator to investigate the outage. How on earth can ACMA investigate themselves? How on earth can ACMA investigate what went wrong when they are part of the failed process? What kind of alternate universe are you living in on that side of the House? We may have taken a walloping at the last election, but the arrogance of those on that side of the House is appalling. Wake up to yourselves. It's time to get off your backsides, out of cloud nine, and start delivering for the Australian people. They need to have reliability. They need to have security. They need to be able to call triple 0 in their greatest time of need.

According to the minister, the triple 0 custodian has been operational since March this year in her department—the very same department that got the alert email from Optus the day of the outage and did nothing with the email. What exactly has this person or persons been doing since March? Clearly not checking their emails from Optus about a triple 0 outage where four people have died. What astounds me most is that it's taken yet another absolute crisis with Optus to get this weak, lazy Albanese government off their backsides, and they still don't have a clue. If the role was established back in March, why wasn't it legislated then? If the role was fully operational back in March without legislative authority, why does it need it now? And how much are Australian taxpayers paying for this custodian who can't even check an email? This is nothing but a dog-and-pony show from this arrogant government, who think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and nothing is going to happen. Nothing to see here.

You failed to act back in 2023, but at least the former communications minister, now the Attorney-General, had the good sense to do an independent investigation. The current minister has refused to do this at every turn, and, like a broken record on repeat, the minister has continued to say that ACMA is the appropriate body—even though they're involved in the broken process and the failure to do the investigation. They are not the appropriate body. It is clear to everyone. They failed to alert the minister when the first warning bells were rung. Why is this not important? Why is the minister not holding them to account? ACMA and the minister's department have failed to brief. They have failed to update the minister on the Bean review recommendations and where they are at. The minister said on Saturday that 12 recommendations were completed. The minister said yesterday that 13 recommendations had been completed.

An honourable member: Another quick one!

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