Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm really disgusted to hear people suggest that this isn't something that Labor is taking seriously and that this government isn't doing everything it can to ensure that people can access triple 0 when they need it, from wherever they need it. I know it's tempting to play politics with something like this. I am particularly disgusted, though, when it is human lives that have been lost here in an awful, awful situation where Optus has failed. We will be holding Optus to account on its failures, and I would have thought any suggestion otherwise was beneath the member for Lindsay, but clearly not.

I've had to dial triple 0 on very few occasions, but when I have had to do it it has been with a real and urgent need. The first time was when my then one-year-old was in a car seat in the car, and I turned around to get him out of the car and he was limp and non-responsive. My brain just fried: 'What do I do here?' Obviously, dialling what we called 'triple O' back then but is much more commonly known as 'triple zero' now was my response. What an incredible service it was to have the operator talk me through what I should be doing with this absolutely non-responsive child, who, as it turned out, was having a febrile convulsion. The operator talked me through bathing him and cooling him in water while I was waiting for an ambulance. It was a horrible experience.

No-one who has ever called triple 0 will have done it for anything other than a really urgent and distressing situation, so we know how important this is. For most of us, the occasions when we do it are few but frightening. What the hundreds of people who tried to call 000 felt when Optus failed to allow their calls to connect would have been shock, and I've heard them describe it as shock, absolute disbelief and total fear that they weren't able to get through. That should never be the case, and that's why we are going to get to the bottom of what has happened here. But you can't just use this interim period to hypothesise and speculate about what it might have been. It was so devastating for the people involved and their families.

We know Optus have to be held accountable for the September outage and that they have to do better, and that's why ACMA, the communications watchdog, is investigating, so we all get the full facts of what happened. But, while we are waiting for the findings of that investigation, we've brought forward the introduction of this bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025, to immediately strengthen government oversight of the triple 0 ecosystem. The bill is about prevention. It's about preventing tragedies like the outage in September from being repeated, by enshrining the Triple Zero Custodian framework in law. The function has been administratively established within the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Communications, Sport and the Arts, but this now enshrines it in law, and it empowers ACMA with the tools that it needs to act swiftly.

The reforms improve coordination across the triple 0 ecosystem, and they give government the ability to step in decisively during outages. I think we have to be really clear, though, that Optus and all telecommunications providers already have obligations under Australian law to ensure they carry emergency services calls. That is already in law. The bill will strengthen the oversight that these obligations are being met.

One of the things that will come in is a requirement for the testing of procedures. The sorts of things that we're going to see here will be in that prevention phase, ensuring that it is more rigorous and that there is more confidence in the processes that are in place. The custodian will drive changes that will reduce the likelihood of these sorts of incidents in the future. They'll give government greater insight into the system, and I think it will go a long way to rebuilding public confidence in triple 0—although, as I say, we need to see, in addition, the outcome of the ACMA investigation into this latest occurrence.

Let's talk a bit about the statutory powers of this bill. It gives ACMA new statutory powers so they'll be able to issue binding directions to carriers, carriage service providers and emergency call persons. These directions may require information such as the cause and scale of outages, restoration plans, and policies and procedures affecting triple 0. The bill also empowers ACMA to mandate specific actions, like improving notification processes or sharing data with emergency service organisations. This would ensure that all relevant stakeholders are informed quickly when there is a problem and that responses are coordinated effectively.

There are also civil penalties that come into effect with this bill. The civil penalty regime supports ACMA's new powers. Telcos and other providers will face significant consequences if they fail to provide information or act as directed during an outage. The penalty framework underscores the seriousness of obligations under the bill and reinforces the government's commitment to protecting Australians by ensuring that triple 0 is reliable and resilient. That is, at the end of the day, our belief as to what this system has to offer—reliability and resilience.

We've been very focused on one particular aspect of triple 0 and the failure that occurred with the Optus outage. Periurban communities like mine in Macquarie are bushfire prone and flood prone and have long, lonely roads and sparse populations. Our communities highlight why that reliability is so important and why resilience is so important. So, when I look at this legislation, I see it in a context of a whole range of things that the Albanese government has been doing to increase reliability and resilience in really difficult situations, emergency situations. Triple 0 needs to work reliably when there is massive demand, such as in a bushfire or a flood. It needs to be accessible in quite remote areas.

Just recently, only 20 kilometres north of Wisemans Ferry, just outside Sydney, residents were unable to phone triple 0 at the site of a tragic double-fatality car crash, when a car went into the Macdonald River. As Macdonald Valley resident Siobhan Mahoney described, on reaching the scene of the accident, which occurred late at night, she couldn't get reception, so she had to drive and get help via wi-fi. These are her words:

We had to waste time trying to get a signal and then eventually I came home to where we have Starlink, and that's how I managed to get hold of emergency services.

When I think about our constituents—and I know the member for Indi would face similar challenges—in nonurban areas trying to access emergency support, there are many things that are part of solving that problem. This legislation is one piece of it, but there are others. Siobhan in the Macdonald Valley didn't need to imagine what goes through your mind when you can't connect to triple 0; she experienced it. I have heard many similar stories over the last decade, including on roads like Putty Road and Bells Line of Road. Everyone, no matter where you are in the 21st century, should be able reach triple 0 in this country. It should be a given. That's why I have been so focused on improving the telecommunications infrastructure in Macquarie and having better and more reliable connectivity.

In the wake of the Black Summer bushfires, there has been significant additional funding, and recommendations from the royal commission supported that. That's resulted in a hardening of infrastructure in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury, and that's both mobile infrastructure and NBN infrastructure, both of which provide really essential communications. We've got improved power backup. There's better coverage, particularly based on the Albanese government investment in new towers in places like Macdonald Valley and Hawkesbury Heights. Very soon the Mount Tomah mobile tower will be switched on. This provides coverage on a really busy and key part of the Bells Line of Road, which is used by people coming from the central west through to Sydney as well as by local users.

There is still work to be done on Yellow Rock and a number of other sites, but these are improving. But there is so much more to do, and I think the crucial next step is the universal coverage obligation that we committed to during the election. The draft legislation is out for discussion. What it means is that outdoor coverage will be accessible almost anywhere Australians can see the sky. It will require mobile carriers to provide reasonable access to mobile voice and text outdoors almost everywhere in Australia. The reforms obviously are going to benefit peri-urban communities like mine but also more regional and remote communities, and it's expected that the changes will help add more than five million square kilometres of basic outdoor mobile text and voice coverage across Australia. The way it will happen is that operators are expected to use a combination of their existing services and emerging direct-to-device technology provided through the low-Earth-orbit satellites, the LEOsats, to expand that baseline outdoor mobile coverage. So, for those in my community who want to give feedback to that, there is an opportunity to do that by later this month.

This piece of legislation today is part of a suite of things that are so vital to communities like mine—peri-urban areas that can be some of the most disaster prone places but also have a high number of users of roads and accidents on well-used but not always best-maintained and highest-grade roads through quite sparsely populated areas. We do need to have a triple 0 custodian who can have the oversight on this aspect of it. No doubt, as we get this new technology happening, as new things come in, their remit will expand to ensure that, whatever the mode of communication, whether you're dialling triple 0 through a LEOsat, whether you're using your wi-fi through your NBN or whether you're using your mobile phone or your landline, you have the ability to connect to the services that you need most. I commend this bill to the House.

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