Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications. After the catastrophic triple 0 outage last month, the minister told a press conference before her trip to New York that there had been deaths. Exactly how many deaths is the minister aware of? And has the minister personally phoned each family to apologise for the Albanese Labor government's inaction?

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sport) | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for her question. I trust that she was watching when the Optus CEO announced news that there had been, as far as he was aware, three deaths. That was late Friday afternoon. The following day, on Saturday afternoon, Premier Roger Cook said that they had found, within the ambulance services of WA, a fourth death that may be connected to the catastrophic Optus outages. Let us agree here: that is not good enough; what happened in September was not good enough. Legislating a triple 0 custodian will drive real change, but, for us here, there is no silver bullet when it comes to corporate failures.

So have I spoken with the families? I have spoken with Optus, the company who has failed Australians and these families here. The CEO of Optus has apologised to the families for the failures of Optus and the catastrophic impact that has had on their families, as has the CEO of Singtel, the parent company of Optus. I think we can all agree it is right and appropriate for these companies to apologise because they are the cause of these catastrophic failures. They have accepted responsibility for this.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) | Link to this | Hansard source

There was nothing the government could have done?

Milton Dick (Speaker) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Leader of the Opposition has asked her question.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sport) | Link to this | Hansard source

Frankly, I am disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition seeks to let Optus off the hook and tries to say that other people should apologise for the failures of a private company, Optus. This outage and the many failings of Optus are the fault of Optus alone. I think the political actions, the politicising of a catastrophe here, are letting Optus off the hook and you should be ashamed of yourself. This is a tragic circumstance. There are families who have lost the ones they love, and that hardens my resolve. Optus is accountable, and as the minister I will hold them to account. The independent regulator has an investigation on foot. We will await her recommendations. Optus, I promise you, will face serious consequences for what they have done.