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

My question is to the Minister for Communications. I refer to the minister's previous answer, where she refused to address whether welfare checks have been conducted. It is an open secret in the press gallery that Labor MPs are complaining to journalists that the minister continually fails to show any compassion for victims. Today, secret emails have revealed the minister—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

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

Order! I can't hear the question. I heard backgrounding, but I want to know what the context was. So I'm going to ask the member for Lindsay to begin her question again—and she will be heard in silence.

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

I refer to the minister's previous answer, where she refused to address whether welfare checks have been conducted. It is an open secret in the press gallery that Labor MPs are complaining to journalists that the minister continually fails to show any compassion for victims. Today, secret emails have revealed the minister's office was aware of this crisis 24 hours before the time at which the minister told the House she found out. Yesterday, the minister refused to apologise for this failure. Will the minister finally now apologise to victims and their families?

Government members interjecting—

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

Order! I just remind government members: do not test me on timed questions; otherwise, it will apply to ministers as well. There is nothing that annoys me more than when someone yells out on the issue of time. If people want me to go down the path of exact, strict limits, we will do it. It means questions will be ruled out and ministers will be sat down. I'm asking everyone to respect that.

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

As I said in an earlier answer, the information that Optus provided to my office on 18 September was that there had been a minor outage that affected 10 calls, that it had been resolved and, most importantly, that there were no adverse impacts on any persons. With respect to the more catastrophic outage that affected 631 calls, potentially with links to three deaths—potentially four deaths, as we found out on Sunday—I inquired as to the correct process for dealing with families in this situation. I was advised that emergency services is the correct and proper agency that we use to reach out, so that's what happened. I also spoke to the premiers of South Australia and Western Australia, the Chief Minister of the NT and numerous other people across that weekend as we all worked on our collective response.

Of course, I will absolutely meet with affected families if that's what they wish. I am respecting their space. There are many sensitivities here, and I'm not going to make their lives harder by politicising their grief in this place as you have now done two days in a row.