James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025. On behalf of the coalition I want to be clear from the outset that this bill was rushed through the House and is now being rushed through the Senate because of the catastrophic Optus outage in September. This was no ordinary outage. This outage went for around 13 hours, completely undetected by Optus. People in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory were unable to call triple 0 in their time of need. There were warning signs that were ignored by Optus during this time, such as customer complaints to the Optus call centres from people who couldn't connect to triple 0, yet none of these raised a red flag and none of these were acted on. It is absolutely appalling that, when a person calls their telco company, this isn't taken seriously.

It wasn't until the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman started getting calls—and until it then called Optus—that Optus paid any attention to this situation. What we now know is that more than 600 calls failed to connect with emergency services during that 13-hour outage. But we still don't know if that is all. We don't know with any certainty how many more there might be. Tragically, four people lost their lives during this outage. These deaths will be investigated by the state coroners, and it may take some time for those investigations to be completed. On behalf of the coalition I want to extend my sympathies to the families and friends of those individuals.

We cannot emphasise enough how unacceptable this outage was, and the way it has been handled by everyone involved is a disgrace. Optus have failed Australians, and Optus have failed Australia. They've failed in not detecting this outage in their systems, which denied Australians in emergency situations connection to help—help that is promised will be there in people's greatest time of need. The Minister for Communications agreed that it's the most critical service in our telecommunications system. Disappointingly, she's failing to protect it.

Optus also failed to tell Australians what was going on for more than 32 hours after this catastrophic failure of their network. More than a month after the outage, Optus have failed to be open and transparent about what actually went wrong, only citing human error as the cause. What does this even mean? Did someone forget to flick a switch, plug in something or code something correctly or incorrectly in the systems upgrade? Did they fail to triple test the situation or the emergency camp-on arrangements in the ICT environment before they upgraded the firewall? Did someone just spill coffee over their keyboard? Your guess is as good as mine because, more than a month on, no-one is talking, and no explanations have been provided.

But Optus are not the only ones who have failed here. They are not the only ones whose systems are broken. The department of communications and the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, have also failed. In Senate estimates just two weeks ago we established that Optus sent two emails first alerting the department to the outage at 2.45 pm and 2.52 pm on Thursday 18 September, the day the outage was first detected by Optus. We spent many hours during the estimates hearing establishing exactly what happened with those emails, and you wouldn't believe it, but the answer is nothing. Do you want to know why? It's because the department of communications claimed that the email inbox was not being monitored for those notifications. Disturbingly though, that very same mailbox is used for other emergency notifications, which leaves me and many Australians, I'm sure, questioning just how seriously emergencies are managed by the department of communications. You also have to ask the question: what happens outside business hours?

ACMA also received notification on 18 September. That notification came in the form of a phone call at about 2.40 pm. During our Senate estimates hearing, the chair of ACMA said Optus advised just 10 calls had been impacted. Interestingly, they also said they raised concerns with Optus about there only being 10 calls, because that seemed very low given the length of time of the outage and how many calls there are each day to triple 0, but that's where their inquiries seemed to stall. That was until the afternoon of Friday 19 September at around 2.40 pm, when Optus notified them of the deaths that had occurred. It beggars belief that panic stations were not sounded by the department of communications, ACMA or the minister's office during this entire saga. The minister has a lot to answer for.

Two weeks ago the Minister for Communications was asked in question time to confirm that 'neither she nor her office were notified of the catastrophic outage that occurred on Thursday 18 September before the afternoon of 19 September, when Optus advised the media'. The minister stood in the other place and said:

Yes; I can confirm we were not notified of the catastrophic outage until late afternoon on Friday 19 September.

Let me tell you where the minister's story starts to fall apart. On 25 September, David Swan from the Age newspaper published a story entitled 'The emails that reveal how Optus downplayed the Triple Zero disaster'. In this article Mr Swan cited the two emails sent by Optus to the minister's staff at 2.45 pm and 2.52 pm on Thursday 18 September. 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. It clearly said that calls to triple 0 had been impacted. The minister's office was directly notified by Optus. This was the first warning sign, and it was ignored by the minister's office.

The minister has spoken of the need to rebuild trust and confidence in the triple 0 network so Australians can have faith that the service will work, but that is nothing more than platitudes. The Albanese government failed to support an inquiry into the Optus outage in the other place. They failed to support amendments to this bill that would have doubled the fines for telcos who breach the act and endangered the lives of Australians to up to $20 million per breach, that would have listed the triple 0 network as critical infrastructure, that would have created a public register of all triple 0 outages so the Australian people would know when something is going on—because heaven forbid this government tells you when something is happening or not happening—and that would have reduced the reporting times in this bill from six months to three months and caused those reports to be published online. The Albanese Labor government failed to support these changes. The Albanese Labor government and the minister don't want to work together to strengthen this bill. They don't want to work together to make sure that Australians are safe and have confidence in the triple 0 network, and they don't want transparency. The government wants to ram this bill through parliament and do a victory lap so they can claim they took action.

The coalition has had a very strong opinion on this and will continue to have a very strong opinion on this. We will continue to hold the government to account, because, while the government may have had the numbers in the other place to shut down a House inquiry, they do not have them here. The coalition will be calling for a Senate inquiry, and the sensible and reasonable minds in this place will support it. Australians deserve to know what went wrong. When every single player in this catastrophic event—Optus, ACMA as the regulator, the department of communications and the minister and her office—failed to tell the truth about what they knew and when, you aren't rebuilding trust.

Like rubbing salt in the wound, the minister has tasked ACMA, as the regulator, to investigate the outage, but how on earth can ACMA investigate what went wrong when they are part of the failed process? They failed to investigate and they failed to heed the warnings that something wasn't quite right. It doesn't matter how many email notifications are being sent to its bureaucracy—if those emails fail to be read, they are useless. According to the minister, the Triple Zero Custodian has been operational since March this year, within her department, but this is the same department that got the email alerts from Optus on the day of the outage and did nothing with them. What exactly has this person been doing since March? Not checking the emails, for sure.

What astounds the coalition the most is that it's taken another crisis with Optus to get this weak and lazy Albanese government off their backsides, and they still don't have a clue. If this role were established back in March, why wasn't it legislated then? If this 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 apparently can't even check an email?

The Albanese Labor government 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 for communications has refused to do so at every turn and, like a broken record on repeat, has continued to say ACMA are the appropriate body to do the investigation. They are not. They failed to alert the minister or anyone else when the first warning bells were rung. ACMA and the department of communications failed to brief the minister and update her on the Bean review recommendations and where they were at. This stuff matters. People's lives are at risk.

This government's failure to act on the recommendations of the Bean review, which they accepted and agreed to in full 18 months ago, is lazy and shows a disregard for the triple 0 service. This bill, at face value, does little more than add bureaucratic layers to an existing process that already has multiple failure points. The coalition will continue to call for an independent review of the triple 0 ecosystem. It is vital that we find out what the failure points are so we can fix them and ensure that this system works. Australians deserve more. They expect more, and it is on the Minister for Communications, as the steward of the system, to deliver that. This system is broken. The minister needs to do her job and fix it. Australians are depending on this government, but also on this Senate, to get this right. With disaster season upon us, there is no time to waste.

The coalition will be moving three key amendments to this bill. The first amendment, No. 3458, circulated in my name, will create a public register of all triple 0 outages. This is really important to ensure Australians have visibility of any outages within their communities, and we can restore confidence in the system. It will also ensure the minister, the department of communications, ACMA as the regulator and the Triple Zero Custodian are accountable and functioning as they should. The absolute disaster we saw with the Optus September outage—clearly, no-one had been reading their emails, and, quite frankly, that isn't good enough. More transparency in the system will ensure Australians' confidence is restored and the telcos and the government are held to account when things aren't working.

The second amendment, No. 3459, also circulated in my name, will change the reporting requirements in this bill from six months to three months and cause those reports to be published on the ACMA website and tabled in the parliament.

The final amendment, No. 3460, will increase the maximum penalty amount to $20 million for a breach of the telco operators' obligations. This is important. Time and time again we have the networks go out and triple 0 outages risking people's lives. This isn't good enough. There must be strong penalties for any operator who does the wrong thing and risks the lives of Australians. The coalition calls on the Greens and the crossbench to support these amendments to ensure our triple 0 system is strengthened and operators and the government have the highest level of transparency to ensure that all Australians are safe.