Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on this bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025, that has been rushed into the parliament after what has been a very deadly and significant failure of one of Australia's largest telecommunications companies. Of course, we know that on 18 September Optus failed its customers. It failed under its licence conditions, and it has failed to put safety front and centre. In fact, Optus's failure is because this big telecommunications company has consistently put profits ahead of safety and the protection of its customers.

I am extremely concerned that this chamber is having to debate this piece of legislation because our triple 0 system is in crisis—that it is not robust enough to ensure that the most basic access to essential service is being met. Governments have one job, and that is to keep their citizens safe. It's the core job of government. Yet here the most basic way of keeping citizens safe is to ensure that, when an Australian needs to call the ambulance or to call the police, someone will answer the phone. Being able to call triple 0 at your time of need is the most basic service Australians expect and deserve from their government.

The reason we're in this situation is that, after years of privatisation of our telecommunications system, we now have a sector that is run by three big corporations who put their profits ahead of people's safety and one in particular, Optus, that has consistently failed over and over again to do the right thing. It beggars belief that we are back here, only two years after a huge Optus failure where millions of Australians were not able to use their phone, were not able to use internet banking and were not able to pay for things at the shops, contact their loved ones or do their work because Optus phones ran dead. Of course, because of that failure, that massive outage, that happened in 2023, thousands of Australians were unable to call triple 0, and at that time we were promised that this big company would have a good, hard look at itself and do what is needed to increase its safety measures and increase its delivery of services. Two years later we are back in the same scenario, except that this time it's with very deadly consequences.

It must be the worst nightmare, as a parent with a sick child—a fever rising, needing desperate help from an ambulance—to pick up the phone and call for help and have no-one answer or for one of Australia's older members of society, one of our senior citizens, who's taken a fall to call triple 0 and have no-one answer. It is not good enough. There is no amount of excuse that can be given by Optus as to how these deadly failures happened. But it gets worse, of course, because not only did Optus fail to provide safety and ensure the ambulance could get to its customers; they then didn't tell anybody what had really happened—for hours and hours and hours.

For months and months, the government has been warned that the triple 0 system hasn't been working, that it's not robust enough, that it doesn't have enough resilience. But, now that we've had this deadly outage from Optus, the government has rushed in this piece of legislation to do the bare minimum that they promised two years ago. So I'm glad this legislation is now finally before us, but it shouldn't have taken another Optus failure and a deadly outage for this legislation to have been brought into this chamber. The government was caught flat-footed and caught snoozing on the job, and now they've had to bring in this legislation.

Of course, this hasn't just been a failure of the big telco. The government's own regulator, ACMA, whose job it is to hold these corporations to account, to make sure Australians are getting the service they require and that is legally required under the licences that these companies are given, has failed too—dismally. Not only has the regulator been caught snoozing on the job; we find out that they were told on the Thursday when this outage first happened that 000 had failed for at least 10 calls. We know through Senate estimates, under tough questioning of the regulator, that they sat on that information and did nothing with it even though they admit it seemed all a bit suss. There was no proactive picking up the phone, calling Optus to question what was really going on. They saw an e-mail and thought: 'That's odd. We'll just wait and see.' This is the problem when you've got a regulator that is so clearly captured by industry's interests. Rather than picking up the phone, interrogating the information and finding out where these calls really had failed, what had happened, what was going on with the welfare checks, the regulator sat on its hands for more than 24 hours. And then, of course, it wasn't even the regulator that called Optus the next day, 24 hours later. It was Optus calling the regulator to tell them: 'Oops; it wasn't just 10 calls. It was hundreds of calls and, oh, by the way, three people are dead.' But the regulator did nothing for 24 hours.

What is the point of a regulator if they don't hold these companies to account in the interests of Australians and under the strict conditions of the licences that these companies have? It is an open secret that ACMA is useless. Everyone in business knows it. Talk to anyone in the industry. Everyone knows that ACMA, the regulator of these big telcos, is 'toothless, useless and does nothing'.

It's not good enough, and now we see that the results are deadly. Australians right across the country don't know whether anyone will answer if they pick up the phone to call the ambulance or the police. This is a terrible indictment of the regulation of this industry, which everyone can see has become an essential service. Not only is it an essential service to be able to call triple 0 when you need an ambulance, the police or the fire brigade urgently—of course that's an essential service that should work—but the telecommunications systems themselves have become an essential part of our daily lives and our work. When the phone runs dead, everything stops. But, of course, this is what happens when you have big corporations which continue to put their profits ahead of service, ahead of safety and ahead of their customers.

I'll tell you what else stinks about this. When the CEO finally found out that this outage had occurred with deadly consequences, that three individuals had died after they weren't able to get their phone call through to triple 0, who did he call when he first found out this information? Did he call the minister? Did he call the regulator? Did he call the premiers of South Australia or WA where these outages had occurred? No; he called his board. He called his bosses in Singapore. For hours, Optus executives were working the phones to line their ducks up to make sure their shareholders were okay and that the announcement to the Singapore stock exchange would be in order before they bothered to pick up the phone to the minister, the regulator or the government of South Australia. If that doesn't show you that this company prioritises their interests and their profits ahead of the interests and safety of Australians, nothing does.

I am furious at what this company has gotten away with, and I'm furious that they promised to clean themselves up two years ago. Our Senate inquiry had the CEO and the other executives in front of us two years ago, and they were begging for forgiveness with promises after promises that they'd clean up their act. It's not okay. It's now resulted in the worst possible outcome. Individuals have died, and Australians across the board are now wondering whether they can trust the triple 0 system at all. That's why this legislation is important. We need to send a message the telecommunications companies that this behaviour is not okay, and we need to whack in stronger penalties to send that message loud and clear. A slap on the wrist of $12 million last time clearly didn't work.

These corporations need to hear the signal of money loud and clear. They need stronger penalties, and I would put it to this chamber that we need criminal penalties as well, because this is criminal. Failing to deliver on the most basic service of triple 0, putting your profits ahead of the safety of people and thinking about your shareholders and the stock exchange before the Australian community and your customers—that should be criminal. That's why we'll be moving to increase the penalties in this bill. I urge the government: if you want to talk tough, work tough. Pass the amendments and let's get this done.