Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025. Regulating telecommunications companies is essential, and the Greens welcome the introduction of this bill. However, it has taken the government far too long to take steps to regulate the telecommunications companies. This legislation is only being introduced now, 18 months after it was recommended, allowing big corporations to be left to run rampant. Why have we left triple 0 up to the operation of profit-seeking companies? Something as life-and-death as calling triple 0 should be bulletproof.

In 2010 my husband had a cardiac arrest while he was out running, and, thanks to a good Samaritan who rang triple 0, and a fabulous man named Gary who gave him CPR, 15 years later he's still here. I cannot imagine how I would have felt if the people putting through that call for the ambulance, who arrived within five minutes to apply the defibrillators that meant that he is still here, were never called and didn't come. I cannot imagine that, and my heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones because Optus did not do its job. Shame on them.

Running triple 0 properly should be a basic responsibility of government, but, instead, we've left private companies like Optus in charge. In the recent Optus outage, 4½ thousand people were affected for nearly nine hours, including losing access to triple 0. Tragically, three people died failing to connect to triple 0. Again, my heart goes out to the families and friends who lost their loved ones. Instead of being treated as a life-saving service, triple 0 has become an expense to be managed on Optus and Telstra's balance sheet—something to be managed while they pursue profits for shareholders. What an absolute disgrace!

Before John Howard's government sold off Telstra, it was publicly owned. That meant the government was actually in charge of making sure telecommunications services were reliable for all of us, and that included triple 0. Later, other networks and retailers, like Optus, were allowed into the mix. In the last reported year, SingTel, the Singapore based owners of Optus, made $8.2 billion in income. How much tax did they pay here in Australia? Zero. Let me repeat that: they had $8.2 billion in income and pad $0 in tax in this country. Shame!

If you're an Optus customer, you might remember another huge outage back in 2023, when 10 million Optus customers lost access for more than 16 hours. What were the consequences for Optus then? There was an $11 million fine. That's about a dollar for each person who was impacted. This is precisely why the Greens have introduced amendments to this bill to ensure that we are increasing the civil penalties for corporations. These are massive corporations putting us at risk, and they can and should be paying more when they fail to protect us and ensure access to essential services.

Let's be clear. Access to telecommunications and triple 0 is an essential service. Even before this, between August 2019 and July 2023, Optus was found to have engaged in 'inappropriate sales practices' in South Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania. They sold services to people that they were aware were going through financial hardship and people with limited English proficiency. Most of these people that were impacted were from regional and remote communities, with many First Nations people impacted. Optus sold services that many vulnerable people neither wanted nor needed. They sold services to regional and remote communities that they, because of their coverage range, were aware customers would not be able to use. If this wasn't enough, they also pursued debts from these customers, including in cases where the contracts were created fraudulently.

I welcome the Greens amendments to ensure that these corporations are not only facing higher civil penalties but also criminal ones. We need to see criminal penalties for outages such as the ones we have seen. The Greens want to ensure that, when there are failures from a corporation that could result in harm and death, we are actually taking steps to hold those corporations to account. We have already seen this happen this year. This occurred because of the privatisation of an essential service to a corporation—a corporation that made billions of dollars in income and profit and that pays zero tax. The big corporations are left to run rampant. They show us, time and time again, that they can and will put corporate profits over the safety of Australians.

All of this makes clear that allowing these corporations to self-regulate is not enough, mainly because it is clear that they are not self-regulating. What is currently being allowed to happen is not ensuring that Australians have access to essential services. Corporations need to be held to account. You wouldn't dream of selling off firefighters or ambulances and leaving them to some business that runs for profit, but that's exactly what we've done with triple 0 through the privatisation of Telstra.

Now the government gets to talk tough on Optus but, really, for decades, Labor and the Liberals have sold off our essential services. Now Labor and the Liberals will talk tough, smash them for failing to keep people's access to triple 0 and play the heroes of the day. This is their failure. It is the failure of privatisation and it is a national responsibility. If Labor cannot ensure that we increase civil penalties, criminal responsibilities and effective regulation, then we are all in trouble, and more people are going to die when people can't get through on triple 0. I commend the Greens amendments to the Senate.