Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is the bare minimum. The public deserve to know that when they dial triple 0, they will reach a system that works and that they will get help that they need. When it fails, there must be only the most serious of consequences. Frankly, this debate isn't a new one. Here we are again, talking about the inability of private corporations to provide the essential and even lifesaving services that the Australian public deserves. This recent Optus triple 0 outage on 18 September is a catastrophic example linked to three deaths, including an eight-week-old baby. More than 600 emergency calls went unanswered. I cannot begin to imagine the terror of reaching out for help in your moment of greatest need only to be met with an empty dial tone. And, as we've heard, this isn't an isolated incident.

In 2023, Optus faced a $12 million fine after a nationwide outage left thousands of people unable to reach emergency services. ACMA found that Optus failed to conduct welfare checks on hundreds of affected customers, demonstrating a pattern of negligence in safeguarding public safety. Now, with Optus's hire of a veteran lobbyist, they are in classic damage-control mode. They're scrambling to manage the fallout from this outage and to retain the influence over government that they've cultivated for years. This is precisely the problem—a corporation that can't even keep emergency calls flowing is still positioning itself to shape policy, dodge accountability and put profits over public safety. Let's be clear: this outage occurred, and outages will likely continue to occur, because of the privatisation of an essential service into a corporation that puts corporate profits over the safety of Australians.

Yet this government continues to hold these services at arm's length, refusing to take responsibility and refusing to hold big businesses accountable because it doesn't suit their interests to do so, not when the revolving door between ministerial offices and corporate boardrooms keeps on spinning and not when invitations to the executive box are dished out in exchange for these contracts. This persistent problem, this culture of outsourcing responsibility, is not an accident. It is a defining feature of successive Labor and Liberal governments, but this pattern isn't unique to telecommunications. It repeats across other essential services—in energy, aged care and childcare. Like the 18 September outage, these failures are predictable. Without systemic change, they will happen again and again.

Today, it is once again in the headlines in the childcare sector for all the wrong reasons. The ABC's Four Corners investigation today has again exposed appalling abuse, neglect and a regulatory failure within Australia's childcare sector—a crisis at the heart of a system designed for profit, not care. I have to say I get a real sense of deja vu every time I rise in this chamber to talk about yet another horrific case of abuse in our childcare system. Nevertheless, every time it happens, I will stand and speak to raise the voices of families and educators who have been sounding the alarm for too long, only for their warnings to go unheard. The investigation revealed that most of the serious incidences of abuse occurred in for-profit centres, where cost cutting, chronic staff turnover and threadbare oversight have left gaping holes in accountability and safety.

Despite years of warnings from experts, advocates, educators and the Greens, Labor has refused to introduce the comprehensive reforms needed to keep children safe. More than 90 per cent of these centres opened over the past decade are run by providers trying to make a profit. The direction is clear. We are moving further and further away from a system that serves children and families and deeper into one that serves balance sheets. We have called time and time again for a national independent watchdog, one with real power to investigate and enforce standards to shine a light into every dark corner of this system. But, instead of taking responsibility, the government tinkers around the edges, layering cosmetic fixes on a structure that is fundamentally in crisis.

Doesn't that sound familiar? This is what happens when you turn essential public goods into profit-making enterprises. The system works exactly as it's designed—to deliver returns to shareholders while leaving our most vulnerable, whether it's children or those seeking emergency assistance, to fend for themselves. This is the system we've built to care for our most vulnerable Australians. Whether it's emergency services or child care, the pattern is the same. Privatisation and a lack of accountability create predictable failures. The lesson is clear: regulators are not clearing this up alone. We need an end to self-regulation, we need actual penalties, and we need a government willing to act and lead.

These are essential services, not market opportunities. When they fail, it's not just a policy failure; it's a moral and democratic failure. When the government cannot provide for the people who elected them, whether in emergency services or child care, it is choosing profit over the very people that it serves. End your regime of secrecy and corporate influence, stop hiding behind private providers, stop allowing these predictable failures to continue to occur and start working for the people who actually elect you, not the ones who hand you tickets to the corporate box.

The Senate transcript was published up to 12:05 . The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.