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

 Oh, no—it's a burn! What we have seen, sadly, with this government is that they're not telling Australians what the penalties will be. They can't even confirm whether there will be penalties. They're saying they will go for consultation on penalties. That doesn't say that there will be penalties. They can't give a definition of what is meant by real-time reporting, so effectively they're handballing everything back to the telcos. We have said consistently on this side of the chamber that the government should be holding the register and that it should be the telcos who are mandated to provide the government with the information concerning outages of the triple 0 network so that it is easier for Australians to hold the telcos to account but also to hold the government to account.

Section 151Q of the bill requires ACMA to provide a written report to the minister within three months after the end of each six-month period. Why will you not support the coalition's amendment or Senator Payman's amendment to have these reports made publicly available?