Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

INTRODUCTION

Triple Zero is the most critical service in our telecommunications system.

It is the number Australians call in their most desperate moment of need, when lives and safety are on the line.

Australians should trust that when they call Triple Zero, someone will answer and help will come.

But repeated failures by Optus in recent years, through which thousands of emergency calls failed to connect and lives were lost, has compromised that trust.

The Albanese Government will always work to protect Australians, and we will hold those who fail to deliver their obligations to full account.

Optus—and all telecommunications carriers—have no excuses for Triple Zero outages.

While the Australian Communications and Media Authority's independent investigation into the most recent incident continues, today I present the Telecommunications Legislative Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025.

WHAT'S HAPPENED SO FAR

From the moment a person dials Triple Zero into their phone, a chain of actions is set in motion.

The call passes through carriers, infrastructure owners and the Emergency Call Person, before finally landing with the relevant state and territory emergency service, who dispatch potentially lifesaving resources.

And while telco outages may occur, the law is clear—carriers must always make sure that Triple Zero calls still connect by being redirected to alternate mobile towers or infrastructure.

Despite this requirement, the Bean Review found a lack of overarching accountability over many years left the system vulnerable when coordination broke down.

That is why, in March this year, the Albanese Government established the Triple Zero Custodian in the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts.

So far, the Custodian has worked closely with industry to understand the gaps in the Triple Zero system.

Alongside the Custodian, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has led a steering committee of industry, government and consumer representatives to establish a longer-term Triple Zero Custodian Model.

The Government thanks the participants in that steering committee for their contribution to this incredibly important work.

This Bill cements into law the powers and functions of the existing Triple Zero Custodian, to strengthen the resilience and oversight of the Triple Zero system.

And it builds on critical industry standards starting on the 1st of November.

From the 1st of November, telecommunications carriers will have to provide real time reporting of outages to ACMA and emergency services.

They will also have to test Triple Zero during upgrades and maintenance, and ensure calls fall back to other networks if needed.

And within six months of the commencement of this Bill, the Custodian, through ACMA, will issue additional performance requirements to telcos to ensure best practice.

Telco providers know under the law they must provide reliable access to Triple Zero—that is their legal obligation.

That's why the Minister recently met with the CEOs of Optus, Telstra and TPG/Vodafone ahead of the approaching natural disaster season.

There are no excuses and the Minister made that crystal clear.

SCHEDULE 1 — MAIN AMENDMENTS

Turning to the specifics of this Bill, Schedule 1 amends the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 to put the Custodian on a statutory footing and equip ACMA with targeted powers.

Under these amendments, ACMA may issue directions to carriers, carriage service providers and emergency call persons.

These directions may require critical information to be provided, such as technical details of an outage, policies and processes affecting Triple Zero, or restoration plans.

They may also require specific actions to be taken, such as consulting with other stakeholders, sharing information with an emergency service organisation, or improving procedures to prevent a repeat failure.

During an outage event, where the Custodian or ACMA reasonably believes access to Triple Zero may be affected, ACMA can compel timely information on the outage's nature, scale, impacts and restoration.

Information gathered by ACMA will be provided to the Custodian in a timely manner.

The Custodian will use this material to support its ongoing, system-wide oversight of Triple Zero.

ACMA will also provide advice and analysis to the Custodian to assist in identifying risks and improving preparedness across the ecosystem.

This arrangement strengthens ACMA as an active participant in Triple Zero, while maintaining the Custodian as the central coordination and oversight function within the Department.

The Bill also establishes rules for the use and disclosure of Custodian information.

This framework allows information to be shared with emergency service organisations, regulators and other relevant bodies to remediate problems before they cause crisis, and to respond during an outage of the Triple Zero system.

Schedule 1 requires ACMA to report every six months to the Minister on use of the new powers, with a copy provided to the Custodian.

The Minister may also cause a review of the Custodian's effectiveness within two years of commencement. These provisions reinforce accountability and provide the flexibility to refine the framework over time.

For constitutional reasons, the powers of direction contained in the Bill do not extend to state and territory emergency services organisations.

However, it is the Government's expectation that the Custodian will work constructively with the states and territories, to ensure the appropriate transfer of information.

SCHEDULE 2—CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS

Schedule 2 makes consequential amendments to the Telecommunications Act 1997.

It confirms ACMA's investigation pathway where matters are referred by the Custodian and establishes civil penalties for contraventions of Custodian directions.

This aligns with the penalty settings of other enforcement tools across the telecommunications regulatory framework and reinforces the seriousness of compliance.

SCHEDULE 3—TECHNICAL UPDATES TO EMERGENCY SERVICES REFERENCES

Schedule 3 of the Bill updates references to 'emergency services' so that the term is consistently defined across telecommunications legislation.

CONCLUSION

This Bill acts on the lessons of past service disruptions by establishing into law the powers and functions of the Triple Zero Custodian.

It provides the Commonwealth with a permanent mechanism to oversee emergency call services, both during outages and in business-as-usual operations.

It will also give the ACMA the tools it needs to be proactive and forward leaning in pursuing a resilient, reliable emergency call service for the benefit of all Australians.

Going forward, I will repeat for the record what the Minister said to the CEOs of Optus, Telstra and TPG.

The Albanese Government is committed to making the Triple Zero system better and more reliable for Australians.

Legislating a Triple Zero Custodian will help—but there is no silver bullet solution for corporate failure.

If a telco fails Australians—like Optus did—they will face significant consequences.

There is no excuse.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to 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.

Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When disaster strikes, whether it's a flood, a fire, a crash or a heart attack, Australians know that they can dial three simple numbers, triple 0, and get help. Triple 0 is a service that has saved countless lives. But we saw, during the Optus outage, that our emergency system—one of the most trusted in the world—is not immune to system outages. When the outage occurred, it reinforced the need to bolster our triple 0 network, and that's exactly what this government will do. The Albanese government is bolstering oversight of the critical triple 0 service through legislation that will bolster the powers of the Triple Zero Custodian. The new laws will reinforce a key recommendation of the review into the Optus outage of November 2023 by enshrining the powers and functions of the custodian in law and providing end-to-end oversight of triple 0. Through ACMA, the custodian will be able to demand information from telecommunications providers so it can monitor triple 0 performance, identify risks, respond more quickly to outages and make improvements.

Before entering public life, I spent more than two decades working in emergency services, disaster management and public health. I sat in disaster control rooms during bushfires. I have worked alongside emergency services personnel responding to floods, cyclones and indeed major system outages. I know that in a crisis seconds matter, and, when triple 0 fails, it can cost people's lives. That is why I am so pleased to see the Albanese government acting so quickly after the Optus outage. The government has launched a full review into the resilience of the national triple 0 system because Australians deserve the most robust system possible. We are now implementing reforms to make triple 0 stronger and more resilient—real-time reporting outages to ACMA and emergency services, which will begin on 1 November. New rules, starting on 1 November, will force telcos to test triple 0 during upgrades and maintenance, and new requirements on providers will fully ensure triple 0 calls fall back to other networks, as well as mandatory improvement plans after triple 0 outages. Within six months of the commencement of the laws, the custodian through ACMA will issue additional performance requirements to telcos to ensure Australians of best practice. This isn't just about fixing what caused the outage; it is about future proofing the system, because, in the next decade, we will face more disasters, more intense storms, hotter summers and a growing population that relies on technology more than ever. Labor's reforms are building a triple 0 system that is resilient, modern and more robust, no matter where you live or which provider you use.

I do urge the opposition and the crossbench to support this bill. I am concerned to hear that amendments are going to be moved that could potentially delay the introduction of these important reforms, and I cannot believe that we'd be even contemplating not taking action and pushing that further out. I am concerned to hear that those amendments are being put forward, and I would urge the opposition to make sure that they are supporting these important reforms that get that moving on 1 November—not delaying it but getting it moving on 1 November. As someone who has worked on the front line of disaster response, I know that we need this action now, because it means saving lives, it means protecting families and it means giving every Australian the confidence that, when they dial triple 0, we have their backs.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This year, 18 September was a shocking day for this country. A number of people died. There are still conflicting reports about whether three or four people died. They died as a result of a catastrophic failure by Optus. For this government to scramble now, to bring in this bill on the Triple Zero Custodian on recommendations that were made close to two years ago, is a disgrace. That is why I am calling on every senator to support an urgent Senate inquiry into the September Optus triple 0 outage when the vote occurs in the Senate tomorrow.

Senator McGrath set out a very good history of the nightmare that we went through in Senate estimates extracting information, extracting the truth, about what happened—the ducking and weaving and deception from this government. I would also name the department. There's one official, in particular, in the department who, for a number of hours, led senators on a merry dance without giving straight answers as to when the department first knew about this, when the minister first knew about this, when the regulator first knew about this. I can tell you, right now, we are not impressed.

I would send a direct message to the secretary of the department: pull your officials in order. When they come before Senate estimates we expect straight, clear, honest answers to our questions. We were told, over and over again, 'Oh, well, on the Thursday when this happened, yes, there were a couple of emails sent but they were sent to the wrong email address.' We could not get a straight answer about those two emails, including advice that welfare checks were still being conducted because of the outage, for a couple of hours. That is appalling.

When we finally got hold of those emails, we discovered they'd gone to the minister's office on the Thursday! Yet we have the minister telling the Australian people in the House of Representatives, 'Yes, I can confirm we were not notified of the catastrophic outage until late afternoon on Friday 19 September.' That's just simply not true. We now know that those emails went into the minister's office the day before, on the Thursday afternoon. So, again, I stress to the secretary of the department: please, when you come back before us in Senate estimates, in December, and hopefully when the Senate inquiry is established, we expect a much better performance than that. Every official, every minister, is required to give clear and straight and concise answers to our questions, because this was a deadly outcome. I too extend my sympathies to the families and friends and loved ones of those who died.

As the initiator of the proposal to hold a Senate inquiry, and the vote will be held tomorrow, as I mentioned, we are determined to drag Optus executives before the Senate and demand answers. We are determined, and we hope that will happen next week. We also need to know whether Australians can ever again trust Optus to provide a triple 0 service. After misleading Australians about when her office first knew about the outage, Labor's hapless minister for communications, Minister Wells, must also appear before the inquiry. We will not tolerate any more ducking and weaving or deception. While the Senate cannot compel a member of the House of Representatives to appear, it is incumbent on this minister to do the right thing in the national interest and give evidence. We deserve answers. Australians deserve the truth—the full truth and nothing but the truth.

In the terms proposed, which have been lodged and will appear on the Notice Paper tomorrow, the role of the minister in safeguarding the integrity, resilience and public confidence in the triple 0 system is central to our inquiry, and there are very good precedents for this. On a number of previous occasions under our government, ministers volunteered to appear before Senate inquiries. Mr Dutton, who was then the Minister for Home Affairs, appeared before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation's Committee's inquiry into national security legislation. He was very happy to clarify a number of operational matters concerning his portfolio and the Australian Federal Police. Mr Morrison, when he was the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, in 2014 also appeared before a Senate inquiry of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. This was an inquiry into the Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014.

Of course, as I said, we cannot compel the minister to appear, but this minister, today, must confirm that she is prepared to front up to the inquiry. We are not going to tolerate anything less. It is a joke that the minister thinks it's good enough to ask her own regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which in so many respects reports to her, which is just one of the conflicts of interest, to inquire into itself and others. That is untenable. I will say this about the former minister for communications, Ms Rowland: at least she had the decency to set up an independent inquiry, the Bean review, which made some very, very good recommendations. Of course, many of those recommendations were not acted on, and many of those recommendations which are in the form of new, enhanced triple 0 rules are still not in effect. I'll say more about that in a moment.

It is appalling that it is clear that the regulator is implicated in what happened on that day, on the next day and in its governance of the triple 0 service. This is an essential service for all Australians. Every Australian needs to know that when they pick up the phone and dial triple 0 they will get the help they need from the fire brigade, from the ambulance service or from the police. I have to particularly condemn the minister and ACMA because there were very important recommendations that stemmed out of our previous Senate inquiry and also the Bean review to enhance the emergency call service rules, rules known as the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Amendment Determination 2025 (No. 1). Would you believe they were made in April of this year? But, extraordinarily, these rules are still not in place. The telcos were given six months to implement these rules. Of course, in September, three or four people died. Just imagine—we don't know, because we don't know all the facts.

These rules are meant to ensure that telecommunications carriers do a better job and are more accountable. These rules include that carriers must wilt a mobile base station if it has lost connectivity so that calls via that mobile tower can be carried by another network. The carriers are obliged to take steps to ensure that their facilities do not impede emergency call camp-on functionality. Providers must test that emergency calls originating on their network can be delivered to the emergency call person—that's triple 0 or 112—including when camp-on is used. Carriers must share real-time network information with specified entities, which include emergency services organisations, but this is currently not the case.

After a major outage, there must be a full report. The new rules provide that, before there is a system upgrade, carriers must submit management plans ahead of proposed changes to show that, where there is a risk of detrimental impact to emergency call delivery, the carriers will have the appropriate measures in place to ensure triple 0 doesn't fail. There are a number of other rules contained in this instrument, which was registered in April, but these rules don't come into effect until 1 November. That is a complete and utter disgrace.

What was the minister doing? She is ramming this bill through at the last minute. It should have happened last year. After ACMA ran its consultation on these new, enhanced triple 0 rules, they should have come into effect straightaway. Now, of course, the carriers are saying, 'We need so much more time.' Well, no, they don't need more time, when there is an outage, to tell emergency services. I recall the outrage of the South Australian Premier, who was also in the dark when we had that scrambled Friday night press conference by the CEO of Optus. He was outraged because services in South Australia and, I assume, in Western Australia were not told—state governments were not told—and the whole thing was a fiasco.

Why is it that, when these rules came into place—really important recommendations from the Bean review, recommendations that were very much supported by the previous Senate inquiry—the minister accepted the fact that it would take six months? We need to put the fire to the feet of these carriers. We need to say that if you are going to have the responsibility of providing such critical infrastructure as telephone services, which are so vital, then we need to see you do the job properly.

I also want to commend Senator Hanson-Young, who, along with Senators Dean Smith and Cadell, is co-sponsoring this notice of motion to set up this inquiry. The Greens have been very, very supportive of this initiative, but we are not going to let the government, the regulator, the minister, Optus or any other carrier off the hook. We are going to go through this with a fine-tooth comb. We are also putting on the table the need to bring mobile phone roaming into this country so that if you don't have a mobile connection or service from one carrier, particularly when you're in a regional area, you can use another carrier's tower. It's a disgrace that domestic customers are barred from mobile roaming in this country. I look forward to the Senate's support of that motion tomorrow.

Richard Dowling (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025, a bill that goes to the heart of public trust and safety. Every Australian should have the confidence that when they dial triple 0, when they reach out for help in an emergency, that call will be answered and that someone will be there at the other end. That's because, in that moment, every second counts and the difference between a call that connects and one that fails can be the difference between life and death.

In September this year, an Optus network failure left hundreds of Australians unable to reach emergency services. Around 600 triple 0 calls failed and at least four lives were lost. For those families, it was a devastating breach of the most basic public expectation—that, when you call for help, the system will be there. That is why the Albanese government has acted swiftly to ensure such failure never happens again.

But, disappointingly, that sense of urgency is not shared by everyone in this chamber. At the very moment Australians expect unity and purpose, the coalition and Greens are playing politics that risk delaying this reform. The coalition is demanding yet another inquiry, the very definition of delay when the facts are already known and the Bean review recommendations have been accepted. The Greens, while preaching accountability, are proposing amendments that would tie this bill up for months of process before a single safeguard could take effect. Every day this bill is delayed is another day Australians remain exposed to vulnerabilities that failed them in September. So this is not the time for theatre and grandstanding. Accountability begins with action. There is nothing progressive about delaying protections that could save lives. This bill is not a political trophy; it is a community safeguard.

The bill strengthens the resilience of Australia's most critical telecommunications service. It does three things. Firstly, it establishes a triple 0 custodian within the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts. Secondly, it empowers ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, to issue binding directions to carriers and compel outage information. Thirdly, it introduces civil penalties to ensure those powers have real consequences. The custodian will coordinate the system end to end, while ACMA can act swiftly during outages and report to the minister so problems are caught early.

Other nations have already acted in this space. In the United States, carriers must report 911 outages within 30 minutes. In the United Kingdom, Ofcom fined BT 17 million pounds for failing to maintain emergency call reliability. Across Europe, calls must include accurate location data under the European Electronic Communications Code.

What sets Australia apart is the creation of a dedicated custodian. This is a bridge between our national networks and our state emergency services. For regional Australians, like those in Tasmania especially, this bill really matters. When a network fails in Hobart or Launceston, it's really serious. But, when it fails in Queenstown, Bruny Island or the Tasman Peninsula, where there is often just one tower, it can be life-threatening. Not every network outage becomes a triple 0 outage, but in places with only one carrier that distinction disappears. If your only network goes down, you can't call anyone, including triple 0. We've seen it during bushfires and storms, where whole communities are cut off. This bill strengthens oversight so that, when networks fail, the emergency system does not. In a state like Tasmania, redundancy isn't a luxury; it's a lifeline.

Consultation with carriers, regulators, emergency agencies and consumer groups confirms strong support for enshrining the custodian and giving ACMA the teeth that it needs. Industry wants certainty, emergency services want accountability, and the public wants reassurance. This bill delivers all three. It's balanced and targeted, not punitive for its own sake and has clear reporting to ensure transparency. The bill seeks to restore confidence that, when the worst happens, help is only three numbers away and confidence that government has learned from the past and acted with urgency.

For the families who lost loved ones in September, this bill says, 'We heard you and we acted.' For first responders, it says, 'We've got your back,' and, for every Australian, from Hobart to Burnie, Devonport to Dover, it says, 'When you call triple 0, your government has made sure that call will connect.' That is what public trust looks like and that is what accountability looks like. That is what this parliament should always strive to deliver. I therefore urge everyone—the Greens and the coalition—to stop playing political games and join with the government in commending this bill to the Senate.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025 and thank my colleague Senator Hanson-Young for all the work that she has done with and for the community after this devastating catastrophe. Telecommunications executives and the Labor government will have you believe that the Optus outage in September was a one-off, unfortunate event that can be addressed with some usual Labor tinkering around the edges. So let's be clear: this was the second major outage from Optus in just two years. Optus and the communications minister want us to think that the recurring failures are unlucky accidents or so-called human errors, but we do know better.

The Optus triple 0 outage last month that left hundreds of calls unanswered and that ended up in three deaths was catastrophic. It was a catastrophic failure of privatisation, of marketisation and of corporatisation of essential services. This is the failure of putting profits over people. The system failures are not a surprise. These disasters are not an anomaly, and the problem will not be solved with some minor tweaks or by creating yet another toothless regulatory role. Failures like this are baked into the very systems that created Optus and Telstra. The roots of the problem are privatisation, neoliberalism and the endless pursuit of profit at the expense of people and the planet.

For decades, we have been sold a lie. We have been told that, if we sell off our public assets and services, we will get better, cheaper services. We have been told that the private sector, big business and the billionaires are more innovative and more efficient than public services and public servants, and so, one by one, we flogged off our telecommunication systems, our power grids, our banks, our airlines, our public transport and our care services. And now look around: Who is better off? Who is safer? Who is being served? It is not the people; it is the corporations, it is big business, it is the big banks, and it is the billionaires. One in three corporations don't even pay any tax here, and neither does Optus, as they make billions on billions of dollars in profit. It is governments who are in the pockets of those who fill their pockets with donations that are to blame; it is not only the corporations.

Let's call it for what it is: a decades-long scam cooked up by successive Liberal and Labor governments to transfer public wealth into private hands. The Australian people have paid the price over and over again. Optus's latest catastrophic failures can be added to that invoice. This time, at least three people paid with their lives. And how has the government responded? It has shrugged. It has performed outrage. It has passed the blame. It acts like it has nothing to do with the catastrophes that inevitably come from the privatisation and corporatisation project. Of course, Optus's overpaid executives and the company itself must take responsibility and must be held to account. But Optus and other big corporations will always look to fatten up their profits at the expense of consumers. That is hardwired into the DNA of neoliberalism. That is why corporations exist—to make money while they screw over ordinary people.

Optus is only the latest chapter of this long and shameful story of privatisation. When Telstra was sold, we were promised better competition; instead, Telstra got billion-dollar profits, and rural communities got left behind. When our electricity grid's poles and wires were flogged off, we were told prices would fall. They didn't. Our energy bills continue to soar while the energy giants and billionaires laugh all the way to the banks. When our public transport was outsourced, workers were stripped of their rights and commuters waited longer for trains and buses that often never showed up. The privatised early education and care system is a disaster—a disaster where babies and toddlers have been neglected and abused while CEOs pocket bonuses.

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

Shame!

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

An absolute shame! My colleague here is absolutely right. I don't even know if there are words to describe what is happening in that privatised sector. That is what happens when successive governments stop believing in the public good and start worshipping at the altar of the market.

And it continues. The Albanese government is dressing up privatisation with buzzwords like 'co-investment'; and 'public-private partnerships' has been used for a long time. Sometimes the language changes, but it is the same disease and the same trajectory: hollow out the public sector, outsource accountability and let corporations run the show while everyday people pay the price every single day. Labor says it stands for working people. I don't think anyone believes that, because working people cannot afford their power bills, cannot afford to pay their HECS debts, cannot afford a home and now cannot even reach emergency services when they need them most. Decades of privatisation have left ordinary people paying more for less while governments wash their hands of the disasters that inevitably follow.

I think this should be a real wake-up call for the Labor government to say, 'Enough!' The privatisation experiment has failed, and we must have the courage to end it. We cannot tinker around the edges. We cannot create more toothless, underfunded regulators or positions. We cannot pretend that small changes will fix a crisis. We cannot pretend that for the climate. We cannot pretend that for any other public services. We need to rebuild public ownership. We need to bring back public accountability. We need to invest in the people and the systems that keep our country fair and safe. We need to put public interest above private profit and make sure that a company like Optus can never hold our lives in its hands, because, when a mother cannot reach triple 0 and her new baby dies, we know the system has utterly failed. Privatisation is not delivering efficiency; it is delivering neglect, it is delivering cruelty, and the disaster has been built, brick by brick, by decades of political cowardice by governments. So today I say to the government: stop selling us out. Let's end the neoliberal experiment. Essential services must be in public hands for the public good.

( Quorum formed )

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three people are dead because a private corporation was allowed to prioritise profits over safety. That's what privatisation looks like, and we should be clear that it's killing Australians. I want to put on the record my gratitude not only for that contribution that my colleague Senator Allman-Payne just delivered but also for the work that my other colleague Senator Hanson-Young has been doing in shining a light on just how dangerous the privatisation of this essential service, the triple 0 service, has been for Australians. I think many Australians are now utterly horrified that the number they call in the most extreme moments of need for them or their family is being routed through private corporations who may not even pick it up because they've got other things to do with their money—profits they want to send offshore.

The Optus triple 0 outage on 18 September wasn't just a technical failure. It wasn't just technology not working in that moment. It was a policy failure delivered by decades of rampant privatisation by the coalition and Labor. That's what happens when this place and other governments across the country hand essential services to corporations. What happens is that people die. And it's not a technical failure. It's baked into privatisation, where corporations, who are required under law to put profits first, put profits before people and safety. You only have to have a look at what Optus is doing as its business model. Optus rakes in about $8 billion from Australian customers. Mums and dads and students pump the money in, and Optus pays zero in corporate tax because they offshore their profits. Then, having raked in $8 billion from Australians and having paid zero dollars in corporate tax, they can't even keep triple 0 working because spending any money on triple 0 will eat into the profits that they can send to their offshore owners. Last time they did this—because, of course, Optus has got form—they got an $11 million fine. They didn't even notice it! It's a rounding error on the profits and the incomes that they make. It's pocket change for a company like this, not a serious penalty.

I again want to commend the amendments that my colleague Senator Hanson-Young is putting forward so that we can have legislation where, if you're going to leave this essential service in the hands of a private corporation, we can have penalties that are meaningful in terms of their business model. Not millions but billions are what should be paid if ever a company like this kills another Australian because they don't think funding essential services is needed.

We shouldn't be having this bill in front of us today because this was all apparent and clear in the 2023 outage. We're going to support this legislation, in one form or another—hopefully with some penalties that meet the damage—because something's better than nothing. I can tell you this: communities deserve far better. Once again, it's the Greens who are standing here, calling for serious penalties for corporate malfeasance and for when the negligence of corporations results in death. It's the Greens who are here saying that corporations need to be held to account and that regulators need the powers. It's the Greens who have been repeatedly calling out the failed experiment of privatisation—that religion of privatisation that both Labor and the coalition keep preaching but that Australians know is a short path to scrapping services, and, in this case, doing so with lethal consequences.

Essential communications must be publicly owned and democratically controlled. As the Greens digital rights spokesperson, I've been fighting for years to get people to hear that we need to talk about nationalisation and public ownership, and not just for telecoms. Let's dream bigger than just resurrecting Telstra. If it's essential for our lives, it should be public. We don't privatise the fire brigade or ambulances, and we shouldn't privatise the infrastructure that connects us to emergency services. We also shouldn't hand our entire digital public sphere over to corporations that answer to no-one but their shareholders. Digital platforms have become essential public infrastructure, and they're often the primary way that governments communicate with citizens during emergencies. In the 20th century, we built public roads, public schools, public hospitals, and, in the 21st century, we need publicly owned and controlled digital infrastructure, starting with our telecommunications networks. Why should Zuckerberg control how Australians communicate during bushfires? Why should Elon Musk decide who gets to access emergency information during floods? Why should Google determine what health information Australians can find? These are public services being bought, sold and destroyed by private companies for profits. It's time to bring essential services home. It's time for public ownership and it's time to put people and this planet before profits.

I again say to the government: if you want to make good on some of the past failures, there's one pretty simple way to do this with this bill, which is to support the Greens amendments to make the penalties serious. Make the penalties meet the moment, at least. Join us. Maybe overcome decades of privatisation and the religion of privatisation. Maybe think about how public services should be provided by the public for the public.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.