by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

The Environment and Communications References Committee's Triple zero service outage report was handed down out of session some two weeks ago. The report is from the inquiry into the terrible, deadly outage of triple zero. It was an inquiry that ran for almost 12 months. Despite the fact that we first started it by investigating the Optus outage, in which a number of Australians sadly lost their lives as a result of not being able to contact triple zero while the phones ran quiet, as our inquiry continued it became very clear that the problems within the triple zero network and the reliability of the mobile phone network were much broader than just those of the Optus network. In fact, it cuts across all of the networks across the country. Telstra, Optus and TPG have all let their customers and the Australian public down. There has been a litany of outages that we have seen, and that has meant that millions of Australians have been left affected.

Something has to change here. Triple zero is the most vital service a government and parliament must keep intact for their citizens. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live or what mobile phone network you are on, you should be able to rely on your phone working when you need to call triple zero. If you need the ambulance, the phone should ring. If you need the police, the phone should ring. If you need to call the fire department, the phone should work. And yet too many Australians, time and time again, are finding out that triple zero just isn't reliable.

And then, of course, it's not just the life-and-death issues facing triple zero that are at risk here. Our inquiry has found that there is such disregard for the reliability of the mobile phone services that these big mobile phone companies provide that customers are being faced with outages left, right and centre. The most serious outages are those that affect triple zero. But there are many people who need to use their mobile phone and rely on a working mobile phone for every part of their lives. We have elderly Australians who need to be able to access the mobile phone network so that their distress button can work. In July, when we had one of the biggest outages of the mobile phone network Telstra, we had elderly Australians who were left fending for themselves, collapsed on the floor in their kitchens, because their distress buttons were not working because they relied on a working mobile phone service. This is not good enough. Australians should expect that, if you're going to be paying a mobile phone company to have a mobile phone—if you're going to pay hundreds of dollars a month, thousands of dollars a year, to access a mobile phone service—that service should be reliable.

That is why, as a result of this 12-month inquiry, the Senate committee has come up with a number of serious recommendations. Firstly, it's crystal clear that the existing Telecommunications Act is out of date and not fit for purpose. It needs a full review and needs to be modernised. We need a comprehensive reliability framework, including performance and reliability standards. Mobile phone companies—those big telcos, like Optus, like Telstra, like Vodafone—should have to be required in law to deliver a service that works. It's crazy that in 2026 there are no real requirements for mobile phone companies to deliver a working mobile phone to their customers. It beggars belief actually. It absolutely beggars belief. We need to fix that.

We need an automatic compensation scheme for those who have been impacted and disadvantaged because the mobile phone service doesn't work. Let me go to some figures on this. We've just recently seen a report from ACCAN, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, which commissioned an economic investigation into how much the Telstra outage in July actually cost Australians. These are the figures, and they are extraordinary: $552 million was lost in GDP during the Telstra outage in July this year; $302 million was lost in direct economic losses; there was a cost of $104.2 million relating to lost productivity across the nation; just the V/Line rail service, which couldn't operate because it relied on a working mobile phone network, lost $7.2 million; $20.6 million was the estimated cost to businesses who were disrupted by the Telstra outage in July; $11.3 million was estimated to have been the cost to businesses just from online sales; and it cost nearly $7 million for consumers who were unable to conduct their work because of the Telstra outage.

So these big telecommunications companies are putting their profits ahead of a reliable mobile phone system working, putting their profits ahead of the safety of Australians and the public. They're putting their profits first, and yet hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars is being lost in the rest of the country. Australians are losing hundreds of millions of dollars while Telstra, while Optus, while Vodafone bank their massive profits, and there's no ability for Australians to seek automatic compensation. Well, that needs to change.

That is why in these recommendations of the Senate committee we have put forward a recommendation in relation to compensation. We've also called for an independent review of ACMA, the regulator at the heart of this industry. It became very clear during our Senate inquiry just how captured and how asleep at the wheel the regulator has been. It was extraordinary. It was extraordinary to see the lack of grit, the lack of due diligence and, frankly, the lack of care that the regulator had for what was really going on. Every time we asked the tough questions of the regulator—why they hadn't picked up the phone, spoken to the right people and read the riot act to the telecommunications companies—we got crickets. The regulator needs a clean-out, needs an absolute review.

One of the other key recommendations for Australians to consider and this parliament to act on as a result of our inquiry is the need for mandatory domestic roaming to ensure that we have a mandate for domestic roaming to allow customers on mobile phone networks to transfer to another one when one service goes down, so they don't have to carry the financial burden over and over again because of these corporations falling silent.

We also believe that it is time for Australians to be able to have a text based system so that they can text triple zero. This is absolutely essential in the modern world. There are a number of other important recommendations, and I urge my Senate colleagues to look at them.

I want to thank my fellow colleagues on the committee. It was a long inquiry, an important inquiry, and we now need to act on the recommendations, because too many Australians have already had to pay the costs. We've had people die and we've had people have to pay out of their own pocket, because these corporations don't put them first. It's time they were forced to.

I seek leave to table the economic costs of the Telstra outage. I understand it's been agreed to by the whips, and so I'll just hand that over to complement what we've done today.

Leave granted.

I seek leave to consider my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.