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Australia’s Shadow Communications Minister has launched a fierce attack on the Albanese government for taking 18 months to implement critical emergency telecommunications reforms, following a catastrophic Optus outage in September that left four people dead and exposed dangerous vulnerabilities in the nation’s Triple Zero emergency call system.
Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh told Parliament on Tuesday, October 7, 2025, that the government had been “sitting on recommendations for a year and a half” following the first Optus outage in 2023, only rushing through legislation after lives were lost.
The Bean Review, commissioned after the 2023 Optus failure, delivered 18 recommendations in March 2024 aimed at strengthening Australia’s emergency call infrastructure. McIntosh revealed that 13 recommendations have been completed, but five remain in implementation more than a year and a half later.
“The recommendations happened after the first Optus outage in 2023,” McIntosh said during a television interview prior to Question Time. “The government’s been sitting on these recommendations for a year and a half and now drags us into Parliament to put through rushed legislation to try and deal with this.”
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The September 18, 2025 Optus outage disrupted more than 600 Triple Zero calls. Communications Minister Anika Wells confirmed during Question Time that she was not notified of the catastrophic failure until late afternoon on Friday, September 19 — more than 24 hours after the incident began. The Australian Communications and Media Authority had been alerted by Optus on Thursday, as legally required, but the minister remained unaware until the following day.
Optus CEO disclosed three deaths connected to the outage during a Friday afternoon announcement. Western Australia Premier Roger Cook subsequently identified a fourth death potentially linked to the telecommunications failure through the state’s ambulance service.
“This is life and death stuff,” McIntosh emphasized. “We just want the minister, the government, to take their role in this seriously, including ensuring that it is a thorough, independent investigation.”
The Shadow Minister raised concerns about the Australian Communications and Media Authority conducting the investigation, arguing the regulator should not investigate itself after being part of what she termed “the failed process.”
“How do you investigate yourself?” McIntosh questioned. “Why is the regulator being the investigator when they are part of the failed process?”
Minister Wells defended the government’s timeline, explaining that the Bean Review did not recommend a specific model for the Triple Zero custodian. Following the review’s March 2024 release, the government tasked the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to lead a steering committee that met six times between May and October 2024.
“The department considered all of the recommendations and all of the issues identified by that committee, which informed its recommendations to the then minister in March 2025, that the custodian should operate within the department and be supported by new legislative powers,” Wells told Parliament.
The Triple Zero custodian position became operational in March 2025, though McIntosh noted that on September 22, the minister “spoke to a journalist and said she wasn’t sure what the custodian was doing and whether they were actually in place.”
The government introduced legislation on October 7 to enshrine the Triple Zero custodian in law and implement six key reforms. These include real-time reporting of outages to ACMA and emergency services, mandatory testing of Triple Zero during network upgrades, requirements for call fallback to other networks, mandatory improvement plans following outages, and new performance requirements within six months.
Minister Wells summoned the chief executives of Australia’s three major telecommunications providers to Canberra on Tuesday morning, ahead of introducing the legislation. She urged industry to accelerate work on the four outstanding Bean Review recommendations that depend on industry action, including temporary disaster roaming and mutual assistance agreements between carriers.
“At my meeting with the Chief Executives of the three telcos who I summoned to Canberra earlier today, I urged industry to go faster on those remaining four recommendations that they have carriage of,” Wells said. “And I’m pleased to update the House that they agreed to do so.”
The opposition received the draft legislation Monday night with instructions to approve it by midday Tuesday. McIntosh criticized the compressed timeline for reviewing such critical legislation.
“For such important legislation, my office received the draft last night for us to approve it by midday today,” she said. “It’s very unusual to get less than 24 hours on extremely important legislation relating to people’s lives.”
When pressed on whether the opposition would support the bill, McIntosh declined to commit, stating it must go through party room processes. “If there’s weakness in the legislation, we’re not going to wave through weakness,” she said.
The Shadow Minister has called for a public register of all Triple Zero outages to ensure transparency. She cited additional recent failures, including outages in Dapto, New South Wales, and NBN-related disruptions.
“That’s the other reason why I want a public register, because I think that we don’t know exactly how many outages there are and why these outages have occurred,” McIntosh explained. “This is happening all the time.”
McIntosh also criticized Minister Wells for traveling to New York during the crisis to advocate for Australia’s social media age restrictions at the United Nations, despite a telecommunications emergency at home.
“Remember, she jetted off to New York during the crisis,” McIntosh said. “You don’t leave your post during a crisis. She’s the communications minister with responsibility of telecommunications, and there were four deaths.”
Minister Wells defended her New York trip, noting she was presenting Australia’s world-leading social media reforms to the United Nations alongside bereaved families who had lost children to social media-related harm.
“I do not regret for one minute standing with Emma [Mason] as she took that mission to the world,” Wells said, referring to the mother of a child lost to suicide. “If we’re going to talk apologies, the Leader of the Opposition should apologise for calling that work swanning around.”
The minister emphasized that the Optus outage was solely the company’s responsibility. “There is no denying that it is an Optus failure,” Wells stated. “The only thing that could have stopped Optus from having this outage was Optus themselves.”
Wells noted that until the Albanese government’s reforms, Australian telecommunications companies were not legally required to report outages. New ACMA determinations taking effect November 1, 2025, will require telcos to immediately share outage information with police, fire, and ambulance services.
The telecommunications industry is one of Australia’s most highly regulated sectors, with government playing a significant role in ensuring operational efficiency. The debate over ministerial accountability versus corporate responsibility continues as the legislation moves through Parliament, with the government seeking passage before the end of the current sitting period.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley questioned Minister Wells during Question Time about her awareness of the outage. “After the catastrophic 000 outage last month, the Minister told a press conference before her trip to New York that there had been deaths. Exactly how many deaths is the Minister aware of?” Ley asked.
Wells confirmed to the House that neither she nor her office were notified of the catastrophic Triple Zero outage before the afternoon of September 19, despite the incident beginning on September 18.
The controversy has reignited questions about Australia’s telecommunications resilience and the adequacy of regulatory oversight in protecting the nation’s most essential emergency services infrastructure.
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