Media release - Labor government votes against safeguarding the Triple Zero network

Melissa McIntosh MP
Shadow Minister for Communications
Shadow Minister for Women
Federal Member for Lindsay

8 October 2025

Labor government votes against safeguarding the Triple Zero network

The Albanese Labor Government today voted against Coalition amendments to safeguard the Triple Zero network and to ensure there is transparency on Triple Zero outages.  

Coalition amendments would have:

• Doubled the maximum financial penalties for Triple Zero outages from $10 million to $20 million;
• Established a public Triple Zero outage register to keep telcos accountable and the public informed;
• Put the Triple Zero system on the critical infrastructure list designating it as an essential service; and
• Reduced reporting times from 6 months to every 3 months and have these reports published.

It has been revealed today that the Communications Minister’s office was first informed on 18 September of the Optus outage, despite her previously saying she didn’t know until 19 September late in the afternoon. The Minister needs to adequately answer questions on this immediately.

Shadow Minister for Communications, Melissa McIntosh MP said, “I cannot stand by whilst this Labor government does not take outages to the Triple Zero network seriously.”

“The Minister has misled the Parliament and the Australian people by saying her office wasn’t notified of the Optus outage on 18 September. Today, emails were released proving her office was notified that day.

“The Albanese Labor Government should have supported the Coalition's amendments to ensure our Triple Zero system is secure, there is greater transparency and there are stronger penalties in place when there are breaches.

“Common sense amendments to make the Triple Zero network secure and ensure outages are publicly reported is exactly what Australians want.

“We wanted to double the financial penalty to hit telcos harder when they stuff up and cause outages that risk people’s lives.

“I have been calling for a public Triple Zero register for a weeks now as it is vital that Australians are informed of all outages.

“Placing the Triple Zero register on the critical infrastructure list and declaring it an essential service will provide greater safeguards for every Australian."