Press conference - Triple zero outage and call for Triple Zero registry - Penrith, NSW - 29 September 2025

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

29 September 2025

Transcript

Press conference – Penrith, NSW

Topics: Triple Zero registry; Triple zero outage; Optus; ACMA; Communications Department; NBN.

EO&E …

Melissa McIntosh

The number one priority for a government is to protect its citizens. The Albanese Labor Government needs to protect Australians. But right now, we are going through a crisis when it comes to the Triple Zero network.

And instead of being here and addressing this crisis last week, the government, the Prime Minister and the Communications Minister were overseas. We had an outage by Optus that resulted sadly, devastatingly in the loss of four lives.

I fronted the media last week and I warned that if something didn't happen quickly we would see this happen again. At the time I called for an independent thorough investigation into the Triple Zero network. Now here we are today and we have had another Triple Zero outage by Optus. But not only Optus. The NBN has also reported that on Friday it also experienced a Triple Zero network outage. Why is this happening? Australians have the right to have access to our most essential telecommunications service when they need it most. Now once again I am calling for a thorough independent investigation into the Triple Zero network ecosystem. Not just Optus, the whole telecommunications network. And I understand that ACCAN, which is the consumer advocacy network, is also calling for an independent investigation, as are experts in the telecommunications space. ACMA cannot be the investigators. When they were part of the downfall of this Triple Zero network last week, they were part of the issue, they were part of the broken process. So they cannot be the investigator even though they are the regulator. We need an independent process. But where is the government on this? It seems like they have a majority in Parliament and huge arrogance because they're not doing anything right now to ensure Australians have confidence in the Triple Zero network. We need action today. We need this investigation to start. The Minister has the powers to do what she needs to do to make sure Australians have access to this very, very important service. Any questions?

Journalist

The CEO is in town today and tomorrow scheduled to meet with the Federal Communications Minister. Has the Opposition sought or would the Opposition be interest in also meeting with the Optus boss and I guess the Singaporean boss as well.

Melissa McIntosh

My office has been in frequent contact with Optus. It was a little disappointing that this outage occurred between 3am yesterday and 12:20 yesterday and we received a draft statement at midnight last night. We are speaking to Optus though of course we welcome being able to speak to Optus one-on-one. But this is bigger than a meeting. This is the third outage. We had one in 2023, we had one last week and sadly four lives were lost and now we've got another outage but as I said, it looks like it's not just Optus. Australians would rightly be asking, how often does this happen? And we just.

I would like to see a register where all telecommunications providers have to record publicly when they have a Triple Zero outage. So Australians have that confidence. But right now, I imagine Australians are losing confidence in Optus, in the CEO, in the mother company and in this government for not acting quick enough.

Journalist

One of the criticisms of Optus was that they didn't go public as soon as they knew there was a problem last time. Does, as you say, the delay in notifying the public this time show that anything's been learned from it?

Melissa McIntosh

Yeah, and you can see through Optus’ statement that some of those calls that were tried to be made into the Triple Zero network were people testing the network. So that means that it seems that Australians are losing confidence in the network and that would be devastating. Australians do need to have confidence in its most essential service. We're approaching summer where we have natural disasters, but regardless, just in everyday life, you need to be able to pick up the phone and make that call.

But if there are faults, if there are outages, I think it is really important that the public knows straight away. And I'm asking right now, how often has this happened and we didn't know about it? Are companies now publicising their outages because they're in a bit of hot water over it? I think there should be a register where companies have to report those outages straight away so the public knows and they can choose the network that has the most strength. And right now, I think there's a lot of questions around which networks do have that confidence by the Australian people.

Journalist

Thank you, Melissa, appreciate it.

Melissa McIntosh

Thank you very much.