Transcript - 2GB Breakfast - 30 September 2025

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

30 September 2025

Transcript

2GB Breakfast with John Stanley

Topics: Triple Zero outage; Triple Zero inquiry; ACMA; Meta; AI; data centres; Communications sovereignty; ACCAN.

EO&E …

John Stanley

Melissa McIntosh is on the line. Good morning to you.

Melissa McIntosh

Good morning, John.

Stanley

Let's just start with Optus, because in your capacity, you'd be looking for answers. Have you got answers that have satisfied you?

McIntosh

This is a shocker, I think, both by Optus and now the government in their response. And you're right, there are - there's not enough answers. There's no answers that would satisfy Australians right now. And they should have confidence in our, you know, our most serious telecommunications network, Triple Zero. When someone's in need, they should be able to pick up the phone and call Triple Zero. I said about a week ago when the outage happened, when sadly, devastatingly, people lost their lives, that I think this is bigger than just Optus and we should have a thorough, independent investigation into the whole Triple Zero network. And we've heard now that Telstra has had an outage, we've heard that the NBN has had a Triple Zero outage, yet we're not hearing anything from these companies. And really importantly, not very much at all from the Albanese Labor government. The PM's been overseas, the Communications Minister’s been overseas while this crisis has been unfolding and Australians deserve answers immediately.

Stanley

I want to get to that because I think you've raised a really, really important point and there's a point to what you're saying about an inquiry just on Optus with this meeting today. What would you. If you were the minister and you were going in there Speaking to the boss of Optus that's flown in from Singapore. What would you be saying?

McIntosh

I want answers now, on behalf of the Australian people. There's nothing more important than protecting Australians, protecting your customers and people who've died on your watch. What are you going to do about it? But I don't think we're going to get answers. The Minister's put in ACMA, the regulator, to conduct an inquiry, but ACMA has been part of the breakdown of the process. So to think that she might come out of that meeting with answers. Why did this happen? How did this happen? What's your investment into Optus in this country? You know, but the Government isn't doing anything. I haven't heard. Have you heard from the Minister recently? Nobody has.

Stanley

Well, what I wanted to. This is important because they're saying. Because in the end, you do want someone to look into this independently, to get to the bottom of what's going on and to satisfy people that the Triple Zero network is working as it should. So they're talking about ACMA doing it. Just explain to us why ACMA's involved and why it would be better to have an independent inquiry, because this is coming from a few different people. Just explain it for us, can you?

McIntosh

Yes. ACMA is the regulator. ACMA was alerted to the Optus outage on the Thursday afternoon, I believe, after the outage happened that resulted in a number of deaths. ACMA did not alert the Minister for a full day. She found out, apparently, she's declared publicly, she found out on the Friday. So why didn't ACMA, as a regulator, nor the Communications Department, in fact alert the Minister? So how can you investigate a breakdown in process if you are part of that breakdown? ACMA also was the regulator, obviously, when the first. The initial outage happened in 2023, and they put forward a number of recommendations to the Minister, 18  I believe, and the Minister has said that around 12 have been implemented somewhat, but we don't know. So where's ACMA's power in ensuring the recommendation so this doesn't happen again? You haven't done enough, nowhere near enough. So it does need to be independent, separate to the government bureaucracy, and it needs to be done quite urgently. The Minister has the powers right now to put a technical expert in under the Telco Act to get things moving along.

Stanley

Yeah, and is it, could it be stubbornness that, alright, we're going to get an inquiry, ACMA will do it. And then it's pointed out by you and others in the Parliament, ‘hey, they're part of the problem here, you need an independent inquiry, and you can do an independent review.’ You can do it reasonably quickly that maybe they’re too stubborn to acknowledge, ‘yeah, actually, we should have thought of that. Let's have a broader, more independent inquiry.’

McIntosh

Well, it's not just me as the Opposition, who you'd expect would be all over this, doing my job the best I can. It's ACCAN now, which is the consumer advocacy group. They're calling for an independent inquiry. Telco experts are calling for it. I think the government should do the right thing because it's obvious it's not just Optus. This is network wide. We're approaching summer. When we have disasters, bushfires, people should be able to pick up the phone regardless of that, just in their normal lives. It's when you're in an emergency situation, you should have confidence. And just by Optus's latest outage the other day, there were test calls being made as part of that outage. So people were picking up the phone to test the 000 network. This means that they're questioning the Triple Zero network. And it is our most essential telecommunications network. It needs to be efficient, and it needs to be available when people need it most.

Stanley

Yeah, Melissa McIntosh is the Shadow Communications Minister. While I've got you here at 24 past 7, we've done a lot on this. I know it's been across the media. We did it the last time I did this show mid-year and it's just got worse and worse. People who've been dudded by Meta business accounts wrongly disabled by Meta's AI monitoring systems, they've had no success in getting their accounts back. They can't really get onto anyone. There's no real presence in Australia. Surely there should be more presence on them because so many people are being affected.

McIntosh

This is - sorry, John, you really just cut out as you're asking me the question. Can you repeat the first bit.

Stanley

Just in relation to Meta and the dramas with Meta?

McIntosh

Yes. Yeah. People - I've got a thing about big tech ruling Australia and, you know, they're ruling our skies at the moment, even, you know, our satellites. They're ruling over our social media. They don't pay for Australian content. That's another issue with the government. They need to get that right. I think they should be, you know, they should be following the rules. The rules should apply to a multinational company online, just as it should be if they were here in this country. So there's a lot of work to do on Meta. We need to be pushing back on big tech, I think. But there's also the other argument on the other side of things as we approach a social media ban for kids, that people want to protect their privacy as adults. They want to have freedom online. But big tech data centres here in Australia are ruled by big tech. We don't have access to our own information stored offshore. Australians will be rightly asking a lot of questions about the future when it comes to technology as AI is emerging as well.

Stanley

No doubt that's a whole other very frightening conversation. Melissa McIntosh, thank you for your time this morning.

McIntosh

Thank you, John.