Transcript - ABC News Breakfast - 23 September 2025

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

23 September 2025

Transcript

ABC News Breakfast

Topic: Optus outage.

Bridget Brennan

The Shadow Minister for Communications, Melissa McIntosh, joins me now. Good morning to you, Minister. So, we've heard from Optus yesterday that these seven further people were unable to contact Triple Zero. Do you anticipate that there's going to be more Australians revealed who were unable to contact that crucial lifeline?

Melissa McIntosh

I think all Australians were really devastated to hear this happened in the first place and that for lives have been lost. But to have rolling updates day by day, it's just not good enough. It leaves so much uncertainty. And my concern now is that people are losing their trust in the Triple Zero system and this is our most essential service. And Optus has let every single Australian down. And I'd like the government to step up more in seeking answers and to have a thorough independent investigation separate to ACMA, because the regulator has been involved in the process. We want it to be independent and we also want to look at why when someone makes a complaint about Triple Zero, they are being sent offshore. That should be happening in our country. So today we still have a lot of questions. It looks like more people may be impacted. Australians deserve an answer right away.

Bridget Brennan

So, can you clarify separate to the investigation that will be undertaken by ACMA, you'd like another independent investigation alongside that?

Melissa McIntosh

No, I don't think ACMA should be doing the investigation. Optus alerted ACMA and the Department of Communications on Thursday and it wasn't until Friday that the Minister for Communications found out about this. So, there has been some fault in the process between ACMA as a regulator alerting the Minister and asking what's going on. Nothing happened for a whole day, so I don't think the regulator can be the investigator when they are caught up in the mishandling of the process.

Bridget Brennan

So then who would run that type of an investigation?

Melissa McIntosh

The Minister has the power to call on any type of investigation that she wants. It should be an independent person outside of the government, an expert in telecommunications, she could bring a whole panel together. ACMA was involved in the last review which resulted in the recommendations, but not all those recommendations. This is when Optus had failure of their Triple Zero network a couple of years ago. Not all of those recommendations have even been implemented. So, the Government hasn't forced the implementation, ACMA hasn't forced the implementation. Why are they the people that are doing the review for this occasion again, when it is so serious people have died? This is so important, and it needs to be done right, because we can't have Triple Zero failing when We've got bushfire season ahead. And as I said, Australians are losing confidence in our most essential call service.

Bridget Brennan

Should the chief executive and other senior executives be forced to consider their positions and resign?

Melissa McIntosh

Well, as I said, Australians are losing confidence in the call system, they're losing confidence in Optus and they're surely losing confidence in the CEO and those involved. So, you know serious questions. The CEO wasn't even out in the public yesterday when we are hearing of seven extra people that have been involved. So he should seriously be considering his position. I think every Australian is rightly calling for him to step down.

Bridget Brennan

Given the multiple failures and warnings issued to Optus in recent years, do you think Optus is fit to be operating in Australia?

Melissa McIntosh

We need Optus to be fit to be operating in Australia. It is good for us to have a dynamic market, but they need to be doing the right thing by their customers. They're not putting Australians first right now. They've had a $12 million fine and that has resulted in, what, another outage that has deaths involved? That's not good enough. They actually need to step up and put Australians first and the government needs to be stepping up and putting Australians first right now as well.

Bridget Brennan

Alright, Melissa McIntosh, thanks for joining us on the programme this morning.

Melissa McIntosh

Thank you very much.