Transcript - ABC News Breakfast - 3 November 2025

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

3 November 2025 

Transcript 

ABC News Breakfast with Bridget Brennan

Topics: Optus inquiry; Triple Zero register; ACMA. 

E&EO … 

Bridget Brennan

Let's get more on today's Senate inquiry into Optus Triple Zero trouble. Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh joins us now from Canberra. Good morning to you, Melissa McIntosh. This inquiry has quite a broad scope. What are the key questions that you feel Optus executives are still yet to answer?

Melissa McIntosh

Thanks. I think Australians are very aware of the disaster of the Optus Triple Zero outage about six weeks ago and the failures both of Optus and the government. The lines were down for hours and hours and hundreds of people couldn't make those desperate calls and sadly, four lives were lost.

We've been pushing as a Coalition really hard to have an independent, thorough investigation into the whole telecommunications ecosystem. It is essential that people can make those calls. And finally, we have this Senate inquiry starting today in Parliament and we need to get to the bottom of what happened. When I met with the CEO of Optus, he said to me that it was human error, and I ask, how can human error result in the outage where lives were lost? That is just not good enough.

Questions around how big telcos can be receiving government contracts at the same time as potentially receiving large fines for letting Australians down and the assurances that Australians need that this won't happen again. We're approaching disaster season, you just had the weather on, and you can see how wild it is out there and people need to be able to call Triple Zero.

Brennan

Is it tenable that there's been no change necessarily in that executive structure at Optus? Should there have been some executives decide to leave the company after what was so catastrophic in terms of the outage and the deaths that occurred?

McIntosh

Yeah, it was catastrophic and I think there's been failures at the top of Optus and I said at the time that people were losing confidence in the telco and also in the government. The Minister for Communications left the country during the crisis, and we had to drag the Labor government pretty much kicking and screaming into Parliament to have this Senate inquiry.

They voted down amendments that I made to strengthen the system; amendments I made to increase fines on the telcos that do the wrong thing. And today the Optus CEO will be fronting the Senate inquiry and let's see if he can give Australians answers, the answers that people desperately want, particularly the people who have been impacted by outages.

Brennan

The government says it wants more transparency in the system. It's got a consultation process to ensure that there's public Triple Zero registers so people can actually see what's happening. I mean, that's a welcome move, isn't it? One you'd support.

McIntosh

It's not a true public register. From the very beginning of the outage, I called for a public register. That was real time, that was, I guess, overseen by the government. But the Minister has pushed the onus back onto the telcos and saying, well, can you please report on your website? So, you're asking the telcos who are doing the wrong thing to provide the public with information on themselves.

I question whether that is going to work and it's not going to be an all-in-one system where people can just go online and see what's going on across the country. Australians deserve to have that transparency. Transparency, true transparency, would be the government using the legislation that we've just passed through Parliament to have a Custodian overseeing the telecommunications system, to be overseeing a public register.

And let's not forget, you know, so called for these telcos to be fined more than what the government settled with as well. We are making very slow progress, but it’s taken a lot of hard yakka to get the government to even budge on any of these measures. So, I hope that the Senate inquiry uncovers what's actually gone on. ACMA, the regulator, will also be questioned today and they caught up in the failed process. So, let's see at the end of today that hopefully we have some answers for Australians.

Brennan

And will the inquiry be able to call Singtel, the parent company of Optus?

McIntosh

Yes, the inquiry has the powers to call, you know, whoever it wants. I think that would be important as well. I would love to know the investment that's being made into Optus. I question whether it's appropriate to have Triple Zero call centres offshore, not in Australia. I think it's worthy of asking questions whether that made an impact on the outcome of the Triple Zero outage.

And it's not just about Optus. This is about all telco providers and holding all of them to account. Because Optus had a catastrophic, catastrophic outage. But other telcos have been caught up in Triple Zero outages in the past as well.

Brennan

All right, Melissa McIntosh, thanks for your time on the show this morning.

McIntosh

Thank you.