Transcript - ABC Radio South Australia Afternoons - 3 November 2025

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

3 November 2025 

Transcript 

ABC Radio South Australia Afternoons with Nikolai Beilharz

Topics: Optus inquiry; Triple Zero; ACMA; compensation.

E&EO … 

Nikolai Beilharz

Melissa McIntosh is the Federal Shadow Communications Minister and is with you this afternoon. Melissa McIntosh, good afternoon.

Melissa McIntosh

Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Beilharz

What's been learned as part of the inquiry today?

McIntosh

Thanks, and just to remember, and I know your listeners are very aware of this, the reason why this is so important is because people did die during that Triple Zero outage and so it is really important to get to the bottom of why this occurred. And unfortunately, although some, there are some answers, we didn't get a whole lot out of Optus nor the regulator ACMA, but we do know that there was - Optus did know about the first fatality at 8:43pm on the Thursday. It took them nearly 12 hours for the information to reach the CEO. Twelve hours that it sat within the Optus organisation. But then it took the Optus CEO another six hours to alert the authorities, to alert the regulator and the government.

So that really is just not good enough. I think every Australian would agree and we know now how delayed and irresponsible quite frankly the whole issue has been in regards to Optus handling of it and in regards to the government. The regulator, ACMA, is part of the failed process. They didn't alert the Minister of the outages - of the outage and there's a big, big time delay there. So I want to thorough independent investigation not run by ACMA and that's another matter that we'll keep prosecuting. But today it's quite interesting to get that information out. The CEO has said he feels that there are adequate controls in place, but it's obvious they're not.

Beilharz

When you mentioned earlier that you feel there were some questions that remain unanswered or missing pieces of information, what were you not able to get clarity on that you wanted to.

McIntosh

Exactly what happened? So, I met with the CEO of Optus a couple of weeks ago after he didn't really want to meet with me because I've been putting the pressure on, but I did meet with him and ask the question what happened? And all he could say was process failures and it was human error.

So really getting to the understanding of how there could be what we're hearing from the senate inquiry now, ten failures. How can it be ten failures in a big telecommunications company that resulted in people not being able to call Triple Zero? And where are the reassurances that this is never going to happen again?

And I just don't think Australians would have confidence that that would be the case and I certainly don't. In addition, where's the transparency? I really wanted a public register of outages that the government handled and the Minister, the current Minister is pushing that back onto the telcos, but that's asking the telcos to self-report on their own issues.

So there's still a lot to uncover. It's bigger than just this one event, Optus. I think every listener out there probably had telco issues and we need to strengthen the system.

Beilharz

Was the - does it appear though that the, in a sense the main area of failure was a failure to escalate or that the escalation, as in when the error was noticed, that the messages didn't get passed up the chain effectively enough or in some cases fast enough?

McIntosh

Yeah, there seems that the CEO in the hearings seem to have said that some people didn't turn up to a meeting to explain the upgrade. There was, you know, a whole lot of failures from not handling the ICT firewall upgrade properly to not caring about the calls coming in from Australians alerting them.

So, this call centre failures as well - there's an offshore call centre and whether having an offshore call centre for Triple Zero complaint calls or, you know, is the right thing to do, something else we should be investigating. So we still have - I hope the investigation - the Senate inquiry is one thing, but I hope those investigations into the actual outage uncover more because we still don't know a whole lot.

Beilharz

So, it sounds then like you don't have a whole lot of confidence that improvements to the system have been identified or are being made to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

Speaker B

They seem to have a lot of focus on it now. The CEO is saying we're focused on this, but is that going to continue? And the telco sector is one of the most highly regulated. But even is it the right regulations that we have in place? We supported legislation going through to have a Custodian to have powers over, you know, the telcos’ ecosystem, but the government informed us, we weren't aware that that Custodian Act had actually already been in place since March. What were they doing?

So other regulations, the right regulations, other fines, right I've been pushing for higher fines. They don't seem to be making a dent on these telcos that are doing the wrong thing. How can telcos be getting big government contracts on one hand, yet big fines on the other hand for doing the wrong thing? That doesn't seem right either.

So, it is a big issue that is bigger than just this one outage. But I think multiple failures have caused this particular issue and I hope going into disaster season, that there is more, you know, there is more oversight on the system so it doesn't happen over summer.

Beilharz

When it comes to - you were talking about money and fines and that side of things, the senators, some senators asked whether or not compensation would be offered to the families.

McIntosh

Yeah, and that's why I wanted a thorough independent investigation to get to the bottom of it. So, we still don't know really what happened and who's responsible and where the negligence was and the fault. So, I think once we can get to them, I think that would be a good time to work that one out. But it is very much a possibility.

People have suffered. People's lives have been lost, families have, you know, suffered in your patch in South Australia. Two people, as you said, sadly passed away during that time, including a baby. There's nothing more important than prioritising Australian citizens, so we should definitely be looking into that once we can get to the bottom of what exactly happened.

Beilharz

So, what do you want to see happen from here, apart from the inquiry running its course? A review into ACMA.

McIntosh

I would love that. I think that sounds like a really good idea. As I said from the start, how can ACMA be investigating itself as part of the failure? And I think that's why I said it needs to be an independent - independent from government departments and bureaucracy into the whole ecosystem, which includes the regulator itself and the government's role in the Optus outage and the lack of communications.

But remember, the Minister left the country and went overseas during the crisis and whether the right things have been done, whether the government has been doing the right thing by Australians. So, I would like to see, and I'll keep prosecuting that. I think that's what Australians deserve, is an independent investigation.

Beilharz

And just finally, Melissa McIntosh, how confident do you think people should feel right now about, you know, you call Triple Zero, the call will get through.

McIntosh

I wouldn't want to make people unnecessarily sort of on edge about calling Triple Zero, but the reality is there's occasions when people can't. And I know through my colleague Anne Webster, a National who's the Shadow Regional Communications Minister that people in regional Australia are suffering this all the time. So I would like to have confidence in the system but it seems like, you know, the telcos don't really deserve our confidence. It wasn't just Optus that has had outages. Telstra has as well. The NBN had an outage which resulted in Triple Zero going down for customers. So, if you asked Australians, I think more and more stories would come out and that's why we need a public register to reinstall confidence in the system and so people can see and choose their telco provider. If they're not doing the right thing, they can move on to another one.

Beilharz

Melissa McIntosh, thank you for your time this afternoon.

McIntosh

Thank you.