Transcript - FiveAA Mornings - 29 October 2025

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

29 October 2025

Transcript

FiveAA Mornings with Leith Forrest

Topics: Triple Zero inquiry; Triple Zero public register; Triple Zero breach fines.  

E&EO …

Leith Forrest

Melissa McIntosh is the Shadow Minister for Communications Women and the Federal Member for Lindsay. Asking the question about the deal with Labor and the Greens uniting against the safety of Australians. This comes down to the Triple Zero Emergency Network. She joins me this morning. Melissa, thanks so much for your time.

Melissa McIntosh

Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

Forrest

Tell me why you're unhappy with the Labor and the Greens.

McIntosh

I think they’re - both parties have let Australians down, Your listeners would know all too well the Optus outage and sadly, four lives were lost during that time when people couldn't call Triple Zero. And this was six weeks ago. And I've been pushing really hard because I think this is a critical issue. There's nothing more important than protecting Australian citizens and the government's just been really slow to act.

The Minister went overseas during the crisis. We've been trying to put amendments through legislation that they're doing here in Parliament now to strengthen the fines that telcos should be paying to $40 million from $10 million because $10 million obviously isn't doing anything. To have a public register of outages so people know when things are happening. And there's a bill that went through the Senate and the Greens who said they wanted it to be $100 million fine, did a darkroom deal with Labor and came out with $30 million when they could have been pushing hard. They're meant to be for the people and it's just - it's just not good enough. It's lacking transparency. What's going on? They voted against having a public register, they voted against higher fines and really that's voting against the safety of Australians. Why is it so hard to do – to pull every government lever you can to protect Australians when they're in the greatest time of need when it comes to calling Triple Zero.

Forrest

Yeah, I don't think these telcos are short of cash, Melissa. So, and as you say, I think Triple Zero is the most important phone number that we have.

McIntosh

Yeah.

Forrest

If we can't hold these people to account on this - so did they give any reasoning as to why the deal was made, why the fines aren't as much as you would like?

McIntosh

That's a good question. Some sort of deal. We were trying to get the Greens to work with us on this, to hold the government to account as well and to have these higher fines? And they voted against it and went with the - in the government and the Greens, sort of the numbers in the Senate and did it together. So, that's a good question I think every Australian could ask their Labor MP or their Greens MP and Senator: why would you do this? Telcos do have a lot of money. Another issue that I have is some of these telcos have big government, multimillion dollar government contracts. At the same time, they're potentially paying big fines for letting Australians down. How can that be happening? The whole system needs an independent investigation, a complete overhaul. People are starting to lose confidence in the Triple Zero network. We're approaching disaster season. No one can say whether it's going to be robust enough. We've heard of another outage just yesterday in Victoria where a woman couldn't call Triple Zero and the community saying that Optus never even told them that there were going to be network outages. This isn't good enough. In Australia people pay good money to have these services and they deserve to have reliability.

Forrest

And Melissa, let's be blunt, if Triple Zero fails, people die. It's that simple. As harsh as that is. So fines - I also saw that you're unhappy in and alarmed by the idea of placing control of the outage reporting back to the telcos. Yeah, sure, I'm sure they're going to dob on themselves.

McIntosh

Well, this is the thing. I put it to the government and we even, I even wrote to the Minister and said we'll work with you on these amendments to change the law and let's have a public register. So, there's the Custodian, which is the Department of Communication is going to be the Custodian, put in to oversee everything. Lots of bureaucracy. It's very - your listeners will go to sleep if I talk about it. But the point is that that would have been in the hands of government to have this register. All of the telcos would have to report in and it would be real time. But the Minister didn't want to do that. She said just you guys do it, telcos do it. You put on your website. So multiple telcos will have information on their websites. Wonder if you've just bought a SIM card from, you know, down at Woollies or wherever. So, you've got to work it out and it's not fair that again, Australians are being pushed, that they're the ones that have to, you know, do the hard work and the heavy lifting on this issue.

Forrest

Yeah, we know there's not a great history of self-reporting right across these kind of issues when it comes to that. This is a line for crisis. I don't quite understand why the Labor Party and the Greens would vote against this. It doesn't quite make sense. Maybe that's what politics is. And you come up to some sort of solution, Melissa. But there is no more important phone line and number than Triple zero. And if it fails, there needs to be consequences.

McIntosh

There needs to be consequences. There needs to be accountability and transparency.

Forrest

So, what happens here? What would you like FiveAA listeners to do? Is it done and dusted? Is there any chance that this can be looked at again or is it just too late?

McIntosh

Well, we've got a Senate inquiry which is - thank goodness the Greens agree with us on that. I asked for an inquiry, public inquiry, and then we pushed that through to the Senate and that's going to start on Monday. So, this decision was made yesterday and this Senate inquiry, they have the power to call anyone. So, I hope Optus will be appearing, I hope ACMA, the regulator, because they're part of the failed process. And you know what? Listeners could appear if they've had the issue with Triple Zero, they can look up the Senate inquiry into Triple Zero on the parliamentary website and get involved, have a say. I think it's really important. People's voices from across Australia that are struggling with this and regional areas as well, make your voice heard. It is such an important issue. And I hope that this inquiry that's going to be running through the Senate really gets to the bottom of what's going on.

Forrest

Tell the family members who lost someone, you know, that they were allowed to self-report and that the fines aren't gigantic. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Interesting to hear this morning. Thanks so much, Melissa.

McIntosh

Thank you.