Transcript - Joint press conference (Triple Zero and social media) - 26 November 2025

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

Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Early Learning
Federal Member for Flinders

26 November 2025

Transcript 

Joint press conference – Parliament House, ACT.

Topics: Triple Zero; Optus; social media ban.

E&EO … 

Melissa McIntosh

Thanks for joining us here in Parliament. I’m here with my colleague, Zoe McKenzie, the Member for Flinders. The Optus outage this morning impacted her community, and we are very, very relieved to hear that – we understand that there were no Triple Zero calls at risk. But we’re only just receiving this information now. Drip-fed really by Optus. And for hours, thousands of people were unable to make phone calls in your community, Zoe.

And I said many, many times standing here and in my own electorate because it is impacting everyday Australians who desperately need to make those phone calls that we do to need to list the Triple Zero network as essential services under critical infrastructure. It seems that today's event was caused by some form of vandalism. How are people getting access to our telecommunications infrastructure? This is not the first time that this has happened in recent weeks. It happened in Dapto as well. So, we are having network issues that are impacting Triple Zero where Australians can't make that most essential desperate call in their time of need.

We are having people accessing our people infrastructure and destroying it bringing down the network. And the government isn't giving Australians answers. I've been asking for a register of outages run by the government. Been calling for that. Been asking for the Triple Zero network to be listed as critical infrastructure essential services. And I've also been asking for an independent investigation into the whole Triple Zero ecosystem which would include infrastructure.

So today we have a community where thousands of people couldn’t make the calls. Zoe, I believe your community found out in not the most acceptable way, and I’ll hand it over to you.

Zoe McKenzie

Thank you. So what we understand is that about 14,500 people on the Mornington Peninsula lost access to telecommunications through the Optus network today. I have a particularly old demographic, so we're the fifth oldest electorate in the country. We are particularly underserved when it comes to hospital services. It is absolutely essential that my constituents have confidence that when they pick up their phone, they can either reach loved ones, or they can reach to Triple Zero.

Today, we found out about an hour ago that there was this. We didn't find out from Optus. We didn't find out from Anika Wells. We found out from Jacqui Felgate who posted it on her social media. I immediately then informed my community via Facebook. We should not be learning this from Jacqui Felgate - extraordinary that she is as a local resident of the Mornington Peninsula in keeping us informed of critical issues. This must come from government.

So, 14,500 people reasonably concerned that when they pick up their phone will the call go through. We still have blackouts on the Mornington Peninsula, even though extensively it is meant to be part of metropolitan Melbourne. But an outage that affects this many people is a very serious indeed causing anxiety in my metropolitan.

McIntosh

Any questions?

Journalist

Melissa, the Greens are talking about that there should be a broader review of Optus’ telecommunications licence. Is that something that you'd endorse? Something you'd support?

McIntosh

I think - when it comes to a thorough investigation we should be having an investigation - all aspects including as I've said before, the big government multimillion dollar government contracts received by telecommunications providers at the same time will they potentially receive in large fines. So, let's clean the slate, let's dig in deep because this can't keep happening.

We might feel relieved today that people, but we shouldn't be on edge every time there is an outage and it's happening more and more. The system is just not up to scratch, and the government needs to be agreeing more. It shouldn't be up to us and the Opposition to be continually informing the public.

And when it comes to those Samsung handsets, I alerted the country the other week that there's potentially thousands of people walking around our country right now that assume that their phone is working because they're on 4G but if it flicks across to 3G to make a Triple Zero call, they won't be able to make that call. The government has been silent on this potentially deadly issue.

Journalist

And as you say, obviously this incident seems to be - have been sparked by vandalism. What does that say about how secure these facilities are? Do they need to have more redundancies? More redundancies in terms of backups and so forth when these incidents do occur?

McIntosh

Yeah, backups and maintenance and investment by telecommunications companies. And again it goes back to investigation. Let's talk about critical infrastructure. If we listed it as an essential service under critical infrastructure then there would be more investment, there would be more focus by the government and it's clear that that is needed right now to protect communities across the country. And we are approaching December, it will be disaster season. You don't want to be standing here during that time and making declarations about more Triple Zero outages.

Journalist

While we've heard that it hasn't effected Triple Zero outages, have you heard of any other essential services that this is impacting?

McIntosh

We haven't heard very much from Optus at all. As Zoe said, her community was notified by a local journo I believe not Optus nor the government, and all that they've done is put out about five lines of a statement on their website. So, it is not clear right now what was impacted. The Premier of Victoria had a press conference, and she said that she didn't know - she hadn't been alerted about the outage. So, there are so many questions, and this just can't keep happening.

Journalist

Can I also ask on the social media? We're a fortnight away. We've heard overnight that Snapchat has not been informing them via the AI bot, young people, that the ban is actually coming in. I mean, what's your response to AI bots not being up to date?

McIntosh

Yeah, I'm really concerned about the social media ban for under 16s that coming that comes in on the 10th of December. I've been warning about this. I'm concerned about platforms that, you know, are out in the government making, you know, drip feeding announcements around new platforms. I'm concerned, as you said, around AI chatbots giving out incorrect information. I'm concerned now that it's being revealed that Meta and probably other platforms will be asking, compelling Australians to use their digital ID. If their age verification technology can't establish an age, they could be asking for a driver's licence or a birth certificate. So, I'm not surprised about this. It is rushed, the government is unprepared, the Minister has not been straight with the Australian people, and we are now just weeks away.

Journalist

There's a group called the Digital Freedom Project have said today that they have launched court action against this ban. Do you think that this could just be the start to more court cases against Australia's new legislation?

McIntosh

Yeah, I haven't followed that particular piece of news, but I wouldn't be surprised. And for the direction that we're going on social media ban, I think there is great risk that it is going to fail or there will be extensive legal cases. Thank you.