QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (14:39): I thank the shadow minister for her question. The only thing that could have stopped Optus from having this outage was Optus themselves. They are responsible for their failure and they will be held to account for their failure.

However, the triple 0 custodian would not exist at all were it not for our government. We commissioned the Bean review. We accepted all of its recommendations, including the work to design and implement the custodian.

It is a complete fabrication to say that the government has sat on this. In March 2024, the Bean review recommended a triple 0 custodian and that further work be done on the specific nature of the custodian. It did not recommend a particular model.

If you read the Bean review—which, again, I encourage—it says this may be done in a number of ways. So in April 2024 the government tasked the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to lead a steering committee of industry, government and consumer representatives to do that work. They met six times between May and October 2024, providing their final report to the department on 28 November 2024.

The department considered all of the recommendations on all of the issues identified by that committee, which informed its recommendations to the then minister in March 2025 that the custodian should operate within the department and be supported by new legislative powers. Upon accepting the department's recommendation, that custodian commenced immediately and work began on the legislation that we are introducing now.

So the Albanese government has and will always work to protect Australians, and we will hold those who fail to deliver on their obligations to full account.