Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (11:31): I rise to speak to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025 and thank my colleague Senator Hanson-Young for all the work that she has done with and for the community after this devastating catastrophe. Telecommunications executives and the Labor government will have you believe that the Optus outage in September was a one-off, unfortunate event that can be addressed with some usual Labor tinkering around the edges.

So let's be clear: this was the second major outage from Optus in just two years. Optus and the communications minister want us to think that the recurring failures are unlucky accidents or so-called human errors, but we do know better. The Optus triple 0 outage last month that left hundreds of calls unanswered and that ended up with three deaths was catastrophic.

It was a catastrophic failure of privatisation, of marketisation and of corporatisation of essential services. This is the failure of putting profits over people. The system failures are not a surprise.

These disasters are not an anomaly, and the problem will not be solved with some minor tweaks or by creating yet another toothless regulatory role. Failures like this are baked into the very systems that created Optus and Telstra. The roots of the problem are privatisation, neoliberalism and the endless pursuit of profit at the expense of people and the planet.

For decades, we have been sold a lie. We have been told that, if we sell off our public assets and services, we will get better, cheaper services. We have been told that the private sector, big business and the billionaires are more innovative and more efficient than public services and public servants, and so, one by one, we flogged off our telecommunication systems, our power grids, our banks, our airlines, our public transport and our care services.

And now look around: Who is better off? Who is safer? Who is being served?

It is not the people; it is the corporations, it is big business, it is the big banks, and it is the billionaires. One in three corporations don't even pay any tax here, and neither does Optus, as they make billions upon billions of dollars in profit. It is governments who are in the pockets of those who fill their pockets with donations that are to blame; it is not only the corporations.

Let's call it for what it is: a decades-long scam cooked up by successive Liberal and Labor governments to transfer public wealth into private hands. The Australian people have paid the price over and over again. Optus's latest catastrophic failures can be added to that invoice.

This time, at least three people paid with their lives. And how has the government responded? It has shrugged.

It has performed outrage. It has passed the blame. It acts like it has nothing to do with the catastrophes that inevitably come from the privatisation and corporatisation project.

Of course, Optus's overpaid executives and the company itself must take responsibility and must be held to account. But Optus and other big corporations will always look to fatten up their profits at the expense of consumers. That is hardwired into the DNA of neoliberalism.

That is why corporations exist—to make money while they screw over ordinary people. Optus is only the latest chapter of this long and shameful story of privatisation. When Telstra was sold, we were promised better competition; instead, Telstra got billion-dollar profits, and rural communities got left behind.

When our electricity grid's poles and wires were flogged off, we were told prices would fall. They didn't. Our energy bills continue to soar while the energy giants and billionaires laugh all the way to the banks.

When our public transport was outsourced, workers were stripped of their rights and commuters waited longer for trains and buses that often never showed up. The privatised early education and care system is a disaster—a disaster where babies and toddlers have been neglected and abused while CEOs pocket bonuses. Senator Hanson-Young: Shame!

Senator FARUQI: An absolute shame! My colleague here is absolutely right. I don't even know if there are words to describe what is happening in that privatised sector.

That is what happens when successive governments stop believing in the public good and start worshipping at the altar of the market. And it continues. The Albanese government is dressing up privatisation with buzzwords like 'co-investment'; and 'public-private partnerships' has been used for a long time.

Sometimes the language changes, but it is the same disease and the same trajectory: hollow out the public sector, outsource accountability and let corporations run the show while everyday people pay the price every single day. Labor says it stands for working people. I don't think anyone believes that, because working people cannot afford their power bills, cannot afford to pay their HECS debts, cannot afford a home and now cannot even reach emergency services when they need them most.

Decades of privatisation have left ordinary people paying more for less while governments wash their hands of the disasters that inevitably follow. I think this should be a real wake-up call for the Labor government to say, 'Enough!' The privatisation experiment has failed, and we must have the courage to end it. We cannot tinker around the edges.

We cannot create more toothless, underfunded regulators or positions. We cannot pretend that small changes will fix a crisis. We cannot pretend that for the climate.

We cannot pretend that for any other public services. We need to rebuild public ownership. We need to bring back public accountability.

We need to invest in the people and the systems that keep our country fair and safe. We need to put public interest above private profit and make sure that a company like Optus can never hold our lives in its hands, because, when a mother cannot reach triple 0 and her new baby dies, we know the system has utterly failed. Privatisation is not delivering efficiency; it is delivering neglect, it is delivering cruelty, and the disaster has been built, brick by brick, by decades of political cowardice by governments.

So today I say to the government: stop selling us out. Let's end the neoliberal experiment. Essential services must be in public hands for the public good.

( Quorum formed )