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

Senator GREEN (Queensland—Assistant Minister for Tourism, Assistant Minister for Pacific Island Affairs and Assistant Minister for Northern Australia) (13:05): Senator Hanson-Young, I'm not entirely sure how a decision by former treasurer Peter Costello would impact your voting decision on this bill, but I can assure you that there are requirements under Australian law for Optus to comply with to ensure that triple 0 does not fail.

As we have said multiple times, the ACMA is now investigating because clearly there has been a failure to comply with those laws. This bill, as an extension of those requirements that Optus is already required to meet, provides for the custodian and then the ACMA to make directions of a proactive nature to telecommunications companies or emergency service providers—core providers.

It requires procedures, preparations and consultations of that kind to occur before an outage happens. We want to be proactive in this space; that is why these laws will, hopefully, be in place and that is what we are seeking to do. There are already requirements for Optus to meet under the law.

Clearly, there has been a catastrophic failure to meet those requirements, but I will not step in where ACMA is, at the moment, investigating and acting on their findings.