‘Being new is no excuse’: Ley savages Wells over Triple Zero crisis

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Communications Minister Anika Wells faced heated criticism on Tuesday over her handling of the Triple Zero crisis, as she finally introduced legislation to empower an emergency call watchdog role recommended 18 months ago.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley used the first question of the afternoon to savage Wells over her self-description last week as a “new minister” – 147 days after being sworn into the portfolio - and demanded to know if Wells had spoken to the families of those who died during the outage.

Anika Wells during question time in parliament on Tuesday.

“Being new is no excuse. Australians dialling Triple Zero in an emergency cannot wait for you to learn,” Ley said. “The minister isn’t across her brief and by her own admission, people have died. Given the magnitude of the crisis, does the minister regret her decision to prioritise a trip to New York over dealing with these urgent matters in Australia?”

The attack came as Wells tabled long-awaited legislation to give the Triple Zero custodian formal powers, a centrepiece recommendation of Richard Bean’s review into the November 2023 Optus outage that left more than 2100 emergency calls failing.

While the government accepted all 18 recommendations in April 2024, the custodian has operated only administratively within the Department of Communications since March, drawing criticism for glacial implementation as further outages killed three people in September.

As every single question from the Coalition and one from the crossbench was directed at Wells, she defended her United Nations trip, saying she travelled with parents who lost children to suicide to promote the government’s social media ban. “I do not regret for one minute standing with Emma [Mason] as she took that mission to the world,” she said, calling on Ley to apologise to bereaved parents.

In a follow-up question, Ley demanded to know how many deaths Wells was aware of and whether she had personally contacted the families to apologise for “the Albanese Labor government’s inaction”.

Wells fired back that she was “disappointed that the leader of the opposition seeks to let Optus off the hook” and insisted “Optus is accountable and as the minister, I will hold them to account”.

Government sources confirmed that Wells had not spoken with the families, but they had been contacted by emergency services. The identities of these families are not public.

The chief executives of Australia’s three largest telcos struck a conciliatory tone following their meeting with Wells on Tuesday morning, issuing a joint statement describing the discussion as “constructive and important”.

“Australians need to be able to trust that calls to Triple Zero will work when it matters most, and we take that responsibility seriously,” Telstra’s Vicki Brady, TPG’s Iñaki Berroeta and Optus’ Stephen Rue said.

The trio acknowledged that “no network is infallible and outages can occur” but committed to “minimising the risk of disruption and responding swiftly when issues arise.”

The legislation will embed the custodian within the Australian Communications and Media Authority with statutory powers to demand information from telecommunications providers, monitor performance and compel carriers to prevent repeated outages.

“Repeated failures by Optus in recent years, through which thousands of emergency calls failed to connect and lives were lost, has compromised that trust,” Wells told parliament.

Under amendments proposed by the government, ACMA will be able to compel carriers to share information about outages, including technical details. Within six months of the laws commencing, the custodian will issue additional performance requirements to telcos.

The legislation works alongside new rules beginning November 1, including real-time reporting of outages to ACMA and emergency services, mandatory testing of Triple Zero during network upgrades, and requirements ensuring calls fall back to alternative networks.

Wells met with the CEOs of Optus, Telstra and TPG on Tuesday morning ahead of bushfire season. “There are no excuses, and I made that crystal clear today,” she told parliament.

At least three deaths were linked to September’s Optus outage, when at least 600 Triple Zero calls failed across Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. Eleven days later, almost 5,000 Optus customers in NSW’s Illawarra region couldn’t contact emergency services for more than nine hours.

Opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh has called for an independent inquiry into the entire Triple Zero ecosystem, arguing ACMA “cannot be the investigators” as it was “part of the failed process”.

According to Telstra internal data, calls to Triple Zero surged 44 per cent over the past decade. The National Emergency Communications Working Group warned in June that “without urgent reform, the system risks becoming obsolete.”

The legislation represents one of the final pieces of business for parliament this year, with just four sitting weeks remaining before summer.