2025-10-27
“Greens pressure in the Senate has forced the Government to increase the penalties for failing to connect customers to Triple 0 to $30 million.
“Following the 2023 Optus outage, the company was fined a pathetic $12 million. From now on telecommunications companies that fail to connect their customers to Triple 0 will now have to cop much larger fines.
“This should send a message to all the telcos that they are on notice. Failure to ensure that this most basic emergency service is available will result in bigger penalties.
“Triple 0 is an essential service and the Government must ensure that when Australians need to call for help, someone answers.
“The Triple 0 Custodian bill in one of several pieces of legislation that the Government must act on following the Triple 0 catastrophe, we will continue to work across the parliament to make sure Australian have a service we can rely on.
“The Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025 remains before the Parliament. We will seek to amend that bill as needed when it comes before the Senate, including whether criminal penalty should apply there.
“Tomorrow the Senate will vote to establish an inquiry into the Optus Triple 0 outage which will take a serious look at these matters, hold Optus to account and suggest a pathway forward for further reform.”