TRANSCRIPT:
The opposition has accused Communications Minister Anika Wells of misleading the parliament after an email Optus sent to her office was tabled in Senate estimates.
Ms Wells was asked yesterday when either she or her office was first notified of the Triple-Zero outage on Optus networks, which has been linked to four deaths.
Here's what she said.
"We were not notified of the catastrophic outage until late afternoon on Friday 19 September."
It has since been revealed that her office was included in a series of emails from Optus - one of which is being read here by Shadow communications minister Melissa McIntosh.
"'Good afternoon team, I've just been informed that the Optus has received reports that some customers in South Australia and Western Australia are experiencing impacts to triple-zero calls.' This was sent Thursday, the 18th of September, 2:45pm."
Ms McIntosh accuses Ms Wells of misleading the parliament.
"The minister's office received notification on the Thursday. The minister stood up in parliament yesterday and told the Australian people she did not find out, and her office did not find out, until Friday. The minister has misled the parliament. She has misled the Australian public, and it is clear and plain to see, in this email, as revealed by Senate estimates.”
But Minister Wells continues to blame Optus, which failed to immediately flag the extent of the outage, including with the regulator, the Australian Media and Communications Authority.
"The information that Optus provided to my office on the 18th of September was that there had been a minor outage, it affected 10 calls, that it had been resolved, and most importantly, that there were no adverse impacts on any person. My office sought assurance that ACMA had been informed, ensuring that the regulator was investigating that incident, and ACMA has publicly confirmed that they were informed."
Senior officials in the Department of Communication also criticised Optus for failing to identify the extent of the outage.
And in a dramatic turn of events, they testified that Optus sent its notification about the outage to the wrong email address.
Here's First Assistant Secretary, Sam Grunhard.
"The ACMA publishes, on its website, the email addresses that the telcos are required by law to send notifications to. The email address is published on their website for all to see so the industry can follow that instruction, and it was not sent to that address."
Officials testified that the department remained unaware of the extent of the outage until more than 24 hours later, after being contacted by the regulator.
The department's deputy secretary, James Chisholm, says despite the seriousness of the email being sent to a more general inbox, that's not the main issue.
"It is totally irrelevant to the question of compliance with the, not only the notification rules, but the actual failure to make triple-zero work, that's the issue here."
The failure is being investigated by ACMA, which has also been the subject of tough questioning in terms of what it knew and when.
ACMA head Nerida O'Loughlin told Senate estimates the regulator only became aware of the extent of the outage on Friday, the 19th of September.
"In that call, the CEO indicated that the outage had impacted over 600 calls, welfare checks had been undertaken by Optus for around half of those affected customers, with the remainder forwarded to the police to undertake checks. The CEO advised that the welfare checks had identified that three people had passed away."
All this comes as a bill aimed at enshrining a so-called 'triple-zero custodian' - with end-to-end oversight to ensure the system is working properly - passed the House of Representatives today.
It fulfils one of 18 recommendations handed down in April last year, after a review by Richard Bean, which was prompted by an earlier Optus outage in 2023.
Ms O'Loughlin has welcomed the move.
"We particularly welcome the conferral of powers which will enable the custodian to monitor the health of the triple-zero ecosystem, identify any potential weak spots, and take action that will better protect Australians in their time of the greatest need."
Several other recommendations remain outstanding, but on Tuesday, Minister Wells said each of these are either being led by industry or dependent on its involvement.
"At my meeting with the chief executives of the three telcos, who I summonsed to Canberra earlier today ahead of introducing the triple-zero custodian legislation, I urged industry to go faster on those remaining four recommendations that they have carriage of, and I'm pleased to update the House that they agreed to do so."
As part of that work, Optus, Telstra, and TPG have agreed to surprise stress-test drills of their triple-zero systems to make sure they're working properly.
It comes as concern mounts in rural and regional areas, particularly, with bushfire season approaching and amid ongoing underlying concerns about poor reception.
But for now, the greatest concern is still focused on the questions surrounding Optus itself - some of which were outlined by Ms O'Loughlin.
"It's fair to say that some of the public comments by Optus raised questions in my mind about its systems and processes, including: why did their systems fail their customers? What testing was done before, during and after the upgrade to make sure triple-zero calls were working? Why did they not know sooner that there was a problem, especially when it had been raised with their call centres? As the regulator, our core responsibility is to look into compliance issues arising from such events, and we are doing so as a priority."
She will also face further questions in Senate estimates this afternoon.
