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Communications Minister Anika Wells has met with representatives of Optus and its parent company, Singtel, to convey her conviction that recent failures have been unacceptable.
In the wake of two Triple-Zero outages in the space of 10 days, she says she has sought assurances similar failures will not happen again, but stood by the government's response.
“I have said that Optus will face significant consequences as a result of what has happened here, but it is for me as the minister to take those decisions after the ACMA investigation is complete.”
The Australian Media and Communications Authority is investigating the failures, which have been linked to four deaths, with hundreds of customers unable to reach emergency services.
Coalition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh says the ACMA itself formed part of the failure, calling for investigations that are independent of the regulator.
She's speaking here with the ABC.
“ACMA, as the regulator, was alerted to the Optus outage, where, sadly, four people passed away the other week. They were alerted on Thursday. It is a responsibility by law that Optus did that. They alerted ACMA and they alerted the department of communications, but the minister is saying she did not find out until Friday. So ACMA did not act on that alert, they did not alert the minister. So, how can the regulator, be the investigator when they're part of the failed process?”
Greens Communications Spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young is also calling for stronger action.
“The minister has got to do something. Simply fobbing this off to the regulator that has continued to fail to protect consumers and to protect users - and instead, really is more of a industry lap dog than a watch dog - is not good enough, and ACMA has failed. They continue to fail to hold these corporations to account, and the minister has got to do something about that too.”
After meeting with Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon, chair of the Optus Board, John Arthur, and Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, Ms Wells said the government may take further action.
“Once that independent regulator investigation is complete, it is for the Australian government to hand down any further penalties beyond what you can expect from the regulator and any further system wide change that may be required to give Australians confidence back.”
However, she largely framed the recent outages as a compliance failure on Optus' part, rather than representative of systemic issues.
Sarah Hanson-Young says there are immediate actions Ms Wells can take to increase public confidence that this won't happen again.
“The minister has the power, under existing law, to impose conditions on the license. So one of the things we've we asked the minister to do last week was to put in place an independent expert, someone to oversee how Optus was managing and responds in relation to its triple-zero service.”
Speaking to the media after meeting with Anika Wells, Mr Yuen apologised to customers, and attributed the failure to human error, as well as technical issues which are as yet undisclosed.
He has pledged to publicly release the findings of an external review.
“The board has commissioned independent review by Dr Kerry Schott, and the board has agreed that her findings will be shared openly with everyone in due time.”
He stood by Optus Australia CEO, Stephen Rue, whose position the opposition has increasingly questioned since the initial outage on September 18.
After a second outage occurred in the New South Wales Illawarra region over recent days, Mr Yuen concedes significant reform is needed at Optus.
YUEN: "We brought in Stephen 11 months ago to transform Optus, to really address the issues that we have had since 2022-23.
REPORTER: How do you think he's going?
YUEN: It is very early days. It takes time to transform a company. Stephen has identified, and I believe so in the initial investigation of the 18th September incident, it is due to a people issue, and it takes time to transform and change the people. He is here to provide the solution.”
Optus has faced hundreds of millions in fines in recent years, most recently due to sales practices that were found to breach consumer law.
Australian Communications Consumer Action Network CEO Carol Bennett says she hopes Optus can achieve cultural change.
She's also urging the government to implement recommendations from the Bean review, completed after the last Optus outage in 2023.
“There are outstanding recommendations from that review that still need to be implemented. And one of those is the triple-zero custodian rules. We need to have an ecosystem wide understanding of the triple-zero system so that we can ensure that it is going to live up to the necessary obligations and requirements on telcos to deliver safety for the Australian public.”
For now, Ms Bennett says that without external oversight, she has serious doubts about Optus' capacity to avoid a repeat of recent outages, which may have cost lives.
“Because we've seen it happen before, and it's now happened multiple times, and I guess that's the gap in community, confidence, versus what the community experiences when it comes to Optus' products and services. “
