Telcos will be required to keep real-time registers of outages and face fines of up to $30 million for Triple Zero-related failures under legislation given the green light by the Senate.

It came on the same day that the Greens and Coalition teamed up to launch an inquiry into the recent Optus Triple Zero outage, with executives set to appear before a public hearing on Monday.

The Senate on Tuesday waived through a bill serving to enshrine the Triple Zero Custodian in law, bolster information-gathering powers from telcos, and increase the maximum penalty to $30 million for not following Triple Zero rules.

The legislation was already in the works before the devastating Optus Triple Zero outage in September, but was fast-tracked following this incident, which has been attributed to at least four deaths where people were unable to reach the emergency services line.

It serves to implement a key recommendation from a government-commissioned inquiry into the previous major Optus breach in late 2023.

Triple Zero Custodian

The Triple Zero Custodian was established administratively in the Department of Communications in March, and the passed bill will establish it permanently, with a role to proactively oversee the Triple Zero system.

The Custodian, who will be the Secretary of the Department of Communications, will have the power to direct ACMA to demand information from telecommunications providers to monitor the performance of Triple Zero, identify potential risks and respond more quickly to outages.

Telcos will also be required to report outages in real-time to ACMA and emergency services, and to conduct testing of the network during any upgrades or maintenance.

“Australians must have confidence that Triple Zero will be there when they need it most,” Minister for Communications Anika Wells said following the legislation’s approval.

“With these new powers for the Triple Zero Custodian, there will be more active and effective monitoring [to] make sure this vital service meets their needs.

“Telcos must be held accountable for any failures in their obligations to deliver this vital service to Australians, and a strengthened Triple Zero Custodian will do that.

“As well as bolstering proactive, end-to-end oversight of the entire Triple Zero system, these laws mean increased penalties of up to $30 million that reflect the seriousness of Triple Zero failures.”

Optus was fined $12 million in 2024 for the one-day outage of its network that occurred the previous year.

The government agreed to the Greens push to increase these penalties for Triple Zero failures, and this figure has now been set at $30 million, despite the Coalition attempting to move an amendment increasing it to $40 million.

Criticised on both sides

Both the Greens and the Opposition criticised the government for taking too long to introduce these Triple Zero reforms.

Liberal Senator James McGrath said that Labor had not been working in good faith with the Opposition on the reforms.

“The Coalition has been calling for a public register of Triple Zero outages so Australians can have confidence in the system and be informed,” McGrath said in the Senate on Tuesday.

“Optus has now had two major and catastrophic outages in under two years, both under the Albanese government’s watch, and both times the Parliament had to step in through Senate inquiries and Senate estimates to drag information out of them.

“[The] Coalition has had to drag the government kicking and screaming to do it.”

In response, Labor Senator Nita Green said it was “difficult to work” with the Coalition on the bill as the Opposition is a “complete broken mess”.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said that the government had taken too long to implement the recommendations of the review into the 2023 Optus outage.

“It shouldn’t have taken another Optus failure and a deadly outage for this legislation to have been brought into this chamber,” Hanson-Young said in the Senate.

“The government was caught flat-footed and caught snoozing on the job, and now they’ve had to bring in this legislation.”

The Senate on Tuesday also voted to launch an inquiry into the most recent Optus outage and plans to call the telco’s executives before a hearing on Monday.

Earlier in October on the day the legislation was introduced to the lower house, the chief executives of Optus, Telstra and TPG met with Wells to discuss the reforms.