Did Labor ignore triple zero 'red flags'?

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Senate Estimates is not unlike a cattle's salyards.

Now bear with me, for those that are unacquainted, cattle hang out in holding pens waiting for their moment under scrutiny.

It's a similar feeling for the hundreds of bureaucrats currently sitting under Parliament House's fluorescent lighting in windowless rooms for 13 hours a day, unaware of what their fate holds.

The nation's telco bosses too are getting a taste of it, having been summoned to Canberra for a ministerial please explain.

So is the government flexing its power or desperately playing catch-up?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Brett Worthington filling in for PK.

And I'm Raph Epstein from ABC Radio Melbourne.

Raph, can you tell I was a rural reporter?

Cattle today, dogs yesterday.

I love it.

And as someone, I've actually actually often spoken to people before they go through the Senate estimates process.

And there's a Yiddish expression on spilkers, which means, I guess, like sitting on a splintered fence, and the anxiety and just the existential dread people go through.

Because you're right, they have no idea what they're going to be asked, what they're expected to produce.

how tough it's going to be.

I mean, it's a terrifying experience because it's the not knowing, right?

They don't know what they're going to be asked.

And it's all sides.

So the ministerial people that are briefing them, they've got no idea what the coalition might ask about.

At the same time, the bureaucrats have got no idea.

There's just this nervous energy that kind of emanates from the parliament.

And because of the election, we haven't had it for a while.

But you love it.

It's like bloodsport, you reporters.

They're fun to watch, aren't they?

They are fun to watch.

They are fun.

And to be honest, it starts getting loose as the day goes on.

And there have been reports of it not being tea that are going into some of the coffee mugs that the politicians have got there.

Do you got a fact to base that rumor on?

I do.

A first-hand account of a politician that would probably kill me right now if it came out what was in their coffee cup.

So, you know, by the time 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock rolls around, let's just see how things are going.

Okay, tune in.

We are recording this just after Annika Wells has summoned the big telcos to Canberra, issuing them with a please explain she wants to know what the telco providers are doing ahead of bushfire season to make sure there is reliable,

well, the people, frankly, can trust that when they call triple zero this bushfire season, they're going going to get through to the emergency services that they need.

And it comes as the government has finally, I suspect from your perspective, Raph, having long been paying attention to this, there's some legislation around the Triple Zero custodian and whether or not that will be enough to get these telcos to where the government wants them to be.

What's your take on where it's landing?

My nightmare, Brett, my nightmare is that I'm going to be on air and people are going to be able to ring me and not ring Triple Zero and there's going to be a bushfire ripping through a coastal town.

And I think that has been everyone's nightmare.

My fear is the government has not been put under enough scrutiny.

You've got, you know, the whole idea of triple zero custodian.

Okay, great.

We've had the red flags.

We've had the warnings for a long time.

I think it is worth looking at the history.

At the end of October, in 2023, they update one of their servers Optus.

in North America, right, to software upgrade.

It crashes to protect itself because the upgrade somehow threatens it.

I don't think there's actually any deaths at the time, but there's certainly trouble accessing Triple Zero.

Then in March of last year, Trelstra has a different sort of problem, but Telstra runs the Triple Zero call center.

So if you call Triple Zero, they end up taking the call.

They farm the calls out to the states using software.

Their software didn't work.

And then when they tried to ring, physically ring the numbers in Victoria, the Triple Zero services in Victoria, they got the numbers wrong and they got the emails wrong.

So it's like we've been here before, and this is all end of 23, start of 24.

There's a review and the review says, you know what?

The system's not working.

There's two things you need to do.

I'm really simplifying.

Number one, these guys need to check the system works.

Like recommendation three from the former deputy chair of the media regulation, the media regulator is you guys have got to do end-to-end checks and make sure it works.

And if it doesn't work, you've got to tell us.

clearly hasn't happened.

And also the triple zero custodian, like it sounds like bureaucratic language, but it's really simple.

It's such a complex system.

Someone's got to be in charge and making sure it works.

The government got that recommendation, what, 18 months ago?

It hasn't happened.

They're rushing laws into parliament.

I think

the real problem, or not the only real problem, this is an example of all of the great chat you had.

with Jacob about the coalition's troubles.

That's really important.

It's really interesting.

There's a huge cost to the coalition working out their future.

They have been completely unable to put the government feet to the fire on this.

We've known about these problems.

Triple zero is crucial, it's essential, we've left it to businesses, we've abandoned regulation

and I don't understand why the politicians aren't more concerned about this.

This goes off on TalkBack Radio.

Everyone knows if the triple zero tower goes down, I've said this to you before, is there battery backup?

Like if the triple zero, if the tower goes down, is Telstra able to jump onto Optus's services?

And no one's got any good answers.

I find it astonishing that it hasn't created more heat under the government.

And I think that what is fascinating for me is obviously Annika Wells has been in the spotlight, attracting a lot of attention.

And undoubtedly, today in getting the telcos here is part of the performative element of government of wanting to send a message that we are pushing back on these telcos.

We are expecting you, the telecommunication providers, to meet your obligations and the new laws that are separately coming in

from November, which would see greater responsibility in terms of not just notifying ACMA and emergency services when there is an outage, but being clear about the amount of time that it will take to resolve and then afterwards what steps it's going to be doing to fix it.

I think that going back question is an important one that's still unanswered for the Prime Minister and for the former Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland.

These are people who oversaw these portfolios for a long period of time.

And Annie College, yes, sure, she's new and she'll carry the can from here.

But do you think there's been enough scrutiny of what they were doing in the former government to to prepare for this situation absolutely not i mean just look at the two reviews so there's a there's an optus review of the latest set of outages again it's a software upgrade problem if my understanding is correct so optus has the former energy expert kerry shot looking at it then the government's got their own review of it neither of them are asking hold on what's the government been doing since the first half of last year now this stuff's really complicated And I think one of the big political factors is it's really easy to be outraged at Optus.

And we're all it's correct to be really angry at Optus.

They've really dropped the ball.

But we're not nearly as quick to say, well, hold on, if Optus has dropped the ball, who's allowed them to drop the ball?

They've been allowed to drop the ball because the rules aren't strong enough.

Who hasn't tightened the rules?

Who doesn't have a tough regulator?

Who was warned about the fact that they needed a tough regulator?

That was was the government.

But I do think the complexity of the technical nature of the problem, I mean, to be honest, I read up on the Optus outage in 24 and the Telster one in 25, kind of every time I talk about them on the radio, hold on, was it a software upgrade or was it the computers not being able to talk to each other?

So I do think that stops some of the spotlight going inappropriate places.

I do think the coalition...

is

partly to blame in air quotes, if that's right.

But I don't think there's nearly enough scrutiny.

Why didn't the former communications minister move more quickly?

Why didn't the communications department move more quickly?

We don't have good answers to that.

There might be good reasons for why they moved slowly.

And there's been someone doing that, keeping an eye on the triple zero thing.

Again, it's complicated.

My understanding, it sort of was sitting in the department to make it something that sits outside of the communications department and give it powers takes a legislative process.

But yeah, I mean, the parliament's supposed to ask, what was the government doing?

And that hasn't happened yet.

It's been

operating since March of this year, but essentially that is

working.

Exactly.

It's just, you've created a structure.

Now, this legislation, which they're calling fast-tracking, it's a bit hard to use the term.

Yeah, they're fast-tracking because they were slow.

Right.

I mean, I

and the reason I get so agitated, my colleague was on the radio on Black Saturday on the Saturday night.

You know, John Fane was in the chair and he took those calls.

And in that instance, it wasn't a matter of, you know, triple zero working or not.

I don't even know if it would have made a difference.

And there's actually an amazing show on the ABC tonight called I Was Always There that focuses on Black Saturday that is worth watching.

It's on Tuesday night.

But that's the reason I get so agitated about it.

It's clear the sorts of problems that optus have had.

People have been able to make regular phone calls, but they haven't been able to make triple zero phone calls.

And that was the same with the Telstra outage.

These are not new problems.

We've known it's a weakness.

Like it's been sitting there.

I'm not the only ABC radio station that's been aware of the problems.

Like it's happened around the country.

People have been asking the hypothetical and there's just hasn't been a willingness to act.

So forgive my agitation, but it's I'm just waiting for that nightmare scenario to play out.

When the government would say that some of these changes that are coming into force are as part of the custodium, but also as part of those other changes are that when there are upgrades that are happening to the system, that the telcos will need to be doing tests as well to ensure the triple zero is still operational during those test periods.

Now we've seen on 7.30 last night there has been further or greater outages than we have been reported.

There was clear frustration at the premier level when we saw the optus outage a couple of weeks ago about the lack of clear communication to state authorities who were then tasked with.

Are you getting calls to ambulance services?

Are you getting calls to the police?

I'm curious the extent to which this legislation that is being put in,

will it achieve the ultimate goal here here of preventing these outages from happening?

Laws don't fix the problem.

Attitudes fix the problem.

People need to be ahead of the rules and ahead of the laws.

And I'm just remembering because when the Telstra outage happened, that mainly affected calls in Victoria, we told the minister's office that it had happened.

They didn't know.

So Telstra hadn't told the minister's office.

We told the government that that had happened.

The reason I think that's important, that's months after a much bigger Optus outage, where you would think everyone's on tender hooks.

Right, Telstra should be thinking, right, this thing happened to Optus.

As soon as something happens like that, right, we've got to have a system.

Government's got to know.

As soon as there's a problem, the government should know.

They didn't do that.

Now, that's before the review that recommends things like the 000 custodian and recommends end-to-end checking.

But it's about a change in attitude.

And to zoom out, I think there's two things going on.

One is we're kind of given up on regulation in many ways in this country.

We had a banking royal commission.

I'm not sure how much has changed drastically in the wake of that.

And two is it's about money.

They are deeply, deeply complex systems.

It's not everyone with a brass connection to an old telecom network.

They're deeply, deeply complicated.

It's going to cost money.

We're probably all going to have to pay more.

for our internet and our phones to make sure Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and everybody else spends that money to make sure the system is safe.

And I think that's also quite a difficult thing.

That's a difficult proposition for a politician to argue.

And I don't know, it's kind of almost a politically suicidal proposition to argue.

So I do think there's some of the reasons it doesn't happen.

Well, I think there's also an open question within parts of the government that feel that Optus, now it's getting a lot of the attention at the moment because of the string of adages.

People within the government will point to the fact that the CEO has changed.

This keeps happening.

Does the board need to take greater accountability?

That's an open question that exists that, you know, that's for the board to

account for.

But there are some within the government that would say, rip up Optus's carrier license.

It has lost the social license to have this.

It cannot be relied upon to provide the service.

There are others in the government, though, that will push back on that price point and say, just look at the supermarkets of what happens if you were to pull out a big competitor in the telecommunications market, what that could mean if you've got even greater reliance on Telstra.

What does that mean for competition and for household costs?

And I think that that is the tension that is being considered within the top elements of the government.

Now, I don't think there's a real push on to rip up Optus's carrier license, but it has been considered behind closed doors about whether or not it has gone too far.

And if you cannot offer that assurance to the public that when they pick up their phone, they're going to get through to an emergency service.

And, you know, there's been white-hot anger within parts of the government at suggestions that people using their phones weren't doing it properly or that people didn't hang on the line long enough for backup systems to work.

That this is the human error of the person calling fault is something that certainly will not be tolerated.

I understand that white hot anger.

I think you make a really important point, though, when you talk about,

I've asked actually, why don't you just take the license away from Optus?

It's not simple.

They don't know that someone else will invest.

But I think just looking at the bare bones of it, because it's politics now, as PK says, like let's do what it says on the tin.

This problem's going to happen again, right?

And it's likely to happen again in some form before the next election.

So now that it's happened repeatedly, twice with Optus in a big way, and actually the recent stuff with Optus has been, you know, it's been several little mini events, hasn't it?

It's happened twice with Optus.

It's happened once with Telstra in a smaller version last year.

Next time it happens, how much do you think the focus is going to be on the phone companies?

How much is the focus going to be on?

the government?

Have you got a tough enough cop on the beat?

And all of the really valid things you say there about cost and you can't push a phone phone provider out everyone's not going to I think that's going to they're going to be lower order issues the higher order issue is right the government's had enough red flags why didn't you act and I hate to be a pessimist and maybe I shouldn't make predictions like this I can't see a problem like this not happening again I just think there's it's almost inevitable unless they change something fundamental about the way it's regulated and the attitude inside the phone companies.

And we know there's going to be a lot of of questions asked at Senate estimates about when the government found out what the broader process is from here, that alliance that you see within parts of, I probably don't like me saying it, the Greens, the Coalition and David Pocock in the Senate of willing to use Senate committees to try and push.

It's better to use the word alliance than coalition.

I mean it might feel more stable at times than the actual coalition.

So we know that that'll be scrutinised.

We know that the government put out this legislation today and some of the other legislation they were announcing today, a bit of a sign of trying to get ahead of this week of Senate estimates, knowing where some some of the questions will be.

But it would be remiss to not acknowledge the day with which we are recording this podcast on.

It is October 7.

We've seen leaders across the political spectrum taking a moment to offer their reflections on where we are at the war in Gaza.

I know you talked with the Deputy Prime Minister this morning.

What did you take out of your chat with Richard Miles?

I should say, I shouldn't say too much about the way the sausage is made, but I did not plan to speak to the Deputy Prime Minister Minister this morning.

Our breakfast show did not plan to talk to the Premier of Victoria.

The reason those interviews were requested is someone actually rang into our breakfast show on 774 and said, hey, someone's spray painted on a big billboard near the entrance to the Eastern Freeway in Fitzroy.

Glory to Hamas.

I'm not actually sure if that's a terrorist offence.

It's clearly a graffitiing offence.

It's clearly offensive to a lot of people on a day like today.

But there was more than one batch of nasty graffiti.

I know for some people this is easy to hear, for other people, it's difficult to hear.

But twice in nearby suburbs, someone had spray painted a range of things like Free Palestine, but also October 7, do it again.

Now, October 7, of course, 1,200 people were killed in Israel by Hamas.

About a third of them were Israeli police and security forces, but two-thirds of them are civilians, including more than 300 kids at a music festival.

It really

energized and angered some people, especially some of the more organized elements of the Jewish community were planning commemorations and ways of marking the day.

But there's also a significant pro-Palestine movement on the streets in Melbourne.

They're planning a vigil.

So it's just

like the social tension is so fraught.

And one thing Richard Miles said to us when we hurriedly organized it, had him on the radio was.

He has never seen social tensions this bad in his lifetime.

And I feel the same same way.

I've been watching the tech screen and doing talk back calls for, I think, something like 14 years in Melbourne, and I've been a reporter for 30 years.

So I used to take calls actually in the Sydney newsroom in the 90s from members of the Serbian and Croatian communities during the Balkan Wars.

So, you know, it's not like I haven't lived through, and 9-11 was a really fraught time, especially for Muslim Australians.

However, this, like that, they're so far apart, the different voices.

I have also never felt the tension quite like this and just the complete inability to agree on anything so of course that graffiti is deplorable and i think the pm and the opposition leader did the right things like you know come on like come on every innocent life matters but the tension and the lack of social cohesion is is bewildering to me.

And I'm old or older or something in my 50s.

It does feel unique and different to me in my 30 years of reporting.

It was just interesting that the Deputy PM said that.

I don't know.

How does this day land in Parliament House?

I think it's a constant juggle that Labor in particular navigates with this area.

It's a very simple day in many ways for the coalition because the coalition position is such a clear binary in a lot of parts of support for the Israeli government and its broader response.

They will then continue to call for the releasing of hostages and hopefully the push working towards the peace plan that Donald Trump has been unveiling in recent weeks.

The government's approach here is a bit paint by numbers as well.

Of course,

mark the lives that were lost.

Again, we saw in those early stage,

the right to defend itself was the line that was put forward constantly by the government in the early stages, but also again then calling for that ceasefire, calling for peace and ultimately Palestine to be able to have its own self-determination.

Now that is all big and complicated as I'm sure that you don't need me to explain to you.

But I think that on a day like today, you'll see a pretty irate Prime Minister with what you're seeing here.

Now he's calling it terrorist propaganda.

Also media organisations are facing pressure as well about how they broadcast and cover this issue.

Really?

I haven't noticed any pressure.

If only people could see the expression on your face as you said that, Rat.

I do think that there is something interesting in, and I don't know the extent of the laws enough to kind of navigate what the answer is here, but the mandatory sentences that passed earlier this year around hate, to do with hate speech, hate symbols and terror crimes more broadly, whether or not that opens up a path of some of these first laws, I genuinely don't know.

But I think

Anthony Albanese, when you hear him speak, he seems to talk a lot about the cohesion concerns.

And

that it is,

I just think that at times we have lost sight of what you just said there.

That, like, we've been through some pretty extraordinary times in this last decade.

This is worse than COVID.

I really genuinely believe this is what now.

A lot of people might disagree with me, and that's okay, because I think it's an entirely subjective judgment.

And being the protest capital of the country, we had some really significant protests against the lockdowns, and we had some of the toughest lockdowns as well.

So, I'm not saying that lightly either.

I think the difference with COVID is there was, it's certainly the case that the state was divided about the COVID lockdowns but like I said it was it was more of a divide around how strong the response needs to be this divide is different this is about your entire self-conception as a person and a participant and I just see those worldviews as they're just they are impossible to reconcile it's not a difference of response like COVID it is

You might have a strong opinion either way, but I can tell you when you talk about the pressure on media organizations, like the barrage of calls and texts and the different perspectives you see written about in opinion columns, that's a pretty stark divide.

If you can't even agree what the words free Palestine mean or the word Intifada means or what a pro-Palestine march means or what it means to call Israel's army the Israeli Defense Forces.

I just find that lack of stable common ground.

And even though this is all half a world away,

the scale of destruction and death and the nature of that death and destruction, I just find that the fabric's just sort of really being stretched.

And it comes out on the floor of the Parliament sometimes and it comes out with our talkback calls as well.

I don't know.

Do you feel that divide or that tension or that lack of common ground inside the building in Parliament House?

I think as a country, both the political class and more broadly, we have lost our ability to offer grace

in any ways that one does not take away from the other.

You can both.

There's no room for grace, Brett.

There's no room for grace.

There's no room for grey, frankly.

Like everyone wants to be stuck in a binary position, whether it's, I remember what it was like interviewing the people that were protesting out the front of the parliament during those days of COVID, this debate, when you listen to it on the radio,

it just feels like people are stuck in binary positions and nobody is willing to move.

And as someone who watches this at a little bit of distance, it is unclear to me how on earth we navigate through this in terms of finding common ground in

any of these areas.

And I think that that it becomes a great challenge for our leaders, both domestically and around the world, about what leadership will you signal, will you send to people about the ability to

have a polite disagreement with someone?

Because I think that makes for great robust debate.

But we have completely lost our ability to do that a lot.

And maybe one person who's a really interesting figure in this is,

and it's weird I would say this, the Governor General Sam Austin is a really compelling voice

in this period where she's not a partisan figure.

she's trying to use the role to to bring care back into the ways in which people have these debates well it's worldwide right so it's just our manifestation of the same and how different that is now that every moment from that conflict can be live streamed and there are people with strong opinions from Israel and Gaza live streaming those things into

onto phones that people are reading on or looking at on trams in Melbourne.

And that's a transformation.

And all of that animus and all of that disagreement and that inability to agree just gets beamed into

our lives right here in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Rockhampton.

I mean, you can beam into this stuff from the most remote parts of Australia.

And that seems to be a really profound change.

And I don't think it's a change I like.

One change that we will be seeing is next week you're going to solve the social media ban debate.

It'll be resolved come next Tuesday, right?

That is the aim.

Well, look, perfect segue, right?

We're all aware of that stuff getting fed into our phones.

The social media ban, as your audience knows full well, is coming in December.

We're doing a national chat on ABC TV and radio next Tuesday evening.

I'd love you to come along.

Just use the search terms ABC digital dilemma, especially if you're young, especially if you're going to be affected by the social media ban.

We're going to be across the ABC News channel and ABC Radio on Tuesday evening.

So come along or tune in and be a part of the conversation because the social media ban isn't only going to affect you if you're 16.

It might impact you if you're as old as I am.

I don't even know.

Like, does my Facebook account require verification?

I barely use it, but I don't know.

Do I need to hand over my license?

I want to answer questions like that.

Well, Angela Voipier will be there with you.

She's the ABC's technology reporter and someone I referred to last week when I got a question about whether Truth Social would be captured as part of this band.

So great question.

Much smarter mind than mine.

So Raph, thank you for spending some time with us.

Always a pleasure, Brett.

Speak soon.

Tomorrow, David Spears will join me on the podcast.

If you have a question, send a short voice note to the partyroom at abc.net.au and Mel Clark and I will answer it for you on Thursday when we record the party room and the digital dilemma forum.

We'll chuck a link to that in our show notes where you can check it out from there.

That's it for politics now.

See you, Raph.

See you later, Brett.