Government agrees to increase the maximum penalties for telcos

The federal government is stepping up penalties for telcos after last month's triple-zero outage.

Transcript

00:00Firstly, the federal government has agreed to increase the maximum penalty from $10 million

00:08to $30 million for telecommunications companies that fail to connect their customers to triple

00:14zero during emergencies after striking a deal with the Greens to triple the penalties here.

00:20So this all follows widespread community outrage after last month's Optus Network outage,

00:26which has been linked to at least three deaths when hundreds of Australians couldn't get through

00:31to triple zero during an emergency. Now, the federal government has been under pressure to

00:37throw its weight around here and show that it can really make sure that these telcos do the right

00:42thing, especially as the disaster season approaches with the threat of bushfires and floods over the

00:48summer period. Now, the coalition has, of course, been seizing this opportunity to dig the boot in

00:53here. The shadow communications minister, Melissa McIntosh, has been quick to criticize the federal

01:00government over its response to this latest Optus outage. And today, Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson

01:07will move a motion in Parliament to call for an urgent Senate inquiry looking at who knew what and

01:14when and who is responsible. Now, it's very likely that the Greens will support this motion because

01:19they've been going very hard on Optus as well. Meanwhile, Communications Minister Annika Wells says

01:25that she's written to the regulator, that is the Australian Communications and Media Authority,

01:30otherwise known as ACMA, essentially directing the body to force telcos to maintain a public register

01:37showing the network outages so that you can go online and take a look and see if there is a network

01:43outage happening in your area in real time. So there is movement here by the government in its mission

01:49to crack down on the telcos and it's shaping up to be a hot topic here in Parliament today.