Topics: Triple Zero Senate inquiry, PM visit and data centres, One Nation/Channel 9 controversy
Laura Jayes: A Senate inquiry has recommended Telstra be stripped of managing Triple Zero calls. A report was prompted after a number of outages left hundreds of callers stranded. It’s recommended the government establish an independent authority. Joining me live now is Shadow Communications Minister, Sarah Henderson. Sarah, thanks so much for your time. You’re outside a data centre, it is [not] noisy but we’ll persist anyway. We’ll see how it goes. First of all, I want to ask you if Telstra shouldn’t run Triple Zero, who exactly should? I mean, what government agency has the technology, the people, and the operational skills to do so right now?
Senator Henderson: Laura, good morning. We know how vital Triple Zero is to every Australian. It can save lives, and as we’ve seen in the Optus outage of September last year, a number of people also tragically died. But this particular recommendation is not supported by Coalition senators. It came out of nowhere. There was no evidence in our inquiry that there was any issue with the Emergency Call Person, which is the centre run by Telstra, and the idea of setting up another bloated bureaucracy is strongly opposed by us. There is no evidence, not even any understanding as to cost. And of course, as we know, when government bureaucracies get involved, sometimes things can go very wrong.
We did make a whole range of other recommendations, including expediting the shocking delay in the review of the Triple Zero laws and regulations, which was appallingly delayed by the government. We want to see real-time reporting of outages. We want to see ACMA being given stronger powers, and we want to see Labor’s shocking cuts to regional connectivity reversed, because of course, Triple Zero is only as good as the infrastructure which underpins it. So much needs to be done, but I think Labor and the Greens have really got this very wrong.
Laura Jayes: Yeah, they certainly do. So I mean, would there be any evidence that transferring Triple Zero to some kind of government entity would make it more reliable, wouldn’t it just transfer the risk and transfer the cost to a taxpayer? And I don’t suppose this committee has even come up with a cost?
Senator Henderson: Well no, and even more shockingly, there was no evidence in relation to any defect with what Telstra was doing. They take nearly 12 million calls every year, that’s the most recent data, Laura. There was no suggestion, in fact, that the Emergency Call Person operation did anything wrong in relation to the Optus outage. Yes, there have been problems in the past, and they need to be scrutinised. But this has come out of the blue, and it just goes to show that when it comes to common sense solutions for the big problems Australians are facing, then, insofar as these recommendations, this really makes no sense at all.
Laura Jayes: Yeah, it’s quite a leap. So it’d be good if someone in the cabinet or ministry could rule it out, but this is something that perhaps should be considered as well, and this is something you would have to deal with if you win the next election. Governments want telcos to spend more money on resilience, regional coverage, redundancies, but the regulator is putting a price at $7.32 billion on renewing spectrum. Aren’t government taxes in this area part of the problem? That’s exorbitant, is it not?
Senator Henderson: It is exorbitant, and one of the recommendations that we have made is that there should be conditions attached to spectrum licensing, which drive incentives for telcos to invest, and therefore they might then get a discount on that spectrum cost. It is a valuable, precious public resource, but at the moment we’ve got no transparency as to how our telcos are going to invest into the future. We don’t know that investment pipeline. There does need to be more transparency, Laura. But when it comes to spectrum, there was a real lost opportunity. Anika Wells, I just don’t think she knows what she’s doing because the government could have imposed conditions on the relicensing of spectrum, which would have basically provided for the telcos to deliver investment certainty, so there’s a whole range of things the government could have done in putting conditions on this spectrum, but it didn’t do so.
So now, of course, every dollar that’s spent on spectrum is a dollar which arguably is not spent on reinvestment in our system, in our networks, and they are becoming increasingly complex. And we’ve got a situation now where we’ve got this so-called universal outdoor mobile obligation to provide satellite connectivity to every Australian, but we’ve got no technology to deliver that. And yet there’s a bill in the Parliament. So, Labor is cutting massively connectivity funding – it’s showing it doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s showing it doesn’t know how to plan for the future as these networks become more complex. And as I say, this is a minister Anika Wells on training wheels.
Laura Jayes: When this first happened, you were quite scathing of Telstra and Vicki Brady. She came back from holidays. Were you too hasty in that criticism?
Senator Henderson: I wasn’t critical of Vicki Brady being on holidays. Everyone’s entitled to take a holiday. She came straight back and she appeared before our inquiry. And of course, Telstra had their outage in July, and a number of Triple Zero calls did not go through, and Telstra did respond, and I think has been pretty upfront about what went wrong. But one of the issues that we have recommended, in contrast to the Greens and Labor, is that ACMA needs greater powers to basically ensure the telcos are held to account straight away. So, just to explain, in the case of Optus, it took nearly a year for ACMA to initiate court proceedings. That could be caught up in the court for another two or more years, which is just appalling. And Australians deserve accountability. They deserve immediacy. And if there are problems that need to be remediated, they deserve urgent action, and we’re just not seeing the urgency at all from this government, or frankly from the regulator, partly because they don’t have appropriate powers, and that’s why we’ve recommended those powers should be strengthened.
Laura Jayes: I want to ask you about a few other things quickly, the Prime Minister leading calls at the UN now with about 20 other nations to put urgent guardrails on AI. This is, of course, at odds with what Donald Trump has had to say, and it is at a time where we’re trying to attract investment, like data centre investment, where you are in Sydney right now. Is this the right course of action to take? Is this a bipartisan call that the PM is making at the UN
Senator Henderson: We don’t know what the Prime Minister is doing, frankly, Laura. He’s all over the shop. He arrived at Apple calling for parental controls, 10 days after Labor voted against our amendment to the Online Safety Act to introduce parental safety tools on the platforms of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others. I think this is a Prime Minister who’s plummeting in the polls, who’s struggling for relevance. I mean, I am at a data centre. This is AirTrunk. I’m outside AirTrunk in Lane Cove because we are conducting a Senate inquiry into data centres, and we are very concerned about the impact that they’re having on residential communities. We’re concerned about a whole range of ways in which they are being rolled out in Australia. But we also understand the opportunity they present to our country and the importance of sovereignty, the importance of having data centres here in this country. But to hear Ben Carroll announcing all these policies in relation to data centres, Laura, after they’ve been developed, many right next to residential housing, the horse has bolted in Victoria. They are causing enormous grief and harm, and we are in Yarraville tomorrow with our Senate inquiry. Ben Carroll doesn’t know what he’s doing, and frankly, I don’t think the Prime Minister does either.
Laura Jayes: One final question here. One nation has this morning told News24 or slammed Channel 9 for airing a piece on the Ku Klux Klan. A reporter spoke to a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Arkansas, and there was a comparison made to One Nation here in Australia. Let me play you a part of this, so you have some context for it.
EXCERPT:
“KKK member: She is demonised by the same element of people that wants to demonise us. What I understand of her is she’s concerned about the immigration, especially from Asia, China, and so on, coming into Australia and changing the racial complex of Australia, changing the culture, changing all the things that the people love and hold dear, and change into something different. And she wants to restrict that.
Journalist: Is it heartening for you to see someone like anti-immigration Pauline Hanson doing well in Australia?
KKK member: Is it heartening? Yeah, yeah. It’s encouraging. Absolutely.”
Laura Jayes: So, One Nation, of course, does not like the comparison and are completely aggrieved by it this morning. Do they have a point?
Senator Henderson: Yes, they do. I understand why One Nation and Pauline Hanson are so upset about this story. They’ve made it very clear that the Ku Klux Klan is a shocking organisation, a deeply racist organisation, white supremacist, and all the other shocking things with this particular setup in the United States. And I can absolutely understand why One Nation and Pauline Hanson are so upset.They’ve got every right to be.
Laura Jayes: Sarah Henderson, I hope you get your data centre tour. Thanks so much for making the time for us this morning. I appreciate it.
Senator Henderson: Great to chat. Thanks, Laura.