JOINT MEDIA RELEASE

Dan Tehan MP
Acting Shadow Minister for Communications and Digital Safety
Member for Wannon

Dr Anne Webster MP
Shadow Minister for Regional Health
Shadow Minister for Regional Communications
Federal Member for Mallee

Senator Ross Cadell

Senator for New South Wales

Friday 17 July 2026

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Damning Telstra evidence shows consequences of Albanese Government inaction

Evidence before today's Senate inquiry has raised serious questions about how known risks were managed inside Australia's largest telecommunications network, while exposing ongoing failures in the Albanese Government's oversight of critical telecommunications infrastructure.

Telstra told a Senate Inquiry on Friday that last week’s Telstra outage, at its peak affected around 45 per cent of calls and data, with 604 Triple Zero calls encountering an error.  

Victoria’s V/Line passenger rail network was disrupted for over a day, services on NSW’s Southern Highlands and Hunter lines were disrupted, while as many as 80,000 businesses’ payment terminals were disrupted and taxis could not collect fares.

At Friday’s emergency hearing of the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee’s Triple Zero Service Outage inquiry, including Nationals Senator Ross Cadell, Telstra admitted they received warnings about a timing-related software issue, later made a design change to the impacted server that was not properly documented, and did not complete the relevant software update that may have prevented the outage.

Telstra further confirmed that the outage may not have occurred if it had invested in a new $30,000 server.

Acting Shadow Minister for Communications and Digital Safety Senator Dan Tehan said the evidence reinforced concerns that the Albanese Labor Government has left Australia exposed to the safety and economic risks of serious telecommunications failures despite repeated warnings following the Optus Triple Zero outage.

"Australians have every right to ask the Albanese Government why it allows known risks to remain inside critical communications infrastructure relied upon by millions of Australians, emergency services, businesses and transport networks," Mr Tehan said.

"The Albanese Government clearly knows the fragility of our telecommunications network, following the Optus Triple Zero outage, and independent reviews identifying weaknesses in emergency-calling governance and telecommunications resilience. Years later, Australians have yet again been hit with a major telecommunications disruption to Triple Zero."

Shadow Minister for Regional Communications Dr Anne Webster said it has taken the Albanese Labor Government two years to act on the Bean Review recommendation for a review of the Triple Zero regulatory framework.

“Australians are entitled to ask why reforms have moved so slowly when the consequences of failure are so serious,” Dr Webster said.

“Australia's telecommunications resilience framework is unacceptably reactive and Telstra effectively agreed on Friday with the Coalition’s policies to update the Universal Service Obligation and impose reliability standards”

"The system still relies on carrier self-reporting, contingency arrangements, welfare checks after failed emergency calls, and lengthy investigations once the damage has already been done.”

"The Coalition continues to call for mandatory reliability, performance and maintenance standards for mobile networks, backed by meaningful penalties, because telecommunications networks are now unquestionably critical national infrastructure."

Senator Cadell said regional Australians have spent years being told to trust the system.

“They are entitled to expect the Albanese Government and telecommunications providers ensure that system works before a crisis, not explain what went wrong afterwards."

"Australians should be able to assume that when they pick up a phone in an emergency, the network will work. The Minister must explain why Australians cannot be sure of that."

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