Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (15:52): I note the comments made by the member for Perth. Of course, this is political. The fact is that it is sad the minister herself is not here to respond to this MPI. This is a serious issue. We take it seriously on this side. Our side is under no illusion that Optus has no responsibility. Clearly Optus is responsible. But the minister is where the buck stops, and that is our point. To continually walk away and point the finger at Optus and say, 'They're responsible, not me,' is absolutely unacceptable.

There is nowhere for the minister to hide. The buck stops, however, with the minister not Optus, not the department and not her staff. We know how serious the outage was. Four people died—four Australians who are no longer with us due to this government's failings. That is a fact. Labor can point the finger at Optus, but, of course, it wasn't Optus's first outage; it was their second. The first, over 18 months ago, was investigated by Richard Bean, who produced a report with 18 recommendations. It was an outage that happened on this government's watch, yet, despite all of that, this negligent Albanese Labor government allowed another failure to happen on their watch.

Westminster tradition, one of the core foundations of this place, makes it very clear that the buck stops with the minister, yet ministerial accountability in the Albanese Labor government is about as strong as a regional mobile phone signal—flaky at best. We are talking today about arguably Australia's most trusted brand: the triple 0 telephone number. Australians rely on triple 0 to ensure that an ambulance, a fire engine or a police officer arrives to assist them as fast as possible.

Let's remember how thin the emergency services workforce is in regional Australia. Farmers, Indigenous Australians and residents of small rural towns live even further from an emergency service than metropolitan Australians do. Regional remoteness is exacerbated by the lack of a reliable mobile phone signal, or no signal at all.

This government has been in office for more than three years, yet we do not have a fit-for-purpose universal service obligation for the 21st century. Telecommunications is an essential service and has been for some time—no different to potable water supply, sewerage and electricity. Without reliable telecommunications, people can get sick and they can die, particularly in regional Australia. Yet, when I moved amendments to make regional telecommunications a specific focus of the new Triple Zero Custodian, Labor weren't interested. They expect regional Australians to trust the government to look out for their interests.

Regional Australians have plenty of reasons not to do that. Everywhere you look at the Labor brand, at federal and state levels—from the reckless renewables rollout to imposing new taxes in Victoria during a drought period, until they were shamed into giving farmers a one-year break—Labor cannot be trusted to look out for the interests of regional Australians. Regional Australians have seen centralisation and closure of local services under Labor governments, particularly in health services. Adding insult to injury, the same Labor governments that have undermined local emergency services have allowed, twice on their watch, the triple 0 service to fail. Regional Australians need reliable triple 0 service, as do all Australians. There is no debate or question about that. I am proud to be part of a coalition on this side of the House, with our colleagues in the Senate, applying the blowtorch of accountability to this government on its failings on the most essential of our essential services: triple 0.

Summer is coming in less than two months time, and in my electorate of Mallee the fire danger period tends to start by the end of October—just a couple of weeks from now. I urge the government to work with the opposition, to be transparent and accountable and build confidence in triple 0 so we do not lose another Australian life.

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