After weeks of chaos over failed triple zero calls, the Albanese government has moved to restore public trust, introducing new laws to tighten control over Australia’s emergency call system.
Communications Minister Anika Wells on Oct. 7 unveiled the Telecommunications Legislative Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Bill 2025, designed to strengthen the reliability, transparency, and oversight of the network.
The bill places the Triple Zero Custodian on a permanent statutory footing, giving the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) expanded powers to monitor, investigate, and direct telecommunications carriers to prevent system failures.
“From the first of November, telecommunications carriers will have to provide real-time reporting of outages to ACMA and to emergency services. They will also have to test triple zero during upgrades and maintenance and ensure calls fall back to other networks if needed,” Wells told Parliament.
Every six months, ACMA will report to the minister on how its new powers are being used.
Lessons from Recent Outages
The reforms follow a series of major breakdowns, most notably a firewall upgrade on Sept. 18 that caused about 600 triple zero calls to fail nationwide, an outage linked to three deaths.
Days later, another disruption in New South Wales again blocked a dozen emergency calls.
“Australians should trust when they call triple zero, someone will answer and help will come,” Wells said.
“But repeated failures by Optus in recent years, through which thousands of emergency calls failed to connect and lives were lost, has compromised that trust.”
She warned that any carrier responsible for service failures would face significant consequences, adding, “There is no excuse.”
