Senator Cadell has slammed the attitude of officials from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts, who this afternoon told a Senate Inquiry “perhaps we don’t want to spend too much time on this” when discussing the delayed flow of information following a triple zero outage earlier this year. The outage has since been linked to the death of an individual.

Nationals Senator for New South Wales, and Shadow Minister for Emergency Management, Water, and Fisheries and Forestry, said he found the complete disinterest from the Department a disgrace, and said that the Department needed to put its focus back on keeping the triple-zero network operational and stop playing politics.

“Here we have a Department who is more interested in looking good than doing good,” Cadell said.

“When an individual gets out their phone to dial triple-zero they deserve to feel comfortable the system will work and that the Department is actively keeping it operational not waiting days to inform the public of the truth.

“Every time the Department has appeared in front of us, we learn something new that we weren’t told previously.

“On multiple occasions, this committee has been left to fill in the blanks by officials seeking to master the art of ducking and weaving.”

The issue of triple-zero outages and their examination in the Senate Inquiry process dates back to 2023, where an Optus network outage saw more than 2,000 calls to triple-zero fail to connect.

“We had an extensive inquiry into the misinformation and lack of transparency from Government following the Optus outage in 2023,” Cadell said.

“The guaranteed operation of the triple-zero network is a matter of life and death. It deserves the full attention of the Department not to be palmed off like a trivial game.”