Interview with ABC Radio Sydney, Breakfast with Craig Reucassel

CRAIG REUCASSEL, HOST: Were you one of the 10 million people affected by the Optus outage last year? Thousands of people tried to call Triple Zero and couldn’t get through. A review into the outage has made 18 recommendations and the Federal Government has agreed to all of them. Here to explain is Michelle Rowland, the Federal Communications Minister and the MP for the seat of Greenway in Western Sydney. Morning, Michelle.
 
MICHELLE ROWLAND, MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Good morning.
 
REUCASSEL. You've accepted all of these recommendations - what is going to change so that we don't have this problem again?
 
ROWLAND: I think there's three things in particular in these 18 recommendations. The first is ensuring that consumers are the focus of the Triple Zero system. It is a complex ecosystem, it's quite a feat of engineering that wherever you are, whatever network, you can use a device to be able to call Triple Zero and get connected to police, ambulance or fire. But what has happened in this ecosystem is that it really hasn't been reviewed for a decade - it's been somewhat set and forget. What is proposed here in the Bean recommendations is that there be established a new Triple Zero Custodian framework, one that's initially going to be led by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. It's going to essentially stand in the shoes of the consumer to look at Triple Zero and ensure that it functions properly –
 
REUCASSEL: Okay, so let's just talk through technically, because the whole thing is that if I'm meant to be able to make a Triple Zero call from my phone and it's meant to use any network - so if I'm an Optus person, but there's only a Telstra network there, it should still go through. When Optus went down, why did that fail? Why were Optus callers not able to use the other networks around?
 
ROWLAND: Well, the reviewer here, Richard Bean, looked into that very issue and he determined that the principal cause of this outage was what's called a lack of wilting on the Optus 3G network. Now, wilting is where there might be a tower where the network isn't operating, but that signal from will continue to try and reach a point. So, it doesn't understand that its own network isn't operating. What usually happens is that the signals are powered down automatically on these towers so that the signal goes and finds another network like Telstra or TPG-Vodafone. That didn't happen in this case, and I'm pleased to inform your listeners that that was something that was pursued with Optus during Mr Bean's inquiry, and the advice from Optus is that that has been fixed as a technical issue.
 
REUCASSEL: Okay. So, if we have another outage like this, we shouldn't have the same problem, and we're also going to have an update too, I guess the rules around Triple Zero as well?
 
ROWLAND: That's right.
 
REUCASSEL: Just onto another topic - do you think there needs to be a royal commission into violence against women?
 
ROWLAND: I think the priority is to implement all the recommendations and the National Plan that is in place. I understand that there have been calls for this kind of inquiry, but at the same time, some very considered advocacy groups have also put forward the view that the time now is for action.
 
We understand what the issues are and of course there are issues around bail conditions, but we need to ensure that we modify the behaviours and look at the causes of what's unfortunately become a normalisation of violence against women. All this is covered in the National Plan - the key is for States and Territories, along with the Commonwealth, to work together to implement that.
 
REUCASSEL: The Prime Minister obviously asserted that there's already been a plan put in place in 2022 - he said that at the rally on the weekend. There was some contention at the moment about whether or not the Prime Minister did actually ask to speak at the rally before he attended. Surely there'd be a paper trail the Prime Minister could put out if that was the case?
 
ROWLAND: I think the more important thing here is to actually focus on National Cabinet that is happening tomorrow. I think that the recent events have really culminated in what has been simmering for some time, and I think it's got the attention of Government and it has got the attention of the general public. I actually don't think it's helpful to be dwelling on some of these issues. I think it's time for the country to move forward and to actually move forward in a constructive way.
 
In a past life, the only time that I went to court as a lawyer was as a volunteer on a domestic violence legal service - and I can tell you what I saw during that ten years actually changed my approach to these matters. It's not only a matter of providing more money, it is spending it properly, it is making long term investments and it is looking at what is working, and I think that the National Plan that's been devised here is exactly in that vein, but it needs to get implemented.
 
REUCASSEL: Yeah, there's calls today. I mean, we're talking about this being a huge society wide problem and there's a lot of talk today about the fact that social media plays a part and that people are seeing - kids are seeing -pornography young. That's part of the kind of lack of respect for women and you can deal with this within the Communications portfolio.
 
Is there ways that you can actually put in place proper restrictions on age? You know, nowadays a kid can click something who says, are you over 18 and basically have access to anything - is there any way this can actually be prevented? Is the technology out there, all the rules out there?
 
ROWLAND: We know that this technology is being developed and in some cases, it is actually quite advanced. I have been working closely with the eSafety Commissioner on having a pilot in place to have some sort of age assurance mechanisms, because – exactly, as you say – no parent wants their child being exposed to harmful content online.
 
Digital platforms need to do more. They already have terms of service around age restrictions. Knowing their users the way they do, you will know yourself and your listeners when you go searching for things through search engines -all of a sudden you will start getting served up articles on that topic in some curated news feeds. It's very clear now, through the ability for the platforms to know their users, to understand whether it is a child that has said that they're 18. If they're otherwise looking at unboxing toys and cat videos, it's highly unlikely that these people are going to be anything other than children –
 
REUCASSEL: Well, I think you'll find a lot of adults who look at unboxing toys and that kind of stuff. I don't know if you can judge - I don't know if you can judge the age of person by their past.
 
ROWLAND: I won't judge you, Craig,
 
REUCASSEL: You say you're speaking with the eSafety Commissioner about getting these kind of tighter rules in place. Now, we saw last week when the eSafety Commissioner was asking for social media organisations to take down videos of the Wakeley stabbing, for instance, Elon Musk's response from X - formally Twitter - was to just kind of say, look, this is a free speech issue, we're going to ignore you. I mean, do you actually have the powers in place to make these changes even if the technology exists?
 
ROWLAND: Well, in Australia, we do have legislation. We've got the Online Safety Act, and the eSafety Commissioner has responsibility as the independent regulator for implementing that Act. That's what Julie Inman-Grant has done in this instance. The Government backs eSafety because the whole point here is that there is some types of content that should not be seen by Australians. What we're talking about here is class 1 material. Class 1 material is otherwise Refused Classification - it's got that RC rating and it applies to – for example – extreme actual violence. It's also child sexual abuse material and it's pro-terror content. It is the type of content that should not be seen.
 
REUCASSEL. So, if Elon Musk says no, if Elon Musk says no to you, where are we now? What's the next step in that?
 
ROWLAND: Where we are right now is a court process, which is coming back in early to mid May. As I said, we back the eSafety Commissioner's actions in this regard because this type of content should not be seen. I also note that eSafety issued similar notices to other platforms and operates also on a cooperative basis with many platforms to have this type of content taken down.
 
I would point out that these are platforms that know their users, that know their own terms of service, and their own terms of service will be saying that there's certain types of content that aren’t permitted on it. So, this is where the platforms need to do more. We will see where this litigation goes, and it is a fact that we know that these platforms are highly litigious and have deep pockets. At the same time, a democratically elected Parliament of Australia has determined what types of content shouldn't be seen and has also passed a law in respect to the implementation of that, and the Government backs that.
 
REUCASSEL: Well, we will watch with great interest what happens in the courts. If only social media was as easy to fix as the Triple Zero system. Thanks for talking to us, Minister.
 
ROWLAND: My pleasure.