RACHEL MEALEY, HOST: Anika Wells is the Federal Communications Minister. She joined me earlier.

MEALEY: Minister, did anyone die yesterday because they couldn’t get through to Triple Zero?

MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS ANIKA WELLS: Rachel, I have not had it reported to me that any failure to connect to Triple Zero has contributed to an adverse outcome. That’s the update I have for your listeners overnight. 

Telstra will be providing an update later this morning with the latest round of numbers and the latest round of welfare-check updates for Australians.

MEALEY: Late last night, Telstra said it was investigating a second network fault that was stopping calls from connecting, including to Triple Zero, again. That came hours after they had said they’d resolved that major outage which began in the early hours of yesterday. What’s your information about that second outage?

WELLS: Like you said, we’ve had people working through the night and Telstra was speaking with both my team and the Triple Zero Custodian and their team overnight about that second issue, that they’ve identified as a residual network issue that was still impacting calls for some users. In some instances, calls are going straight to message-bank. In some instances, Triple Zero calls were not going through. So working overnight to try and address that. It has been largely resolved, but there are still residual problems, so Telstra’s going to provide a further update to their customers about that this morning.

MEALEY: So again, Triple Zero was unavailable to Australians last night.

WELLS: That's correct. And Telstra needs to account for how and why that has occurred because Australians are right to expect that as a baseline service from their telco.

MEALEY: Should there be a system of enforceable reliability standards holding these telecommunications companies to account?

WELLS: Rachel, we have legislation before the Parliament right now that tries to improve consumer standards for telcos. We have both the TECS Bill and the UOMO Bill- sorry, the TECS is enhancing consumer standards and safeguards. Look, I'm sure, Rachel, that Telstra has internal standards about that. What we need here is for companies to competently discharge their duties to customers. And there's been multiple reviews into the Optus September outage. There will be reviews into this outage. Those preliminary investigations have already begun. It is up to lawmakers to lift the standards, and that's why we've been working on trying to do that since September.

You know, we've legislated the Triple Zero Custodian. We've raised penalties for telcos to over $30 million. We've introduced real-time reporting of outages to ACMA and emergency services. That has helped us with this outage. We've forced telcos to test Triple Zero during upgrades and maintenance. We’ve placed new requirements on providers to ensure Triple Zero calls still connect via other networks when the home network is down. We require telcos to provide mandatory improvement plans after Triple Zero outages.

MEALEY: Some of those things that you've mentioned there didn't happen yesterday.

WELLS: Look, camp-on arrangements have been working, except there are instances where they have not. The call system has been maintained. Australians overwhelmingly are still able to successfully call Triple Zero, and camp-on arrangements, as you heard from the acting CEO yesterday afternoon, were working. However, you are right. There are instances where the Triple Zero custodian has observed they have not been working, where Telstra has observed they have not been working, and that’s where welfare checks are taking place and continue to take place.

MEALEY: Do you remain confident that this wasn't a cyber security attack?

WELLS: We have no evidence to suggest that it was either from Telstra or from the Minister of Home Affairs, my colleague. It is irresponsible for parliamentarians to speculate about that without any evidence. We should all be focused on restoring Australian's faith in Triple Zero and working as lawmakers to improve this system for everybody.

MEALEY: Are you confident that our networks could withstand a cyber security attack?

WELLS: The telcos work really closely with national security agencies day to day, week to week. The Minister for Home Affairs and I will continue to work closely on that issue. That is not what has happened in this instance. It's been a software update time synchronisation issue. You've heard that from the Telstra Acting CEO. No one has presented any evidence to the contrary.

MEALEY: There was a two-and-a-half-hour delay before your office was informed yesterday. Would telling you earlier have made any difference?

WELLS: I would have liked to have heard earlier. I understand Telstra wants to get their information correct. Even as we are experiencing this outage, the information is changing hour to hour, the numbers change hour to hour. I was informed at about 7am. I understand the fault began at 4.30am. It would seem there was some sort of delay. That will form part of the investigation. ACMA has begun a preliminary investigation. The Triple Zero Custodian, who I'm speaking with constantly, I’ve spoken with her again this morning before speaking with you. There will be an investigation and a clean tick-tock on the timeline of everything that happened here so that we can continue to improve.

MEALEY: Do you think heads should roll at Telstra?

WELLS: I am focused on getting everybody back online. This is a really frustrating time for customers, and particularly for commuters. Rail services are still not restored for everybody. There's still people in Victoria, the Hunter, the Southern Highlands, who will not be able to access rail services this morning. We're really focused, Kristy McBain, the Acting Transport Minister and myself, on doing what we can to get everybody back online as quickly as possible, getting to the bottom of those welfare checks, and then the investigation can take foot and we can learn out of that. And penalties can be administered, justice can be served.

MEALEY: By late yesterday, Telstra still had no idea what had caused that timer issue that started affecting its data-centre nodes. What do you think about that? Should answers be coming to you quicker than that?

WELLS: The answers that come to me should be correct and they should be in aid of making better laws for Australians and improving the services. I think there are two sense of timings here. It is urgent that we get everybody back online as quickly as possible. It is urgent that we perform welfare checks and make sure that everybody who attempted to connect Triple Zero and were not successful is ok. A large number of the numbers of welfare checks are happening where people were able to successfully connect on a second time or where they were camped-on successfully, but out of abundance of caution, those welfare checks are going through.

MEALEY: Minister, on the ABC, the ABC has defended itself against criticism that its journalism has contributed to anti-Semitism or social division. Do you think the ABC's reporting is biased?

WELLS: The Albanese Government condemns anti-Semitism in all its forms, but the ABC, our national broadcaster, is more than just a broadcaster. It is a lifeline in natural disasters. It is a key part of our national identity. It should report on the facts. It does uphold its standards, and that's why we as the Albanese Government have legislated five-year funding terms so that we can continue to ensure that 90 years of public programming continue to be of the highest standard. And that’s why having worked overnight on this outage, I am updating Australians on the national broadcaster first thing this morning. That's the importance of this service.

MEALEY: Anika Wells, thanks for joining AM.

WELLS: Thanks, Rachel.