Nationals Leader David Littleproud has criticised the government and Communications Minister Anika Wells for not having legislated a Triple Zero custodian despite the role’s creation being provisionally accepted as a recommendation from an independent review over a year ago.
Littleproud said the opposition would be constructive in their viewing of the legislation, but criticised Wells’ claim that she was a “new minister” to her portfolio.
“You’ve got a minister that’s saying, ‘Well, look, I’m only new’. That’s cold comfort to the families of those that have lost loved ones. The reality is, when you’re the minister, the buck stops with you under the Westminster system,” Littleproud told Sky News this morning.
“When you become a minister, you get an incoming minister’s brief, you should understand those things that are in front of you, those priorities that need to be fixed, and the fact that this government sat on it for a year and a half, the new minister has been there for over four months,” he said.
Nationals leader David Littleproud. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“I would have thought that is one of the major priorities, is Triple Zero. It is that linked in our hour of need to emergency services. The fact that it wasn’t done is a failure of this government, a failure of the minister and the failure of the previous minister.”
A Triple Zero custodian currently exists within the Department of Communications, according to the minister, but legislation is being “fast-tracked” following accepted recommendations of the Bean review into the November 2023 Optus outage.
The recommendations were accepted in April 2024, and later reiterated in a September 2024 Senate inquiry.
During a doorstop interview in Sydney yesterday, Wells said: “I am still a new minister to the industry, so I would say I’m listening to everybody at the moment, and I would say we are fast-tracking our Triple Zero guardian legislation that will give confidence to Australians about the specific role that Triple Zero plays for us in our country with disaster season ahead, and I’ll be doing that as quickly as I can.”
Read the full article here
