Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Emergency Management) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government response to the interim report of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee on the shutdown of 3G was tabled on Monday 19 August. The 3G shutdown has been thoroughly examined by the Senate committee, and the recommendations provided in the interim report are under active consideration by government. The government has sought to transparently support the Senate through its interim response to the committee and, indeed, through the committee process itself.

Since the committee produced its interim report, there has been an important change. Telstra and Optus had planned to switch off their 3G networks from 31 August and 1 September respectively, but have delayed that switch until 28 October 2024, which is welcomed. In addition to delaying the switch, the government notes Telstra and Optus's plan to undertake a six-week national public media campaign to give Australians a greater opportunity to be informed of the impacts to devices and to upgrade incompatible devices in time. Our key message to the public remains: all Australians should act now to check if their device could be affected after the switchover in terms of access to triple 0.

The government continues to closely monitor industry's progress to identify and inform impacted customers and ensure any public safety risk is appropriately managed. Any regulatory actions would be subject to consultation and procedural process because community safety is this government's No. 1 priority. The government encourages all Australian individuals and businesses to act now and upgrade impacted devices. Any customer on any network can text 3 to the number 3498 for an automatic response on whether or not their mobile phone is impacted, and I urge senators to take steps to communicate this important message to their constituencies.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take not of the explanation.

I'll now explain to the chamber what it just heard. The Albanese Labor government is putting multinational telco company profits above human life, above Australian lives. For many people this is a matter of life and death. The Senate has pulled the minister in front of the chamber to explain:

… why the Government has failed to place a single condition on the 3G mobile network shutdown …

So 1,041,282 is the number of devices the telcos have told us will not function as sold when they shut the 3G network in just two months, yet the communications minister is sitting back and letting telcos Telstra and Optus just do it. That's thorough for the Labor Party.

If our Senate had not fulfilled its role as the house of review and instead stood back and not intervened, telcos would have shut Australia's 3G network in 10 days time. Revelations from our Senate inquiry into the 3G shutdown led to a two-month delay. In two months, the communications minister will let telcos switch off the 3G network, even if a million devices still rely on it.

I have simple questions for the communications minister: How much are telco companies, like Telstra and Singapore owned Optus, making from shutting down the network early? How much is an Australian life worth? Who will be responsible if telcos are allowed to flick the switch in two months and someone dies? There are Australians with 4G phones, not 3G phones, who will not be able to call triple 0 when the 3G network is shut down. There are emergency phones in lifts that will not work when someone gets stuck—and they didn't know that until a couple of weeks ago. Many fall alerts, medical alarms and pacemakers use 3G to alert an ambulance. This isn't just about upgrading old phones, although the telcos will certainly make more money from forcing people into new phones. There are non-mobile devices that will be affected as well.

Telcos gave us the figures at the inquiry. Together they estimate there are 68,000 3G mobile devices still in use. These are old phones. An argument could be made that it's time for them be replaced. Yet the 4G phones are where it gets really interesting. There are 4G mobile devices that will be affected when 3G shuts down. Some 4G phones piggyback on the 3G network. They use 4G for data and default to 3G to make calls. These are referenced as non-voice-over LTE, or non-VoLTE. Telcos tell us there are 311,000 of these. When the 3G network is shut off, there will be 311,000 4G phones that won't make a phone call. Then for the final category, 4G phones that have VoLTE and will be able to make calls yet default to 3G for triple 0 calls, there are 52,000 4G devices that will appear fine until someone tries to call triple 0 and it doesn't work. Across the phones that are 3G only, 4G non-VoLTE and 4G VoLTE with no emergency calls, there are 432,000 mobile devices that won't work properly, and that's only half the story.

There are non-mobile devices that will be cut off and will stop working. There are an estimated 608,329 of them. No-one really knows how many because telcos can't directly contact the users—that's thorough, according to the minister. These non-mobile devices include fire alarms; 200,000 medical alarms; emergency phones in elevators; warning systems; EFTPOS terminals; agricultural equipment like water pumps, water trough monitors and tractors; Internet of Things enabled products; routers; scanners and survey equipment; water meters; power meters; and much, much more. As the department said at the inquiry:

… it's fair to say that we are learning new things as we reach out to different stakeholders.

That was just a few weeks ago—thorough, huh? That means they have no idea how big the non-mobile device problem is.

In total, 1,041,000 devices will be affected, potentially more, and the Minister for Communications is ready to let it happen in two months. Why the rush? It's a good question. Why not delay it further until Australians won't be put in danger? It's all about profits for these huge corporations, and the minister's ongoing timidity or apathy to not protect Australian lives.

I thank the Liberal, Nationals and Greens senators for supporting my motion for this inquiry, especially Senator Canavan as chair. I note and appreciate James Parker's outstanding submission and testimony.

The solution is simple. The communications minister must intervene and set safe, practical criteria or thresholds for the number of devices affected, before the shutdown can proceed. Instead of leaving Australians high and dry, put the onus on the telcos to take care of Australians.

This is a matter of life and death. What value will the minister place on Australian lives?

Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend Senator Roberts's comments on this matter. This is a very serious matter, and what we heard from the minister just goes to show how much disregard the Labor Party actually has for the seriousness of this issue. Maybe they have such disregard because where this issue actually matters, where it really makes a difference, is—surprise, surprise—in regional areas.

But this is not something that happened yesterday or last night or even only as a result of the very thorough inquiry held by the committee. This is an issue that the Labor government was warned about as early as June last year, but also let me remind you that the telcos, Telstra and Optus, had given five-years notice. In June last year the Labor government was warned that there would be an issue with some 4G phones being unable to call 000. At that point in time, when that issue was made public, there were further investigations that went on, and rural and regional areas realised there would be issues with things like agricultural equipment—irrigators that send text messages to farmers to alert them when something is going wrong—medical devices and EFTPOS machines.

These were all raised by November last year, and what did we see from the Labor government? Crickets. Absolute crickets. It was only in March when again the issue of 000 calls was raised, which was heightened by the failing of Optus when they had the blackout to 000, and the risks were realised that the communications minister finally woke up and thought, 'Maybe we have a problem.' Congratulations! What was this government's solution? 'We'll cobble together an industry working group which will meet behind closed doors, not report publicly' and from which we've heard nothing from since. It is only thanks to this inquiry by the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee that a lot of the true issues are now coming to light. This government did nothing.

Telstra, of their own volition, in July, extended their shutdown to August, hoping that the increased publicity would actually activate people. Telstra and Optus now together, of their own volition, have agreed to extend the shutdowns to late October. Telstra, of their own volition, have sent compatible devices to their vulnerable customers living a certain distance away from a store and amenities so that those vulnerable customers are not at risk. And what is this government doing? It is saying, 'Hey, Telstra and Optus, while you're at it, can you run a public information campaign?' Seriously, this is a government that's willing to spend $14 million on false advertising about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and $40 million advertising to people that they're getting a tax cut that has already past parliament, but it's not willing to try and help in a very serious public communications campaign to make sure people know the risks that they are facing.

I'm not just talking about being able to call 000. I'm seriously concerned about medical devices, the ETFPOS machines, the agricultural devices and, as we heard during the committee inquiry, the elevators. Can you imagine—we're stuck in an elevator in this place and we go to press the button, but we get a 'beep, beep, this phone has been disconnected.' It's not good enough by the Labor government. It's not good enough for the people of rural and regional Australia. More needs to be done, and we need a proper response to this Senate committee's very thorough report.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So many things I agree with have been said here, but let's get down to the root of the problem: the industry still does not know what's going on. My industry sources say in the last month Telstra have identified another between 45,000 and 50,000 items that may be affected that they haven't picked up before. These are the things we're seeing going forward. If the industry is still catching up with the effects, how can we?

I have some sympathy for the government and the telcos in that, if you have a 3G phone and you've been texted and messaged and have done nothing and are waiting for the last moment. I actually get that. That's maybe on you a little bit. But we've heard the issue of the 4G phones, the voice over LTE phones. People think they're safe because they have a 4G phone, but they aren't safe; they aren't aware. When we look at all these devices, those that have 3G phones have been communicated to plenty. They've got the chance. The 4G VoLTE and the devices are where we really come. Many of us in the chamber might have a skyview or something like that, and we may contract through third parties, not the original telcos, for the sim cards and the devices that go in them. It's the same with lifts. Who would know who provides the SIM cards for lifts or medical devices? You contract to a third party who has a contract with the telcos. They don't know. They don't know what it is. They buy something that has a SIM card in it, and it works. If I am a customer that has a medical alert and I am not the one who puts the communication device in it, I have no idea what technology is behind it; I don't know if it's 3G, 4G or two tin cans with string between them. All I know is I want it to work when it matters.

There are methods the industry can do at direction of government that will minimise risk. There can be a shutdown where the call aspects of phones other than triple 0 go down a day, week or a period before the entire thing is shut down so that triple 0 calls still work. Let's not forget that this is the industry that gave us the Optus failure day, when triple 0 calls didn't work with Telstra and didn't work with Optus. This is the industry that has failures of networks all the time. This is the industry that, until a month ago, didn't know about the 45,000 other devices that are there. So we can't just rely on industry. I think they have had a very good public campaign on phones, but they aren't the things of concern—it is the ag equipment, the water pumps, the lifesaving equipment that is out there.

If I've sold a medical device and changed the plan, changed the method I communicate with or changed the contracts, am I that engaged with you? You can't text a medical device. I did take the minister's advice just now, and I texted that 3498 number with the number 3. I did that, and it confirms my device. I get that the phone stuff is pretty sorted unless you've got a VoLTE. But you can't do that on a medical alert. You can't do that on a burglar alarm. You can't do that from a tractor. If the industry is still discovering tens of thousands of devices this late in the day, it is not a process that is sound and it is not a process that should be turned off.

While the government are taking note and looking at the final response to the report—they've noted all the issues in the interim report—I would ask that they look at this more openly, more opaquely, with this industry group. Talk about processes, talk about methods, talk about ways that we can minimise risk. There will never be no risk; I accept that. With all the best efforts in the world, there will never be no risk, but if we do a staged shutdown of voice calls, of data, of triple 0 calls in that order, people will react. If I have a phone and I'm dialling and it doesn't dial out, I have an idea that I've got to change it. But if I need to make a triple 0 call—I don't want to find it out that way. This is the way: a more staged, more thorough and more managed plan with onus on government directing this to happen, so that if carriers do not comply there is real consequence. That is the way forward.

My colleague Senator Canavan chaired this inquiry and uncovered stuff every day. As I said, there is more stuff coming out as we go forward. It is unknown, it is unsafe and it needs to be slowed down.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the mess we find ourselves in with the 3G shutdown comes from an incorrect assessment of who should be in charge of this process. It became very clear to me and other members of the committee that I chaired that the government is taking a hands-off Pontius Pilate approach and have washed their hands of this. Their view is that this is a commercial decision of the telecommunication operators, and it should be them that leads this and decides on the shutoff and how it is done et cetera. I think that's wrong for a couple of main reasons.

No. 1 is that there is an ownership or almost moral point of view here—an economic point of view, perhaps. No-one has really mentioned the fact that the spectrum we are talking about that 3G devices will no longer connect to is a public asset. It's actually not owned by Telstra or Optus or anybody else. They do lease it, they pay for it, but it is a publicly owned asset. Over the last 10 years, federal governments of different political persuasions have made $6½ billion from the sale of spectrum to Telstra and Optus and other people that use the spectrum. We have made money from that. We therefore have some kind of obligation here to ensure that those accessing that network, that public asset, continue to have reasonable use of it. But it's been pretty clear from the get-go that the government or the department have not been doing that. As others have alluded to here, through our inquiry, it became very clear that perhaps the otherwise diligent public servants were not across the level of detail regarding the devices that would be affected from a 3G shutdown.

I do want to recognise Senator Roberts for bringing an inquiry forward to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee. It has, I think, highlighted these issues. It has led to a delay in the shut-off date, but, as Senator Roberts mentioned, the penny really dropped when, during our hearing with the departmental officials, it became clear that they had only found out that week—this is only a month or so ago—that the emergency phones in elevators may no longer work after the 3G shut-off date. They'd only contacted the elevator manufacturers that week to try and find out what was going wrong.

This has been five years in the making, and we're a minute to midnight, working out something as critical as whether or not you'll be able to make an emergency call—keeping in mind your mobile phone often doesn't work in a lift—if the lift stops working. That's not on, and it's not really the responsibility of Telstra and Optus to make sure that elevators are working all around our country. They've got an obligation here in their own space, in the phone space, and there have been some shortcomings there. But there has to be a broader audit, led by the government, on what exactly will not work in a couple of months time and how we are going to fix it. We can't just leave it up to Telstra and Optus alone.

That's why our committee did recommend that the government lead, with industry cooperation, an audit of all of these types of devices, like medical devices, security alarms and farm equipment—it was lots of things; we think it was possibly up to a million devices, but no-one knows for sure—to get to the bottom of this before the shut-off date. I have to say, unfortunately, I think the government's response to this has been totally inadequate. They haven't committed to do any more work, as far as I can tell from this response, to get to the bottom of it. There are clear inadequacies in what has happened and what has been done. The government keeps referring back to the fact that it set up working group to deal with these matters in March—four years after it was announced that the 3G shut-off was going to happen. It took until March this year for the government to actually establish some kind of group that would look at these issues. It is not enough time, in my view, to give Australians six or so months from the creation of a working group to change their security systems and to work out whether lifts in buildings will work and also, may I add, whether the phones will work. Even though we have largely got to the bottom of that, I think it's still unreasonable to expect Australians to have to buy new phones with just months notice. We only found out a few months ago the exact number of phones that will be affected.

The clear issue here is just to pause. We have to do this. We should do this. It's right for our future to turn off the 3G network at some point, but let's get this right. I don't think an extra extension of a couple of months is going to be enough time to tackle the issues that we've dealt with, but we are now in the situation that, if there are major issues occurring on farms or in lifts or in hospitals in the next few months, it is clearly on the government's head, because they've been warned. They were told to do something different, and they continue to wash their hands of this, incorrectly.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak to the matter of the 3G changeover date, and I cannot emphasise enough many of the points that have already been made by those people who've spoken before me about how important telecommunications is in regional and remote parts of Australia and that we are completely unprepared for this changeover date. The minister has acknowledged that there are hundreds of thousands more devices that are still 3G that people either have not realised need to be changed or have no ability to change over.

As I go around, I now ask every business I walk into: 'Are you aware of the changeover? Have you checked your EFTPOS machine? Have you checked your petrol bowsers? Have you checked your security and data devices? Have you checked what's out on your water monitoring equipment?' With all of these things, they need to be assured that they have understood whether or not they are still running on the 3G network. In the absence of that understanding, we will run the very real risk of having, on 1 November, failed systems that could put people's lives at risk and could put people's businesses at risk and there being no solution.

As I go around the state, though, what I see is a system that is in complete collapse. The telecommunications providers will say that they are overworked and that there is not enough broadband or capacity. This is crazy. In the last couple of months, I was at the Richmond Field Day, and people had taken satellite dishes off their roof and brought them down to the field day so that businesses could continue to take money. There was absolutely no mobile connection at all in that region because Telstra had failed. It was part of their preparations for the upgrade away from 3G. At the Boulia Camel Races the same thing happened. Can you imagine a more isolated town: three hours from Mount Isa and no telecommunications for the weekend?

By this stage I thought, 'I'm going to get ahead of this.' I rang Telstra up to say, 'Make sure, for the Tully Show that's coming up, you're all across this and you wheel out your emergency NBN van, or whatever it is you do for disasters, because you'll have pressure on the network.' Guess what? No support—no telecommunications. How can we have any confidence? Sorry, I've got one more to add; Tara had their races and camel races just a month ago. This is a joke. When you have no telecommunications at all, you've got no ability to ring somebody, to pay for anything or to take money. These are important communities. Sometimes, thousands of people are there. This is the highlight of their year. This is their opportunity to make money and showcase their region and, because it is a large gathering of people, this is the time when they might need medical assistance. Yet, under the current regime, there is no support.

I don't know, for those people who live around Canberra, if you've got any idea what it's like to be so completely disconnected—nothing. You may not even be able to drive to the next town, because the petrol pump is not working. This is incredibly serious. So I now have incredibly little faith in the telecommunications providers being able to transition us from 3G in any sort of timely manner, because they are failing right now. The upgrades that they're doing mean that there are whole communities without phones or data and without the ability for businesses and hospitals to run or for people to make the most rudimentary connections. That's happening right now—today—yet we're expected to trust that on 31 October they'll be able to switch over the system and it will go in any way smoothly. I do not trust that now.

The minister has an opportunity to say, 'We're not ready.' These are public assets that have been put into many of these towers. People have a right to consider that they have the basic connection facilities, and they currently do not. Minister, please, I'm asking you: you have got to put this on hold until you have any confidence to know exactly who it is you're affecting and what it is you're affecting and to know that the telecommunications providers have any capacity at all to make that transition.

Question agreed to.