The communications minister has defended her handling of a deadly triple-zero outage following opposition attacks she was too slow to respond to the crisis.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley criticised the minister in parliament after Anika Wells described herself as a "new minister" 147 days after being sworn in to her portfolio.

"Being new is no excuse. Australians dialling triple zero in an emergency cannot wait for you to learn," Ms Ley said during question time on Tuesday.

"The minister is not across her brief and, by her own admission, people have died."

Several questions were fired at Ms Wells after legislation was introduced to parliament enshrining a triple-zero watchdog into law.

It was tabled on Tuesday, 18 months after being recommended following a review into the November 2023

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