Australia's emergency call network will undergo a surprise drill to assess its readiness ahead of the bushfire season. This decision comes as the opposition criticizes Communications Minister Anika Wells for her handling of a recent triple-0 outage linked to multiple fatalities.

On Tuesday, Wells met with leaders from Australia's telecommunications companies at Parliament House. This meeting followed a 13-hour outage experienced by Optus, which was connected to deaths in South Australia and Western Australia. After the discussions, Wells announced a series of priority actions aimed at strengthening the emergency call network. The telecommunications companies agreed to participate in a simulated outage organized by the National Emergency Management Agency, which is expected to take place in the coming weeks.

Wells emphasized the importance of the drill, stating it would help identify shortcomings in the current system. She attributed the recent outages to Optus, saying, "The only thing that could have stopped Optus from having this outage was Optus themselves." During the meeting, she faced numerous questions from opposition members regarding her response to the incident.

Details about the drill's execution are still being finalized. Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh expressed surprise that such drills were not already standard practice. "You would think that telcos would be doing this anyway, that it would be a responsibility for them to be checking their systems," she said. "I don't know that it will particularly change things, and the expectation is already there that they do that."

The meeting coincided with the government's introduction of a bill to establish a "Triple Zero Custodian" to oversee the emergency call system. This custodian was recommended in the Bean Review, which followed a previous Optus outage that affected 10 million customers. McIntosh noted that she received a draft of the bill just the night before its introduction, calling the short review period "unusual."

While the Coalition supports the idea of a triple-0 custodian, their backing for the bill is contingent on approval from their party. McIntosh stated, "Of course we support the intent of the legislation, we want to protect Australians … but the government has been sitting on the recommendations of the Bean Review for a year and a half. And then all of a sudden they want to rush legislation through the parliament, so we have questions about their intent."

Experts have mixed views on whether the Bean Review's recommendations would have prevented the Optus outage. However, Paul Gardner-Stephen, an associate professor at Flinders College of Science and Engineering, believes a Triple Zero Custodian is essential. He noted that during the September outage, it seemed that failed calls were not monitored by Optus. "That's exactly the kind of thing the Triple Zero Custodian, you imagine, would be monitoring and making public," he said.

Gardner-Stephen argued that with a custodian in place, the response to the outage could have been more immediate, potentially avoiding the lengthy delay that occurred. The government accepted all 18 recommendations from the Bean Review, but Wells acknowledged that five have yet to be fully implemented, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the current emergency call system.