Key facts
- Communications Minister Anika Wells criticized Angus Taylor and Barnaby Joyce for linking Telstra outages to China without evidence.
- Opposition leader Angus Taylor defended Senator Sarah Henderson's actions during the Telstra outage.
- Senator Sarah Henderson faced criticism for calling the triple-zero emergency line during the outage.
- A claim by Senator Kerrynne Liddle about a death linked to the outage was disputed by South Australian police.
- Telstra attributed the nationwide outage to a time-keeping server issue, not a cyber incident.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has criticized opposition figures Angus Taylor and Barnaby Joyce for linking Telstra's nationwide outage to China without evidence. Wells accused them of irresponsibly speculating on national security concerns during a crisis.
Telstra confirmed that a nationwide outage on Wednesday, which affected millions of mobile customers and some triple-zero emergency calls, was caused by a time-keeping server issue and not a cyber incident. The company stated that a secondary issue affecting triple-zero calls resulted in a 90% reduction in secondary issues.
Opposition leader Angus Taylor was forced to defend his team's actions, including Senator Sarah Henderson's decision to call triple-zero during the outage, which is an offense if unnecessary. Taylor stated Henderson was fulfilling her accountability role. Meanwhile, Senator Kerrynne Liddle claimed a person died due to the outage, a statement South Australian police refuted, stating they were unaware of any such death.
The opposition's focus on these issues has been criticized as a "communications failure" that distracts from pursuing the government on the outage's regulatory implications.