Telstra outage shuts down Victoria’s regional train network; mass delays across region

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has called for an investigation into the cause of today’s Telstra outage, claiming without evidence that it could be linked to China’s ballistic missile test on Monday.

“I hope it’s just a coincidence with the intercontinental ballistic missile entering the Pacific. I hope no, you know, I don’t want to be paranoid or a conspiracy theorist, but we know that China has the capacity to influence this type of software and this type of network and hopefully that will be investigated and cleared as part of the process,” he told Sky News.

“I don’t want to be some kind of conspiracy theorist and be surprised, surprised, surprised, but I think there’s a painstaking process to make sure there’s nothing malicious about this.”

Telstra said it was investigating the cause of the outage and the government was aware of the problem. There is no evidence to suggest foreign intervention.