As the Telstra crisis unfolded, the Coalition fell victim to another communications failure | Australian politics
While the government was being questioned about telecommunications regulations and the latest major Telstra outage, opposition leader Angus Taylor was being asked about communications failures of a different kind: his own and those of his ministerial team.
Millions of telephone connections across the country were cut for hours on Wednesday. Trains ground to a halt, Eftpos transactions went blank, hundreds of triple zero calls failed and welfare checks were being carried out urgently. Much of the fault lies with Telstra. But there are important questions to be answered about whether the critical telecommunications sector is appropriately regulated and whether the government has learned from last year’s devastating Optus outage and made the necessary changes.
All points where the opposition can follow the government. But at Thursday’s press conference, Taylor was instead forced to defend his team’s growing list of gaffes: Sarah Henderson’s gaffe. Decision to “test” by calling triple zero; and his own call for the possibility of Chinese intervention with zero evidence.
As of Thursday afternoon, experts had no evidence of any such malicious activity by any foreign power. This may change. But it does no good for politicians to make such serious allegations in a crisis environment where the facts are disputed at best.
With communications minister Anika Wells quickly returning from leave and prime minister Anthony Albanese’s government figures providing regular updates via the media, Taylor and his team were struggling to stop tripping over their own feet. A two-day game played out over why the Coalition – despite incessant media criticism for Labor delivering an unpopular budget and plateauing in the polls following the meteoric rise of One Nation – has not only failed to gain ground but somehow continues to lose support.
Taylor’s first contribution about the Telstra outage on Wednesday morning was to criticize the government for not “stepping up to the plate” and raise the possibility of Chinese intervention; this theory was only made public by Barnaby Joyce.
It doesn’t matter that at the same time as Taylor’s press conference, Albanese, who has just returned from a Pacific diplomatic tour, gave an update on Telstra. Or the acting communications minister, Kristy McBain, had already made a statement. A second press release was issued on Wells’ behalf during lunch, only to be delayed by ever-changing critical facts.
Wells returned from leave to hold a press conference at 1:45 p.m.
Unsympathetic to an unplanned interruption during a planned leave, Taylor said Wells “said nothing for seven hours.”
Henderson’s contribution was to announce that he had called triple zero and failed to connect; This admission was soon accepted by the government after it was pointed out that unnecessary calls to the emergency line were a crime. The shadow communications minister was supposed to lead the opposition investigation into the matter, but was instead forced to give a torturous 12-minute interview to the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas defending his own conduct.
Henderson denied wrongdoing, protesting that he was “just doing my job” but added “I accept the criticism.” McBain scolded him for “making a joke by calling triple zero”.
Meanwhile, Kerrynne Liddle claimed a man in South Australia died after being unable to reach emergency services, which local police flatly denied. The shadow deputy secretary for health claimed in an online post late on Wednesday that his office had “received a report of a tragic death following an apparent failure to connect to triple zero”.
This was news for SA police, who took the extraordinary step of responding to the senator’s Facebook post by saying they were “not aware of any deaths” related to the Telstra outage. SA police minister Michael Brown later said: “If people are going to make public allegations, they need to be able to back them up.”
Liddle said he was “disappointed” that Brown “chose to go before the media and question my integrity in the process.”
Liddle’s office was destroyed, his staff did not respond to the media until Thursday afternoon; Liddle released a statement supporting his claim that he had been contacted by a bereaved family and said he had referred them to SA Police.
Trying to refocus his attention elsewhere on Thursday, Taylor chided the government for not being more forthright. Instead, he spent the press conference defending himself and his colleagues.
There is growing frustration among some in the coalition that under Taylor the opposition is spending too much time cleaning up its own mistakes; An avoidable own goal conceded when the ball should have been put into the open net of Labour’s mistakes.
They point to a day last month when the government confirmed it would introduce controversial tax changes following a deal with the Greens (a move the Coalition described as a “broken promise”), but Taylor instead made headlines by deluding himself about whether he supported multiculturalism in Australia.
There is a quote often misattributed to Winston Churchill: “never waste a crisis”. Taylor’s mantra increasingly seems to be “never fail to waste a crisis.”
The opposition has fertile ground to put pressure on this government. But Taylor and his colleagues aren’t doing themselves any favors with their own communication failures.
