The Albanese government will introduce legislation this week to give the Triple Zero custodian formal powers, more than 18 months after the role was first recommended, as it faces criticism for failing to reinforce the service despite a string of outages.

The bill, to be tabled in parliament’s final sitting weeks for 2025, will embed the custodian within the Australian Communications and Media Authority, with statutory powers to demand information from telecommunications providers, to monitor performance and to respond to outages.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said the move was critical to rebuilding trust in the emergency call system after three deaths were linked to September’s Optus outage, when at least 600 Triple Zero calls failed in Western Australia, South Australia and th

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