Communications Minister Anika Wells is looking at ways to fast-track laws to empower a Triple Zero watchdog to oversee the nation’s emergency phone number, over a year after the Albanese government agreed or offered in-principle support to the recommendations of a review into Optus’ 2023 nationwide network failure. Speaking on Monday after an Optus outage cut off access to Triple Zero for 13 hours, during which three people died, Wells said work had started to implement the 18 recommendations of last year’s review, but more action was necessary to see those recommendations delivered in full. Communications Minister Anika Wells Credit: Alex Ellinghausen“The Bean review was designed to make sure that this never happened again, after it happened last time around … it appears here that on the face of it, there has been ineffective implementation of those recommendations by Optus,” Wells said. Legislation is being drafted to give the regulator role, which already exists, more teeth to enforce compliance, and will be introduced as soon as it is ready. But the window to introduce the bill this year is shrinking as parliament will sit for only four more weeks before it rises in December.