Factual accuracy

On 27 November 2023, the day it met Optus Mobile to discuss the findings of a public-safety investigation into its Integrated Public Number Database uploads, the communications regulator emailed the company. Documents the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) released under freedom of information, published in its Disclosure Log 153 on 3 February 2025, record what it said, sent at 5:11pm that day: "we will give Optus an infringement notice in the range of $1.5 [to] $3 million [,] the amount being at the lower end if Optus offers an EU with terms acceptable to the ACMA" ¹². EU is an enforceable undertaking, a written promise a company offers and the regulator accepts, enforceable in court.

On 6 March 2024, ACMA announced that Optus Mobile had paid a $1,501,500 penalty ³, at the lower end of the range ACMA had stated about three months earlier: $1,500 above the floor and $1,498,500 below the ceiling, computed.

In February 2026, almost a year after it defended the practice at Estimates, ACMA's Chair told a Senate committee: "in future we will not be consulting on media releases before they go public" ⁴.

This article lays ACMA's own documents beside its account to Senate Estimates and the ABC's reporting of the same practice, then records what ACMA has said since about that practice and the replies THE RORT sought. It centres on one matter, the IPND penalty, and not the outage this case has already covered.

01The IPND, not the outage

The $1,501,500 penalty is not the Triple Zero outage penalty this case has covered elsewhere. It follows a separate matter: the failure ACMA found, that Optus Mobile had not uploaded customer data to the Integrated Public Number Database, the database Triple Zero uses to locate an emergency caller ³. ACMA's release of 6 March 2024 states: "Optus Mobile Pty Ltd (Optus) has paid a $1,501,500 penalty after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found large-scale breaches of public safety rules" ³. ACMA found Optus had failed to upload data for close to 200,000 Coles Mobile and Catch Connect customers between January 2021 and September 2023. Alongside the penalty, ACMA accepted a court-enforceable undertaking requiring an independent review of Optus's IPND compliance, and directed Optus to comply with the industry code. If ACMA finds Optus has failed to meet either, its release states, it may commence proceedings in the Federal Court, which can order penalties of up to $10 million per breach ³.

02The sequence

The documents ACMA released under freedom of information, published in its Disclosure Log 153 on 3 February 2025, lay the sequence out in the regulator's own words and, for one step, Optus's, and match the account the ABC had already reported ¹². On Monday 27 November 2023, the day it met Optus to discuss the findings of its IPND investigation and enforcement, ACMA emailed Optus: "Thank you for meeting with us today to discuss the IPND investigation findings and enforcement. The final investigation report is now attached" ². ACMA's email to Optus that day, sent at 5:11pm, invited Optus to consider offering an enforceable undertaking: "we invite Optus to consider offering an enforceable undertaking (EU)" ². For an EU to likely be accepted, it suggested a two-year term including "an acknowledgement of the ACMA's investigation findings" ². It also set out the range and the condition quoted above, and recorded what ACMA said it had weighed: "previous enforcement action against a related Optus entity, and Optus' statements that the contraventions were Prvidr's fault", Prvidr being the data provider involved in the matter. The same email goes on: "we've also noted the remediation of the services, and steps Optus has taken to increase its oversight of Prvidr" ². According to the documents, the email asked Optus to respond by 4 December 2023 and planned to issue the notice by 8 December ²; the penalty was announced on 6 March 2024 ³.

Optus answered on the day ACMA had set, Monday 4 December 2023. An email from Optus to ACMA, sent at 5:33pm with its writer's name redacted, begins "Further to our meeting this afternoon" and says: "I confirm that Optus agrees to offer an Enforceable Undertaking in the Prvidr IPND matter. If you could confirm the final amount of the Infringement Notice, it will be appreciated, so that I can update our Executive Committee." It adds: "We will work on a draft EU to provide to the ACMA in the coming days" ². The released document does not contain a reply from ACMA to that request.

The next day, on 5 December 2023, an internal ACMA email, written "following a meeting with Optus yesterday and its email below", recorded Optus's answer and the amount the regulator was preparing: "Optus has confirmed it will offer an EU along the lines we proposed and intends to provide us a draft before Christmas shut down. On this basis, we're preparing an IN of about $1.5m" ². IN is an infringement notice.

Almost three months after that, on Thursday 29 February 2024 at 4:02pm, ACMA emailed Optus an embargoed draft of the announcement it planned to publish: "please find attached an EMBARGOED copy of the media release scheduled to be published on 6 March with the investigation report, infringement notice, enforceable undertaking, and direction to comply", inviting a response by the close of business the next day: "If Optus has comments on the factual accuracy of the release, please provide a response by COB Friday 1 March 2024" ². Optus replied at 4:36pm the same day: "Thanks [redacted] we'll review accordingly. [redacted] has asked that you send the media release only to him" ².

Optus did not, in the end, have comments. An internal ACMA email sent on Monday 4 March 2024, after the Friday deadline had passed, records: "FYI, I spoke with [redacted] at 4.30pm and she confirmed there were no comments on the MR" ². Two days later, on 6 March 2024, ACMA announced the $1,501,500 penalty, the enforceable undertaking and the direction to comply ³.

ACMA proposed the undertaking, stated the range, and sent Optus the draft announcement. Optus had no comments.

03What ACMA says, what Optus says

ACMA published its own account of the practice these documents show. On a page last updated 31 January 2025, and still carrying that date on 8 October 2026, it says: "The ACMA will only consider making changes to media releases which go to the accuracy of the facts contained in the release" ⁵. On sending companies draft releases in advance of publication, it says: "We consider this practice is consistent with the position set out in our Regulatory Guide No 6 and with the law, including the legal principle of procedural fairness" ⁵. It describes its engagement with a regulated entity as "robust in nature, is conducted with complete independence and is standard practice for regulators" ⁵. On the same page, ACMA states its own reading of the law it relies on: "Section 518 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 also specifically requires the ACMA to provide a person a reasonable opportunity to comment on a report that may adversely affect their interests before it is published" ⁵. The page goes on: "This includes findings of regulatory non-compliance and associated enforcement actions which are contained in our investigation reports and media releases about those reports" ⁵. The Act's own text, in the compilation dated 4 June 2026, says in section 518(2): "The ACMA must not publish the report or the part of the report, as the case may be, until the ACMA has given the person a reasonable period (not exceeding 30 days) to make representations, either orally or in writing, in relation to the matter" ⁶. Section 518(1) applies where publication of a matter in a report "would, or would be likely to, adversely affect the interests of a person" ⁶. The section speaks of a report and does not use the words "media release"; ACMA's page applies it to media releases about reports. This article does not decide whether the section reaches a draft release.

The same page opens by saying recent reporting is inaccurate: "Recent public comments and reporting about the ACMA's approach to telecommunications industry compliance and enforcement contain a range of inaccuracies and ill-informed assertions" ⁵. It does not name Optus's IPND matter, the $1.5 million to $3 million range, the "lower end" wording or "willingness to pay". On that page, ACMA does not identify any specific fact in the reporting as wrong.

The ABC reported that ACMA told it the regulator "engaged with companies to test their 'willingness to pay' an infringement notice" ⁷. That phrase does not appear in the released FOI documents or in the Senate Estimates transcript examined for this article; it is the ABC's account of what ACMA said, and this article attributes it to the ABC throughout. The ABC also reported that ACMA told it the regulator made some changes to draft releases for accuracy but does not negotiate their content ⁷.

The ABC reported that Optus, in a statement, described ACMA's practice this way: "The ACMA consults with the party entering into an EU in relation to the terms that the ACMA would consider appropriate" ⁷. It also reported Optus saying: "If there are any factual inaccuracies in a statement, we would seek to have those rectified" ⁷. The ABC also reported Optus saying it apologised for the public safety breaches and had introduced "audits and checks over its supplier's performance" ⁷. The documents show ACMA proposing the terms of the IPND undertaking ².

04On the record at Estimates

At Senate Additional Estimates on 25 February 2025, ACMA Chair Nerida O'Loughlin gave the regulator's account of the practice, describing it as fact-checking, not drafting: "We also provide a short period of time for them to factually check a media release. It is not a drafting exercise between us" ⁸. She said: "Really, it is just a risk mitigation exercise to make sure we get the facts right before we make something public", and called it routine: "It occurs regularly, not just in the telco area; we also do the same due diligence with things like broadcasting investigations" ⁸.

O'Loughlin answered the ABC's report directly:

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young put the range directly to ACMA: "What about when you offer Optus a fine from $3 million down to $1.5 million? How many times have you done that?" ⁸ The committee chair intervened. The senator said O'Loughlin was not answering the question, and O'Loughlin replied to that charge: "That's incorrect. We don't believe that's", before the chair stopped the exchange ⁸. The chair told the senator: "You're not enjoying the answers. That doesn't mean that is not the answer that is appropriately provided by the witness" ⁸. When the question was put again, she said: "As I indicated at the outset, these are negotiated outcomes. They also involved the negotiation of enforceable undertakings which require investment by the company to make sure they ensure future compliance" ⁸. She neither confirmed nor disputed the $1.5 million to $3 million figures at that hearing. Those figures stand on ACMA's own email, not on this exchange ¹².

Asked on notice for the draft and final releases in the cases the ABC reported, O'Loughlin answered: "Certainly" ⁸. Asked on notice "in how many instances you have struck an agreement where the fine has been reduced", she said only: "We will consider that" ⁸. Asked how much industry had "avoided", she gave no figure: "That is completely speculative and would require us to think about what a court might decide" ⁸. On the same point she said: "The company can choose to accept the infringement notice or not pay it", and "That's the way infringement notices work right across the Commonwealth" ⁸. ACMA has since answered the first two in writing, on the Parliament's questions-on-notice database ⁹. For the first, it supplied the embargoed drafts and the published releases for the Optus matter and for two Telstra matters. THE RORT compared the Optus pair: apart from the embargo line, the date, the release number and the media contact line, the draft and the published release carry the same text. For the second, it gave no count. Its answer, SQ25-000063, says: "Infringement Notice penalties are an agreed outcome between a regulated entity and the regulator to achieve compliance by the entity." It also says: "In considering the appropriateness of any infringement notice penalty amount, the ACMA considers whether any complementary enforcement action will be taken, including whether a court-enforceable undertaking is also being offered by the entity." And it says: "While the payment of all infringement notice penalties reflects the outcome of an agreement, the ACMA alone decides the amount to be specified in all cases and there are no instances where the ACMA has given an infringement notice for an amount less than it considers appropriate in the circumstances" ⁹.

In February 2025 O'Loughlin also told the committee ACMA had reviewed its processes after the criticism and judged them appropriate: "We would say that with the criticisms that came forward, we've gone back and looked at our processes. We think they're appropriate" ⁸. She added: "We have taken on board the criticisms. We've looked at our practices, but we think they're appropriate" ⁸. A year later she told the same committee that ACMA would change it, as the next section records.

The range stands on the email. The Estimates exchange settles nothing either way.

05What ACMA says it does now

ACMA has since said it will stop consulting on media releases. At Senate Additional Estimates on 10 February 2026, after senators asked about its release on Sportsbet, Nerida O'Loughlin said: "I've instigated a review to look at the way we approach our media releases and stepped back from those processes. We found that we had quite inconsistent processes across the organisation." She said ACMA would "amend those processes, and in future we will not be consulting on media releases before they go public" ⁴.

Asked by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young what the process would be now, she said: "I expect we will not be giving people an opportunity to check any full press releases." She drew a line between releases and reports:

In its written answer to a question on notice from that hearing, SQ26-000107, ACMA said it "has agreed a new agency wide process for the publication of investigation and enforcement outcomes" and "will inform the investigated entity of the ACMA's intention to publish investigation and/or enforcement outcomes no more than 1 business day prior to the ACMA's publication" ⁹.

The Senate committee's report on the Triple Zero outage, released on 21 September 2026, records the criticism that ACMA "had shared embargoed media releases with companies such as Sportsbet, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Optus and Telstra before publication", and records ACMA's account that it "generally advises an investigated entity of its intention to publish an investigation or enforcement outcome no more than one business day before publication" ¹⁰.

On 27 May 2026, at Senate Estimates, Senator David Pocock asked: "did you give Entain an opportunity to comment on the media release that you released on 6 May?" O'Loughlin answered: "No." Senator Henderson said: "ACMA's changed its practices in that regard." Asked by Senator Pocock whether that was true, O'Loughlin said: "Yes." ¹¹

These are statements about ACMA's process in 2026. They do not change what the documents record for November 2023 to March 2024, and ACMA's "Correcting the record" page, quoted above, was last updated on 31 January 2025 ⁵.

06Not only Optus

The Optus release is not the only one the ABC found ACMA sent to a company in advance. The ABC reported three other instances of draft enforcement releases sent to providers before publication, two of them to Telstra: "The ABC has discovered three other instances where draft media releases about enforcement outcomes were sent to providers [:] two went to Telstra" ⁷. Neither of the two Telstra instances concerned Triple Zero. The third is not identified in the material available to this desk, and this article does not guess at it.

The ABC reported that ACMA told it Telstra asked for changes to its drafts, that some factual changes were made, and that some requests about "tone and messaging" were declined ⁷. Separately, and this is a documented fact rather than the ABC's account, both of the two Telstra drafts differ from the releases ACMA finally published. The draft of ACMA's 6 December 2023 release on Telstra overcharging customers carried the headline "Telstra pays $20 million in penalties and refunds after wrongly charging customers" ². The release ACMA actually published put the figure at $24 million: "Telstra has paid a $3,010,320 penalty and refunded over $17.7 million to thousands of customers ... A further $3.4 million is to be refunded by the end of the year" ¹², about $21.1 million in refunds, computed. The draft said 7,404 customers; the final release said 6,532 ²¹². The documents released do not show who asked for the changes, or why ². The ABC reported that ACMA altered this release to reflect "the exact number of affected customers and the amount of refunds" ⁷.

The second of the two Telstra drafts concerned a separate scam-rule matter: in July 2024 ACMA announced that Telstra had paid a $1,551,000 penalty, also unrelated to Triple Zero: "Telstra has paid a $1,551,000 penalty after failing to perform required customer ID authentication processes" ¹³. That draft differs from the published release too, in wording rather than in the headline figure. As ACMA supplied it to the Senate, the draft said Telstra "failed to use multi-factor ID checks for more than 168,000 high-risk customer interactions, including for SIM-swap requests and password resets" ⁹; the published release says Telstra "failed to use the required ID authentication processes for 168,000 high-risk customer interactions, such as for SIM-swap requests and password resets" ¹³. ACMA told the ABC that it made a "small number" of changes to that release, that Telstra "provided feedback on what it referred to as factual matters to do with how the nature of the breaches were described", and that these changes improved the release's accuracy ⁷. Telstra told the ABC it had provided "feedback" to ACMA to ensure accuracy ⁷.

07Critics and a defence

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), which the ABC says represents phone and internet consumers, called the practice inappropriate. Its chief executive, Carol Bennett, told the ABC in January 2025: "It is the regulator acting like a lap dog to industry, it is completely inappropriate" ⁷. The ABC reported that Anthony Whealy KC, a former New South Wales Supreme Court judge, said the practice threatens the transparency at the heart of good regulatory governance ⁷. These are the critics' views, as the ABC reported them. The ABC reported that ACMA rejected those concerns, saying its handling of the Optus penalty and its sharing of draft releases were consistent with its regulatory powers and were about making sure the information was accurate ⁷. At the February 2025 hearing, when Senator Hanson-Young put it to O'Loughlin that people were asking whether ACMA was "more of a lapdog than a watchdog", she began her reply with "I reject that" and was interrupted ⁸.

An industry-facing commentary site, Telco Central, argued on 5 February 2025 that trading a lower penalty for an enforceable undertaking is documented ACMA practice, and that undertakings are onerous, not lenient. On draft releases, it wrote: "Of course it asks the subject telco to point out any factual errors in a draft media release" ¹⁴. That is the site's opinion, not a finding.

ACMA states its own enforcement tally for the year to September 2024: 23 enforcement actions, two accepted enforceable undertakings, and payment of close to $7 million in penalties. In ACMA's words: "for the period September 2023 to September 2024 the ACMA undertook 23 enforcement actions which resulted in the ACMA issuing 12 formal warnings, 2 remedial directions and 20 directions to comply with registered codes", and "We also agreed to accept 2 enforceable undertakings and accepted payment of close to $7 million in penalties in that period" ⁵. The outcomes ACMA lists there, 12 warnings, 2 remedial directions and 20 directions to comply, total 34; ACMA does not say how many of them each of its 23 actions produced. This article states ACMA's figures as ACMA's own, not as a verified count.

An ACCAN-commissioned study by the UTS Centre for Media Transition tallied a different, earlier and narrower set of enforcement figures: 24 infringement notices worth $6,143,160 and three court penalties of just over $1 million, from 2010 to 30 June 2023, across four sources of consumer protection rules only, in its report "The Enforcement of Telecommunications Consumer Protections" ¹⁵. That period ends before either of the Triple Zero penalties this case examines, and the study says nothing about Triple Zero.

08Right of reply

THE RORT emailed questions on this article to Optus, ACMA and Telstra on 2 October 2026 and asked for a response by 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026. What came back is set out here.

Optus's media team replied by email on 8 October 2026. The email is signed Optus Media Team and carries no request that it be kept off the record. It says: "Optus’s position on these matters is on the public record, including our submission to the Senate Environment and Communications Committee following the September 2025 Triple Zero outage." The email also says: "Matters currently before the Federal Court will be addressed through the appropriate legal process." It links a release that Optus dated 21 September 2026, which the email describes as its response to the Senate inquiry report, including an update on the changes Optus has made since the outage ¹⁶. The reply does not directly answer the questions THE RORT put to Optus on this article. THE RORT asked whether Optus knew, when it offered the enforceable undertaking in the IPND matter, that the undertaking would put the notice at the lower end of the stated range, and whether Optus sought changes to any other ACMA draft enforcement release it was sent, and if so which releases and what changes. The reply addresses neither. Its Federal Court sentence names no matter, so this article does not say which matter it refers to. The release it links does not mention the Integrated Public Number Database, enforceable undertakings or draft releases.

No response was received from ACMA by the deadline, 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026. The questions THE RORT put to ACMA on this article's subject included the range and condition in its 27 November 2023 email, the ABC's report that it tests companies' "willingness to pay", its "Correcting the record" statement, the changes between the draft and the published version of its 6 December 2023 release on Telstra's overcharging, and whether draft releases on the Triple Zero penalties were sent to the companies. ACMA's published answers to Senate questions on notice, and its Chair's evidence at Estimates, are quoted above.

No response was received from Telstra by the deadline, 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026. THE RORT asked which changes Telstra requested to the draft ACMA releases it was sent, and which were made. Telstra's earlier statement to the ABC, as the ABC reported it, said: "Where appropriate, we provide feedback about findings to ensure that they are accurate and contribute to the drafting of things like enforceable undertakings to help ensure they are clear and can be given effect" ⁷.

09What the documents do not show

Nothing in the documents examined for this article shows that the $12 million in Triple Zero infringement notices against Optus, or the Triple Zero penalty against Telstra, were previewed or discussed in advance, as the documents show for the IPND matter. The 27 November 2023 email and the 29 February 2024 draft concern the IPND matter only; the two identified Telstra drafts concern scam-rule breaches and overcharging, not Triple Zero. THE RORT put to ACMA the question whether any draft release on those penalties was sent to the company before publication; what came back is recorded under Right of reply. This article draws no line between the practice described here and the Triple Zero penalties themselves.

THE REPORTING RORT set the $12 million Triple Zero notices and the $1,501,500 IPND penalty beside a different regulator's privacy record. THE CARTEL SWITCH examined a new ACCC power to authorise coordination between competitors that would otherwise be cartel conduct.

If it's a rort, we cover it.