A senior Liberal has defended opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson amid backlash over her test calling triple-0 during the Telstra outage, insisting his colleague’s actions are “not an offence”.
Senator Henderson has weather condemnation from Labor since claiming she “tested” the emergency system early on in Wednesday’s outage.
Noting Telstra’s requests to “please do not test triple-0”, she said she “had a couple of failed calls this morning” and “obviously I needed to know if triple-zero was working”.
Calling triple-0 without an emergency is a commonwealth offence punishable by up to three years in jail.
But fellow Liberal frontbencher James Paterson came to her defence on Thursday, saying he did not “seriously” think the Australian Federal Police would pursue Senator Henderson.
Liberal senator James Paterson has defended his colleague. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
“This is an absolutely desperate attempt from the government to try and distract from their own failures,” he told Sky News.
“Sarah wanted to be informed about the state of the network before she did media interviews.
“I understand why she did. It’s certainly not an offence.”
Labor’s criticism of Senator Henderson continued on Thursday morning, with Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres declaring himself “shocked”.
“I’m rarely shocked by developments in politics. I was absolutely shocked by that revelation,” he told ABC radio.
“I just say to Australians – don’t do what she did. There is a framework here that is about managing these issues.
“Individual Australians taking it upon themselves, like apparently Senator Henderson did, to make telephone calls, to make triple-0 calls like that is not in anybody’s interest.
“It’s utterly irresponsible.”
Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres says he was ‘shocked’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Senator Henderson said on Wednesday she understood the criticism but would not apologise.
“I accept the criticism, but what I will say is that I am in a unique position holding this government to account,” she said.