Australian Liberal senator Sarah Henderson could face a jail threat after admitting she made two "test" calls to the Triple Zero emergency line during Wednesday's nationwide Telstra outage. Making false calls to the emergency service is a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of three years' imprisonment, so the admission has triggered political controversy. It matters because it involves a senior opposition figure potentially misusing an emergency system at a time when that very system's reliability was in question.

Henderson, the shadow communications minister, said she dialled Triple Zero to check whether the network was functioning and insisted she was acting in her official capacity to hold the government to account, though she accepted the criticism. Labor ministers condemned the calls, with Industry Minister Tim Ayres calling them "reckless" and "utterly irresponsible" and urging Australians not to follow her example. Opposition leader Angus Taylor defended Henderson, arguing she was doing her job and accusing the government of deflecting from the outage itself.