000 (emergency telephone number)

000 Emergency, also known as Triple Zero or Triple 0, and sometimes stylised Triple Zero (000), is the primary national emergency telephone number in Australia and the Australian External Territories. Operated by Telstra and overseen by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), it is intended only for use in life-threatening or time-critical emergencies.
When called on a mobile or satellite phone, the international standard emergency telephone number 112 will be redirected to Triple Zero (000). Other numbers including 911 may be answered, though this is strongly discouraged by the government. For people with a speech or hearing impairment, 106 can be called from telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) textphones. 000 is the only emergency number that can be dialled from fixed lines including public payphones. No SIM card is required to call to 000.
For non-life-threatening situations and natural disasters, the State Emergency Service (SES) number 132 500 should be called instead. For non-emergency calls to the police in Australia, 131 444 should be used.
000 was also the emergency telephone number in Denmark and Finland until the introduction of the 112 number in 1993, and in Norway until 1986, when the emergency telephone numbers diverted to 001 for fire brigade, 002 for police and 003 for ambulance. Those Norwegian emergency telephone numbers changed in 1994 to 110, 112 and 113 respectively.
Before 1969, Australia did not have a national telephone number for emergency services; the police, fire and ambulance services had many telephone numbers, one for each local unit. In 1961, the Postmaster-General's Department started introducing the 000 telephone number in major population centres, and during the 1960s, extended its coverage to nationwide.
The number 000 was chosen for several reasons. Technically, it suited the dialling system for the most remote automatic exchanges, particularly those in outback Queensland. These communities used the digit 0 to select an automatic trunk line to a centre. In the most remote communities, two 0s had to be used to reach a main centre, so dialling 0+0 plus another 0 would call (at least) an operator. Zero is also the closest to the finger stall on rotary dial phones making it easy to dial in the dark or in an environment with smoke.
Today, the Triple Zero service is operated and maintained by Telstra, a former branch of Postmaster-General's Department and Australia's former national telecommunications company.
000 is a free call. If the phone cannot connect to the caller's subscribed network, the phone will attempt to call using another carrier's network. By law, mobile networks are required to take emergency calls from customers of competing networks. For mobile and satellite phones, a SIM card is not required to connect. Interpreter services for different languages may be available once connected to emergency services.
The 2G and 3G mobile networks have been discontinued in Australia, with 3G being discontinued in late 2024. Mobile phones that do not support 4G or later, or do not support Voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology, cannot make emergency calls.
Calling 000 begins by connecting to Telstra and greeting the caller with a recorded message stating "You have dialled emergency Triple Zero, your call is being connected". The Telstra operator will ask the caller whether they require police, fire, or ambulance service, and their location. When calling from a landline or public telephone, the location is automatically determined. The call is then transferred to the emergency service operator requested by the caller.
As soon as the emergency service call taker answers the call, any available caller location information, ascertained by automatically accessing a special database from the calling line identification (CLI) data that is provided with all emergency calls, is transferred to the emergency service. However, the emergency service call taker will still question the caller again to verify the caller's location in order to dispatch the correct response.
The caller's address is usually available to Telstra operators for fixed services in Australia even if the number is "private". However, emergency service organisation call takers will always ask for the address of the emergency to be stated whenever possible to ensure an accurate location is provided – this is especially relevant in the case of "third-party" callers who are not personally on the scene of the incident (e.g. relatives, or alarm monitoring corporations).
iPhone, Apple Watch, and Android smartphones can automatically determine the caller's location through Advanced Mobile Location technology.
Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Norfolk Island have their own Triple Zero infrastructure and calls from these external territories are not handled through Telstra or the mainland Triple Zero infrastructure.
In the state of Victoria, emergency service dispatch and call taking for Victoria Police, Ambulance Victoria, the Country Fire Authority, and the Fire Rescue Victoria, is handled by Triple Zero Victoria. They operate three State Emergency Communications Centres, located in Williams Landing, East Burwood, and Ballarat.
When a person calls 000 for emergency response within Victoria, the call will be answered by Telstra who determine the service required. The call is then directed to the relevant Triple Zero Victoria facility where it will be answered by the next available trained call taker, who will collect information from the caller, and enter this into the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. Using this information, a dispatcher will identify and dispatch the appropriate emergency services or resources. Emergency crews are often already being notified by the relevant services' dispatchers while the call taker is still obtaining further information or giving advice, such as guiding the caller through cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), obtaining details of a possible offender, or receiving further details about the exact location or situation - an initial response may be made to details as vague as a town or suburb, while the call taker continues to get more specific location information.
Triple Zero Victoria is also responsible for Victorian State Emergency Service (SES) call-taking and dispatch, although this service cannot be contacted by dialling 000, as SES calls are not considered to be life-threatening. The number for SES calls is 132 500, but police or another service dialled inappropriately will notify SES.
Many Triple Zero Victoria practices and protocols are standardised across all emergency services agencies, as all agencies use the same computer network. The result is complete and instantaneous information sharing between emergency services.
The Emergency+ app helps Triple Zero callers to identify their exact location by using their mobile phone's GPS and location services. Launched in 2013, it was developed by Fire and Rescue New South Wales. Videos in the app include instructions on CPR, as well as emergency first aid. The app also contains What3Words functionality, allowing users to provide quickly and easily provide accurate location details to a 000 dispatcher.
On 3 December 2003, floods and storms in Melbourne, Victoria, caused "an extremely high number of calls to the 000 emergency call service", which prevented some calls from being answered immediately. This delay was compounded by a software upgrade on the emergency call handling system used by the Victorian emergency service organisations (ESOs), meaning that Telstra (the national 000 call operator) encountered severe delays in handing over emergency calls to the relevant ESO. This caused some users interviewed by authorities to believe that they may have accidentally dialled the wrong number. A subsequent investigation recommended that a temporary recorded announcement be implemented during extreme events to assure callers that their calls were being connected and a delay may occur. This is not to be confused with the standard "You have dialled Emergency Triple Zero, your call is being connected" recorded voice announcement (RVA), which was introduced in 2008.
On 7 February 2009, catastrophic bushfires occurred in Victoria, otherwise known as Black Saturday bushfires. Over 18,000 calls to the Triple Zero Emergency Service on that day were left unanswered, and the majority of calls took much longer to be answered than usual. Owing to the unprecedented numbers of calls coming through, Telstra decided to isolate all Victorian emergency calls which were answered by the Melbourne emergency call centre, with all the remaining calls answered by the Sydney emergency call centre. Telstra also activated the generic extreme event recorded voice announcement "You have dialled Emergency Triple Zero. If you require police, fire or ambulance, please stay on the line. If you require your local State Emergency Service please hang up and dial 1223 – that's 1223 – as this service cannot be connected through Triple Zero", which temporarily replaced their front end announcement. While Telstra records show 95 emergency call centre employees rostered during the 24-hour period on 7 February 2009, call pick up delays were evident due to lengthy delays at the SECC level, being ESTA. Telstra agents were left tied up on phone calls with callers, waiting for emergency services to answer, thus calls in the 000 queue were unable to be answered. Callers in a queue waiting for a Telstra agent to answer the phone were played an RVA every 30 seconds in the following terms, "You have dialled the Emergency Triple Zero number. Due to an unprecedented high volume of calls being received by Triple Zero, we are experiencing short delays in answering. Please stay on the line and you will be answered by the next available operator". This reassures callers that an extreme emergency was occurring, and their call would be answered.
Emergency services and Australia's communications regulator prefer the phrase "triple zero" while the service is colloquially often called "triple oh". On older phones with physical alpha-numeric keypads, the letter 'O' is typically located on the same key as the number '6'.
One major obstacle in earlier 2009 is that operators of triple-0 could not use global positioning system (GPS) data within GSM or CDMA telephone systems to accurately locate distressed or injured persons using mobile phones visibly away from roads. Instead, emergency operators must ask the caller exactly where they are. The answer to this may need to correspond to an existing road name (which may be practically impossible for distressed person(s) some kilometres away from a road), until the emergency service organisation operator can dispatch an emergency service vehicle. In 2010, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) began researching options that may provide improved location information for mobile services when dialling 000.
In 2013, an emergency service smartphone app was produced and developed by Fire and Rescue NSW and the Triple Zero Awareness Working Group. Australians in remote locations are encouraged to use this app to contact emergency services, as it uses phones GPS data to display the caller's location on the screen. This allows the caller to read their location aloud to the operator, so they can be found by emergency services when they are far from roads.
In 2017–2018, ACMA stated in their annual report that both Industry and Government had begun to make considerable investment to communications infrastructure. This includes a privacy report for implementing the Advanced Mobile Location (AML) standard for Triple Zero calls. The system will automatically provide location data (including GPS, Wi-Fi positioning system, and mobile phone tracking) from the caller's device, to the Triple Zero operator automatically. These new arrangements were due to be implemented and operating by May 2020.
The New South Wales State Labor Government has admitted to failings regarding the death of David Iredale, a high school student who died of dehydration in the bush near Katoomba, New South Wales, in late 2006. Iredale called 000 several times for help before he died. Emergency services, specifically the NSW Ambulance Service Triple Zero call centre, were accused of inappropriately handling Iredale's calls; he was not given any medical advice, and operators were accused of being "preoccupied" with obtaining a street address to send help to, although Iredale was in the bush. An inquest set up to investigate failings in the 000 system as a result of his death identified serious issues in the practices used by 000 operators.
Another case of 000 operator failure was reported in The Daily Telegraph in 2011. Joanne Wicking had called for police assistance, but the 000 operator chose to believe her killer, who had assured the operator everything was fine, despite repeated calls by Joanne. In another incident six months later, when 000 staff were insistent about needing a street address for a remote country farm, the man needing help died.
In April 2014, telecommunications company TPG was fined A$400,000 for withholding access to emergency numbers where customers had failed to pay their bills. Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that TPG failed to provide access on over 190 occasions between March and September 2011, and the company did not ensure that almost 6000 lines had emergency access.