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Calls for charity watchdog in phone furore

Finbar O'MallonAAP
A company that provided captioned phone services for deaf people may come under further scrutiny.
Camera IconA company that provided captioned phone services for deaf people may come under further scrutiny.

The Morrison government has urged the charities watchdog to investigate the company that used to provide captioned telephone services for deaf people.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher has written to the Assistant Charities Minister Zed Seselja to ask the watchdog to put Australian Communications Exchange under the microscope.

"I understand that the (Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission) has previously investigated ACE and had a number of concerns with ACE's compliance," Mr Fletcher wrote on Tuesday.

Mr Fletcher wants the charities commission to see if ACE inappropriately used its funding as a not-for-profit organisation.

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The government recently moved the National Relay Service from ACE, to a new service provider, Concentrix, which doesn't provide the CapTel service.

CapTel provided real-time captioning on telephone calls for deaf Australians, displaying the words on a screen on the handset.

The latest move marks a fresh escalation in the stoush between ACE and the government.

The government took legal action against the company to compel it to provide a list of its clients so it could warn them they would be switching off CapTel on February 1.

A Senate estimates hearing in October heard that use of the CapTel service had grown from 100,000 minutes in 2013-14 to about 3.5 million in 2017-18.

ACE was on a five-year contract from 2013 to 2018 for $90 million, but the government signed up to a $66 million three-year contract with Concentrix in 2019.

Deaf Australia chief executive Kyle Miers has previously told AAP the government's decision to move from ACE to Concentrix was to save money.

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