Optus outage ‘absolutely disgraceful’, says emergency management minister
The federal minister for emergency management has blasted Optus outage as “absolutely disgraceful”.
Speaking to the ABC on Sunday morning, Kristy McBain said this was the second in “only a couple of years” and “not good enough” from the Telecom.
The fact that no state or federal government was advised of this outage I think is beyond reprehensible
The minister said the last outage prompted a review that delivered 18 recommendations that were adopted by government.
Optus clearly needs to review its protocols. No doubt that they will be employing crisis communications specialists to come in and help them, but what they need to be doing is getting their systems in order so that Australians can have confidence that when they dial triple-0, it’s going to get through to one of our emergency operators.
Key events
Optus CEO to speak to media about network outage
The Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, is expected to provide an update to media at 3pm AEST about his networks outage and the failure to connect triple-zero calls.
We will bring you the latest as it happens.
Tony Abbott implores Cpac to give Liberals ‘one last chance’ and condemns party’s ‘factional warlords’
Tony Abbott has urged conservatives to give the Liberals “one last chance” and apologised for the party’s 2025 election drubbing, joining a host of high-profile Coalition figures at a major political conference in imploring voters not to abandon the opposition for rightwing minor parties.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, recently dumped from the shadow frontbench, exhorted the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Brisbane to stick with the Liberal party, and encouraged her parliamentary colleagues to dump a net zero climate target, to cheers from attendees.
Abbott told Cpac in his headlining speech: “We must be a better opposition this time than last time, and we must be a better government next time than last time.
“I hope that you will give us one last chance to prove ourselves worthy of your trust,” he said, later repeating his request for another “chance to earn your trust”.
For more on this story read the full report by Guardian Australia’s Josh Butler:
Environment minister to give press conference
We are expecting the minister for the environment and water, Murray Watt, to speak to reporters at 12pm in Brisbane.
We will bring you the latest as it happens.
Revealed: how Albanese tried and failed (so far) to get a meeting with Trump
Anthony Albanese is anticipating his first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump next week.
If it goes ahead, it will be the culmination of a long and complicated process of diplomatic scheduling, according to documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information.
More than 100 pages of government communications reveal the lengths senior Australian officials went to in securing a meeting between Albanese and Trump in June, later cancelled when Trump abruptly left the G7 to attend to a conflict between Israel and Iran. The documents reveal:
-
Their meeting was locked in just days before;
-
Officials’ uncertainty over the status of the meeting;
-
The response among Australian officials when the US president cancelled meetings with Albanese and other world leaders.
The prime minister last week claimed “in the real world, no one cares” when he meets Trump – but a bevy of staff inside the departments of prime minister and cabinet (PM&C) and foreign affairs (Dfat) had worked to secure the June bilateral.
For more on this story, read the full report by Guardian Australia’s Josh Butler:
Barnaby Joyce says only people who live in cities are concerned about climate crisis
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has continued advocating for the Coalition to abandon efforts to tackle the climate crisis, repeating claims that efforts to reach net zero by 2050 would be “devastating” for the economy.
Speaking to Sky news on Sunday Morning, Joyce claimed that Australian efforts to reduce emissions would have no impact on climate change. He did not present any evidence for this claim.
Joyce continued to make similar claims, dismissing the recent National Climate Risk Assessment and alleging that only residents of major cities were concerned about climate change.
They always come up with these Calamity Jane statements. I think Australians are over net zero.
The black summer bushfires burnt at least 7.5m hectares of eucalypt forest, forced the evacuations from multiple regional centres and has been credited in some attribution studies with interrupting climate patterns that led to the torrential raid across northern New South Wales and catastrophic flooding in places such as Lismore and other northern rivers towns.
The Climate Change Authority chair, Matt Kean, rejected Joyce’s claims, saying the best scientific evidence has outlined the existential threat of global heating.
The more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the more heat that we’re creating, and the more extreme weather events that will result from that.
It is having a catastrophic impact, not only on Australia, but globally.
We need to be part of a global effort to reduce the amount of carbon that we put into the atmosphere – to stop or limit global warming – so that we can protect our lives and our livelihoods.
– with AAP
Australia marks 100th renewable project
Albanese government marks a milestone of 100 renewable energy projects since the May 2022 election as the prime minister lands in New York where he is expected to talk climate change with other world leaders, among other issues.
In a statement released on Sunday, Senator Murray Watt said the government was “setting Australia up for a future powered by renewables” with the 100 projects expected to reduce 53m tonnes of CO2 each year.
The projects included 43 solar farms, 22 onshore windfarms, 13 energy storage systems, 13 infrastructure and exploration projects including for offshore wind and nine transmission projects across the country.
The 100th renewable energy project to be given the greenlight is the Nowingi solar power station, 47km south of Mildura, Victoria. It will include an eight-hour storage battery and a 300mw solar farm.
Watt said the government would “continue supporting the rapid rollout of renewables to meet our ambitious and achievable 2035 target, and to achieve net zero by 2050.”
The Albanese Government is doing its part by approving these 100 projects right across the country.
Importantly, almost 90 per cent of these approval decisions were delivered on time.
During the first term in government the Albanese government approved 27 new coal, oil and gas developments and have approved four new projects since the 2025 election, according to the Climate Council for a total of 31.
This includes a 45-year extension to the North West Shelf gas export project by Watt approved earlier in September, a decision that would allow the associated facilities to operate beyond 2050 and is expected to generate 87.9m tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.
According to the Climate Council, the projects approved since the Albanese government came to power in 2022 would generate 12.8m tonnes of climate pollution in 2035.
Henry Belot
New Russian ambassador confirmed after high court challenge over embassy
The Australian government has accepted Russia’s nomination for its next ambassador in Canberra, Mikhail Petrakov, after months of strained diplomatic relations.
Petrakov’s predecessor, Alexey Pavlovsky, departed Australia in early April, leaving his deputy as the most senior diplomat in the country.
Russia featured during the federal election campaign after unsubstantiated reports the country was seeking a military presence in Indonesia. At the time, Russia’s ambassador to Indonesia warned Australia “had no cards” to stop its military activity in the Indo-Pacific, which was mocked by Anthony Albanese as authoritarian “propaganda”.
Petrakkov’s confirmation comes just weeks after Russia told the high court its embassy lease in Canberra was illegally cancelled by the Australian government.
The Albanese government rushed laws through parliament in 2023 to cancel Russia’s lease on a plot of land where it planned to build a new embassy. Albanese cited advice from national security agencies about the proposed embassy’s proximity to parliament when justifying the action.
Russia at the time rejected the cancellation as “Russophobic hysteria” and an official even squatted on the land after the decision to frustrate any Australian effort to reclaim the plot.
The high court has reserved its decision.
Problems go beyond Optus in regional communities: Littleproud
Nationals leader David Littleproud has joined the government in condemning Optus over the outage of an essential service that is thought to have led to four deaths across the country.
Speaking to Weekend Today on Sunday morning, Littleproud described the failure by the company as “abhorrent behaviour”.
They have a responsibility. This is a universal service and a universal right for Australians to be able to use in our hour of need. The fact that Optus has just in some blase way ignored the risks that are there for Australians to be able to ring 000 is just beyond belief. And they do need to face penalties for this. The government needs to crack down.
Littlerpoud said other towns have also suffered similar outages from other providers. In one example, he said the town of Dalby didn’t have mobile service for two weeks from Telstra.
You couldn’t make a triple-zero call on a mobile phone. No one cared about us out here.
Thargomindah, just to the west of me here in St George, went under. Two hundred and fifty lives were at risk and they had no mobile service because Telstra didn’t update the tower. So it’s not just Optus, we need to actually lean into these telcos.
We need to make sure that we have the regulatory guardrails around them, to make sure they’re doing the right thing in terms of maintenance, but also that we’re building in the redundancy for things like 000 when they do maintenance.
Littleproud said that maintenance was necessary but “you need to have redundancy built into it” and describe the failure to plan properly as a “failure of these telcos”.
Spectre of black summer bushfires hangs over Optus outage, minister says
McBain said the spectre of the black summer bushfires hung over the Optus outage, particularly given reports that the incident lead to at least four deaths.
The minister is asked about an ANU study that found communities affected are still grappling with the long-term effect of that disaster.
Everyone is impacted and, as I said, sometimes those impacts can be uneven, but the trauma of an event like the black summer bushfire will remain with everyone in the community, whether they were impacted directly or not.
McBain said a skills shortage for essential trades has slowed reconstruction and repair efforts in regional areas.
I think the other thing we’ve seen, obviously during Covid, was we’ve had a number of people from our more metropolitan areas buy up in regional areas because they love the lifestyle that we get each and every day, but that’s had an impact on people trying to recover from bushfires as well.
The minister said that high insurance premiums have been an issue for some time but the government had created the “hazard insurance partnership” with insurance companies to meet regularly and discuss the issue, was “investing in disaster risk reduction” to bring them down and has initiated a “review into disaster funding arrangements and disaster responding arrangements”.
There is more work to do in this space, but it’s really important that those communication lines remain open, and I’m really keen to work with the assistant treasurer to make sure insurers are also holding up their end of the bargain when we are investing in mitigation and disaster risk reduction.
Optus outage ‘absolutely disgraceful’, says emergency management minister
The federal minister for emergency management has blasted Optus outage as “absolutely disgraceful”.
Speaking to the ABC on Sunday morning, Kristy McBain said this was the second in “only a couple of years” and “not good enough” from the Telecom.
The fact that no state or federal government was advised of this outage I think is beyond reprehensible
The minister said the last outage prompted a review that delivered 18 recommendations that were adopted by government.
Optus clearly needs to review its protocols. No doubt that they will be employing crisis communications specialists to come in and help them, but what they need to be doing is getting their systems in order so that Australians can have confidence that when they dial triple-0, it’s going to get through to one of our emergency operators.
Republicans warn Australia of ‘punitive measures’ over recognition of Palestinian state
Anthony Albanese says he will push for improved global peace and security during meetings with world leaders this week, as allies of Donald Trump warn Australia’s recognition of Palestine could spark “punitive measures” from the US.
Albanese arrived in New York on Sunday morning, Australian time, ahead of the UN general assembly and his possible first meeting with the US President.
Australia will use the UN talks to formally recognise Palestinian statehood, in concert with countries including France, Canada and the UK, but the decision has sparked a backlash from Israel and allies of Trump in Washington.
“What we want to see is increased peace and security and stability around the world,” Albanese said. “Australia plays an important role. We are a trusted partner and an ally.”
A group of 25 senior Republican lawmakers, including Texas senator Ted Cruz and Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik of New York, have written to the prime minister, as well as French president Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer of Britain and Mark Carney of Canada, urging a rethink.
The letter was sent to Trump and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
This is a reckless policy that undermines prospects for peace. It sets the dangerous precedent that violence, not diplomacy, is the most expedient means for terrorist groups like Hamas to achieve their political aims.
For more on this story, read the full report at Guardian Australia:
