Price says Liberal leaks risk party looking like a ‘clown show’
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says she has written to Sussan Ley demanding she intervene to put a stop to the leaks and backgrounding against their own side, which she claims is feeding perceptions that the Liberal party is turning into a “clown show”.
The former frontbencher said she wrote to the opposition leader on Tuesday after the Nine papers reported supposed details from Peter Dutton’s confidential interview with the Liberal election campaign review, which was highly critical of Andrew Hastie’s performance in the last term.
The source of the leak is unknown, but allies of Hastie suspect it was orchestrated and timed by internal opponents who wanted to damage the Western Australian after his shock decision to quit the shadow cabinet.
Price – a Hastie ally who was sacked from the frontbench after her Indian migrant comments – said the leaks needed to stop. She told 2GB on Wednesday morning:
I’ve written to our leader about my concerns about backgrounding and about leaking to the media when we need to get on with taking a principled, respectful focus on serving the Australian people instead of feeding leaks. I mean, enough’s, enough. It’s just become, you know, juvenile, this kind of conduct, and I’m pretty over it to be honest.
Guardian Australia is not suggesting Ley, her office or her allies are behind the leaks, only that Price has raised concerns with her about them. The offices of Ley and Price were contacted for comment.
Price said she intended to raise the issue with colleagues but was unable to attend Tuesday’s party room meeting because of Senate estimates.
It’s got to stop. There’s been commentary on the fact that we look like a clown show.
Key events
Greens join call for parliamentary inquiry: ‘Optus has failed’
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who’s been hounding department officials this morning over the Optus outage, says the evidence heard shows there needs to be a broader parliamentary inquiry.
Speaking to reporters in parliament while the estimates hearing takes a lunch break, she accused Optus of putting “safety at the bottom of the list while they thought about their profits and their shareholders” and said a parliamentary inquiry would allow Optus to be hauled in to answer questions.
We need better regulation, stronger regulation, stronger penalties, and a watchdog with teeth …
[An email] was not sufficient to alert the minister for the scale of this thing. It just said there was a routine out[age] … look, I am concerned that if minister’s officers are receiving emails that are alerting the minister to the fact that there’s a triple zero outage, someone should have escalated that … why didn’t someone pick up the phone and call Optus?
Liberals in ‘dismay’ after failure to establish parliamentary committee over triple zero
The shadow communications minister, Melissa McIntosh, has stood up after her motion to establish a parliamentary committee looking into the triple zero system, and her amendments to the government’s triple zero custodian bill.
Safe to say she’s not particularly pleased about the political loss.
She also takes a dig at the latest information learned in estimates – about the email received by Anika Wells’ office from Optus on the day of the outage. (Though as my colleague Tom McIlroy reports below, the full scale of the outage was not revealed for another 24 hours.)
McIntosh says:
Between the email that the minister’s office received on the Thursday after the outage and she said she didn’t know until Friday, to our sensible amendments… to not having a committee to have a look into what occurred, it is a dismay.
Tom McIlroy
Who knew what when? The Optus triple-zero outage
Following from our last post, here’s a bit of context:
On 18 September, a network firewall upgrade blocked emergency calls for Optus customers in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of New South Wales.
The deaths of two people in SA and one in WA have been linked to the outages. A fourth death – an infant in SA – was found likely to have been unrelated.
A separate outage on 28 September affected nine calls to the triple-zero network on one tower in the Illawarra region of NSW, but Optus has confirmed the welfare of all who tried to call.
Guardian Australia approached Wells’ office about the email. A spokesperson provided a transcript from her 22 September press conference about the outages, in which Wells confirms that her office was first told about an incident involving Optus a few days earlier.
In that press conference, she said: “We and my department … were first emailed a notification that there had been an outage affecting 10 calls on Thursday afternoon, about 3pm, I think from memory.
We didn’t hear anything further until 3.40pm Friday afternoon where we were told the outage had affected about 100 calls. And then shortly after 4pm we were told the outage had affected 600 calls. And then we found out from our department that there had been three deaths and then we were told that there would be a press conference from the CEO of Optus shortly.
Tom McIlroy
Incorrect email address Optus outage alert was sent to revealed
Labor is facing questions about emails sent to the office of communications minister, Anika Wells, in relation to the Optus triple-zero outages.
Senate estimates hearings on Wednesday heard that in addition to emails sent to an incorrect email address within the Department of Communications, a second email about problems with Optus triple-zero coverage was sent to an email ending with “@mo.communications.gov.au“.
It was sent on Thursday, 18 September at 2.45pm. The full scale of the problem was not revealed for another 24 hours.
Under questioning from Greens senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, the deputy secretary of the Department of Communications, James Chisholm, said the address could be related to the office of the communications minister, Anika Wells.
“Normally, I think in this case … it could be a minister’s email address,” he said.
“Whether it went to them is another question.”
Hanson-Young demanded to know who received the email.
Assistant minister Nita Green said “clearly” the address related to someone in the minister’s office.
She took on notice which particular staff member received the email and said the email only alerted the government to the fact that a minor outage had been resolved.
Jordyn Beazley
NSW police encourages ‘knowing who is coming in’ to Sydney Opera House protest site via security screenings
Circling back to the Palestine Action Group’s bid to march to the Sydney Opera House this Sunday, which is before the court of appeal today.
The assistant police commissioner, Peter McKenna, was asked while under cross-examination if he would advise the Opera House to deploy full security screening of protesters entering the forecourt. He said:
I would still say to the Opera House that being such an iconic location, and where, and I’m careful with what I say here … But there are people who are in our society [that] would love an opportunity to do some things at that location because of the media interest [and] given our current threat in Australia, I would say it would be good to know who is coming in there and what they have on them.
Just because there’s a protest, it does not stop other people from coming into that environment.
The acting chief executive of the Opera House, Jade McKellar, gave evidence a short time ago. She said she would take directions from police on whether it should deploy security screening, which could include X-ray equipment and bag searches.
Under the bylaws which govern the iconic Sydney landmark, the Opera House has the power to conduct such searches. The court heard this was standard operating procedure during events that attract large crowds.
Glencore Mount Isa copperworks to be bailed out
A little earlier today, the industry minister, Tim Ayres, announced a joint federal and state bail out for the Glencore Mount Isa copper smelter.
The governments will go 50/50 on a $600m bail out, which will keep the plant open and save about 600 jobs.
… capital is being provided by the commonwealth and Queensland governments on a 50/50 basis. It is also Glencore’s responsibility to run the facility over this period and they will continue to experience losses over the course of it.
This is invest[ing] in the future industrial capability of the north-west province [of] Queensland.
Ayres says the deal – which will last for three years – is about backing heavy industry and “investing in the future of Australian manufacturing”.
Of course, no mining announcement by a pollie is made without the appearance of hi-vis and Ayres is donning a bright orange hi-vis shirt with his name embroidered into it.
Price says Liberal leaks risk party looking like a ‘clown show’
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says she has written to Sussan Ley demanding she intervene to put a stop to the leaks and backgrounding against their own side, which she claims is feeding perceptions that the Liberal party is turning into a “clown show”.
The former frontbencher said she wrote to the opposition leader on Tuesday after the Nine papers reported supposed details from Peter Dutton’s confidential interview with the Liberal election campaign review, which was highly critical of Andrew Hastie’s performance in the last term.
The source of the leak is unknown, but allies of Hastie suspect it was orchestrated and timed by internal opponents who wanted to damage the Western Australian after his shock decision to quit the shadow cabinet.
Price – a Hastie ally who was sacked from the frontbench after her Indian migrant comments – said the leaks needed to stop. She told 2GB on Wednesday morning:
I’ve written to our leader about my concerns about backgrounding and about leaking to the media when we need to get on with taking a principled, respectful focus on serving the Australian people instead of feeding leaks. I mean, enough’s, enough. It’s just become, you know, juvenile, this kind of conduct, and I’m pretty over it to be honest.
Guardian Australia is not suggesting Ley, her office or her allies are behind the leaks, only that Price has raised concerns with her about them. The offices of Ley and Price were contacted for comment.
Price said she intended to raise the issue with colleagues but was unable to attend Tuesday’s party room meeting because of Senate estimates.
It’s got to stop. There’s been commentary on the fact that we look like a clown show.
Police argue expected number of Palestine protesters at Sunday rally poses significant safety concern
Jordyn Beazley
The Palestine Action Group is before the court of appeal this morning in their fight against the New South Wales police over a proposed plan to march on the Sydney Opera House this Sunday.
One of the state’s most senior police officers has said the protest has “disaster written all over it” due to significant safety concerns.
The assistant commissioner, Peter McKenna, said in his evidence that of particular concern was how the 40,000 people expected to attend would safely enter and exit the Opera House forecourt without the risk of a crowd crush. He also questioned the estimate of 40,000 people:
I don’t think you can say it will only be 40,000… But even if 40,000 move into the area … I have significant concerns about that, both egress and ingress [points].
Palestine Action Group’s barrister, Felicity Graham, put to McKenna that police could stagger the crowd as it leaves from Hyde Park, which is the start point of the march.
McKenna said police could facilitate this with 10,000 people, but not significantly upwards of that.
You’re talking significant resources, which I don’t have.
He also said that the organiser’s expectation that people would leave the Opera house forecourt – which marks the end of the march – as soon as they arrived was “farcical”. He added that people will want to stay to get the imagery they need to get global media attention. McKenna said:
We are not anti-protest. We assisted this group with over 100 protests over the last two years and we do about 1,500 protests a year.
All the altruism in the world does not assist when we have a physical situation where we believe the numbers are far too excessive to keep people safe.
Government’s triple zero custodian bill passes House
While the opposition piles pressure on the government and the infrastructure and communications department in Senate estimates over the Optus triple zero outage (see here), the government has passed its bill to legislate a triple zero custodian.
The opposition tried to swing several amendments into the governments bill – with support from the crossbench – but to no avail.
It means the bill will now go to the upper house for debate and a vote at the end of October. Because of Senate estimates, the other place can’t look at any legislation until the next joint sitting week on 27 October.
Sarah Basford Canales
Home Affairs confirms group of six Australians returned from Syria last month
The home affairs department has confirmed two Australian women and four children, who escaped a Syrian detention camp, returned to Australia last month.
The department secretary, Stephanie Foster, told Senate estimates this morning the group had returned without Australia’s “repatriation assistance”. It followed the repatriation of a group of four women and 13 children in 2022 and eight unaccompanied minors in 2019.
Foster said the department became aware of the recent group’s intention to return to Australia as early as June 2025.
