Australian news and politics live: Wells blames ‘process’ for not contacting Triple-0 outage victims’ families

Senior bureaucrats have admitted that no measures have been established to ensure that an ex-Home Affairs employee, found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct in the department, can’t work on Government contracts.

According to a National Anti-Corruption Commission report released earlier this year, the Home Affairs senior executive had misused her position to acquire positions in the department for her sister and her sister’s fiancé.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge asked about the department’s handling of the former Chief of Staff during a session of Senate Estimates on Wednesday, including how the department ensured she wouldn’t engage with the government again through her new private sector role at a cybersecurity firm.

“There’s no public record of the name of your corrupt former Chief of Staff. There’s no way of identifying what cyber entity they’re employed by, without naming her and without having that name publicly and broadly known, there is a real risk she’ll continue working for the Commonwealth, but through a private entity, at no doubt significant expense to the public,” he said.

Home Affairs chief operating officer Charlotte Tressler confirmed there were no set protective measures in place.

“We haven’t put anything explicitly in place, but that’s something that we’re looking at,” Ms Tressler said.

Department of Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster added that while the former staff member wasn’t named publicly, her identity had become “widespread” in the government agency.

The European Union has announced that it plans to double tariffs and halve the amount of foreign steel it imports saying European “sovereignty is at stake.”

The EU said that it is planning a supersized 50 per cent tariff to be imposed from next year. That is twice the tariff being imposed by US President Donald Trump. The measure will come as a double blow to Australian steel producers who export to both markets.

Australian steel exports to the European Union were valued at €142 million ($251 million) in 2024, according to official statistics compiled by the EU.

The EU is responding to oversupply from China and fears that even more cheap steel flooding the European market, following the United States’ tariffs on steel imports, worth 25 per cent, aimed at protecting American manufacturing.

The EU says that non-market policies and practices have turned the EU’s 11 million tonne steel surplus into 10 million tonne deficit in just a decade with 30,000 jobs lost since 2018.

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The Communications Department says it was not made aware of last month’s deadly Triple-Zero outage for more than a day because Optus sent a mandatory notification email to the wrong address.

In Senate estimates, senior government officials have revealed further details of the telecommunication company’s failure to properly alert them about problems with the emergency network on September 18 that has been linked with three deaths.

During an often-heated hearing, the Communications Department has also been accused of initially giving misleading evidence about the “debacle” that took place after the outage.

Communications Department Deputy Secretary James Chisholm has revealed Optus sent an email at 2.45pm on September 18 when the failure was detected, and another at 2.52pm when it was fixed, but both messages were sent to an old address.

The department says it didn’t get notified about the deadly outage until 3.30pm the next day when the regulator, the Australian Communications Media Authority, informed them following contact from Optus.

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Nationals Leader David Littleproud has told pro-Palestine protestors to “give up”, saying their point has been made.

The comments come as a controversial protest planned for the Sydney Opera House on Sunday attempts to get the green light from the NSW Court of Appeal.

Mr Littleproud said on Wednesday that Australia “can’t do any more than what we’ve done here”.

“This is the problem,” Mr Littleproud told Sky News.

“I think everyone expects the Government to fix everyone’s problems. You know, we’ve all got a responsibility here, a personal responsibility. And with that personal responsibility that we’ve been granted is to live up to the freedoms that we’ve been given and do that responsibly,” he said.

“You’ve had a fair crack. You’ve had plenty of goes at this. You’ve made your point.”