Australian news and politics live: Ley considering dumping Liberals’ commitment to net zero

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue again blamed errors by the telco’s staff for a failure to connect triple-0 calls linked to four deaths on September 18 and thousands of calls going unanswered over 13 hours.

“The initial mistake, a human error, occurred when the wrong process plan was selected for a routine firewall upgrade,” Mr Rue told the inquiry.

Mr Rue doubled down on his argument that responsibility for the outages across South and Western Australia lay at the feet of bungling staff, and not his management team for failures to implement recommended reforms from a 2023 review into network outages.

Senator Sarah Henderson labelled Mr Rue’s response “unbelievable” and said it was clear from the CEO’s prior statements that the deaths could’ve been prevented if Optus had done what it should’ve completed in implementing procedural improvements since 2023.

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Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says the Nationals are “entitled” to make their own decision on abandoning net zero and said the Liberals were still reviewing their policy position.

Speaking at a Kmart wishing tree on Monday morning, Ms Ley said the Coalition partners were “mature parties” who would continue to work together.

“I always said that the Nationals would come to their decision in their party room and the Liberals would similarly come to our decision in our party room,” she said.

“They’re entitled, as their own party, to arrive at their own position.

“But our joint energy working group has done an incredibly sound job up until this point in time, it’s continuing.

“And we can look forward to a Liberal Party energy position and then a coming together as a Coalition.

“I’m looking forward to the work that will happen between now and the Liberal Party’s position becoming known, and then us sitting down together as two mature parties.”

When asked if the Coalition was over, Mr Joyce was vague adding: “I don’t know, that is above my pay grade”.

“In the past, I’ve argued against splitting the Coalition because of precisely this.

“When there was an amalgamation of the parties in Queensland, the LNP.

“It may sound good on paper but when you come to an election, you have to remember in Queensland the division of the Liberal Party has blue how-to-vote cards.

“It is just not going to work out how you think is going to work out.”

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce says while separating the Coalition could be electorally unworkable, it’s something for people to “think about in coming days”.

Speaking on Sunrise on Monday morning amid rumours of further division after the Nationals voted to dump net zero, Mr Joyce said he had always been an advocate for them to remain partners.

“It becomes really hard. Look at Queensland where the LNP is… what are you going to do? Have two conferences?” Mr Joyce said.

“You can’t be two different parties down here (Canberra) and then one party up there (Queensland).

“What are you going to have, one party where they are aligned with The Nats and another where they are aligned with the Liberals? Another one where they don’t want to be either?

“Maybe they will come down here and sit as the LNP and not as the Liberals or Nationals.

“There is a whole range of combinations, permutations, and confusions that are around this beyond the comments in the paper.

“I think people are going to come across them and think about them in the coming days.”

Nationals Leader David Littleproud continued by revealing his alternatives to net zero include “building more dams” and other infrastructure, and investing in resilience and mitigation.

“When the net zero policy that Anthony Albanese, is going to cost the Australian people $9 trillion.

“We’re sending our country broke when there is an alternative way.”

He called for Labor to stop the “puerile attacks on the National Party” and have “sensible conversation” over energy policy.

“We want to have that conversation with the Australian people about other ways, about having a cheaper, better, fairer way to reduce emissions,” he said.

Nationals leader David Littleproud says Australia needs to have a “common-sense” conversation about energy policy and explore “alternatives to net-zero”.

He said the junior Coalition partner would work with the Liberals who are yet to set their energy policy in a “calm and methodical” way.

“We’ll work with our Coalition partners when they get to their position,” he told ABC News Breakfast.

He said the Nationals policy would continue to reduce emissions “but in a cheaper, better, fairer way for Australians”.

Mr Littleproud said it was important that the Coalition focused on policies which delivered “affordable energy for households, as well as for industry”.

“We should do the practical things that we haven’t been doing in a stronger environment. Investment in a stronger environment,” Mr Littleproud said.

“We believe in climate change. Net zero is not the only way to address climate change.”

WA Liberal MP Rick Wilson has spoken in support of Barnaby Joyce’s repeal net zero private members bill in Parliament.

Standing up in the House of Representatives on Monday, the O’Conner MP described his electorate as “ground zero for Net Zero”.

“My electorate of O’Connor is ground zero for Net Zero,” Mr Wilson said.

“We’ve already seen the total demise of the nickel industry, with 14 out of 16 Nickel Mines in my electorate closing thanks to cheap, dirty nickel being produced in Indonesia.

“Last week I visited Narrogin, which will soon host three wind farm projects, and there is open tension between those who accepted the wind farm windfall and those who want to continue farming as their forebears did, some residents are concerned about visual and noise pollution or are fearful of potential adverse health effects.

“We’re already decimating the mining industry across my electorate, inflicting serious damage to our agriculture and transport industries, and hitting the hip pocket of everyday people living in O’Connor, all for a climate goal that most of the international community is coming to realize will never be reached.

WA’s National party leader Shane Love says State members would now “carefully consider” their position after their Federal colleagues decided to abandon net zero.

“The Nationals WA acknowledge the decisions of both the National’s Federal Council and the Federal Parliamentary team, concerning Net Zero emissions targets,” Mr Love said.

“They have provided their reasons for the new position following a report produced by the Page Research Centre.

“The State Nationals WA Parliamentary Team and party will carefully consider the report and these important decisions made by our Federal colleagues over the coming days.

“The Nationals WA commitment remains clear: securing a reliable and affordable power supply that benefits all Western Australians.”

Asked by Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson whether the triple-zero outage constituted a breach of any laws or regulations, the Optus boss said he would take the question on notice.

“If you know the answer, you can’t take something on notice to duck and wave the question. So you can’t duck and weave, if you know the answer, you would have considered this in depth,” Senator Henderson responded.

Optus will employ another 300 workers at call centres in Australia following September’s catastrophic outage of triple-zero services, but the telco’s boss has pushed back on calls for his resignation.

Appearing before a senate inquiry, chief executive Stephen Rue has also declined to say whether the deadly failures on September 18 constituted a breach of any laws or regulations.

“I firmly believe that another change of leader at this time is not what Optus means or what our customers need,” Mr Rue told Senators on Monday when asked why he should not resign.

“The disruption of uncertainty actually set back with activist investigation is leading an independent review the management of triple-0 calls and our overall response.”

During often heated questioning Mr Rue said that Optus accepted full responsibility for the failures and said he “regretted reforms were not embedded earlier to prevent them.”

“We will add around 300 people to our Australian call centres focused on Triple Zero and vulnerable customers, including our specialist care teams helping customers in rural areas, elderly customers or those with serious medical conditions.”