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

Communications Minister Anika Wells has been forced to defend her decision not to reach out to families of victims whose deaths have been linked to the Triple-0 outage, blaming “process”.

“With respect to the more catastrophic outage that affected 631 calls and potentially with links to three deaths, potentially four deaths, as we found out on Saturday, I inquired as to correct process about dealing with families in this situation,” Ms Wells said on Wednesday.

“I was advised that emergency services is the correct and proper agency we use to reach out, so that’s what happened.

Ms Wells said she spoke with the WA and SA premiers after the outage, as well as the NT Chief Minister.

“Of course, I would absolutely meet with affected families if that’s what they wished. I am respecting their space,” she said during Question Time.

“There are, of course, many sensitivities here and I’m not going to make their lives harder by politicising their grief in this place as you have now done two days in a row.”

Police are sceptical that an estimated 40,000 people rallying for Palestine at the iconic Sydney Opera House can be kept safe.

The NSW Court of Appeal on Wednesday heard a last-minute police challenge to the Palestine Action Group rally on Sunday, planned to start in Sydney’s city centre and finish under the sails of the harbour-side Australian landmark.

Organisers initially suggested 10,000 people would attend before telling the hearing they now expected 40,000.

“If you’re telling me 40,000 - and I don’t think you can say it will be only 40,000,” Assistant Police Commissioner Peter McKenna said under questioning from the organisers’ barrister.

“But if you can tell me 40,000 - trying to move them into that area, that cul-de-sac, that peninsula, then I have significant concerns about that.

“It has disaster written all over it.”

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Australia is introducing the means to target nations trying to sow community discord, as the government cracks down on state-sponsored terror.

The action follows allegations by spy agency ASIO that Iran’s hardline Revolutionary Guard Corps orchestrated the firebombing of Jewish sites in Sydney and Melbourne in 2024, prompting the expulsion of Tehran’s ambassador.

Labor promised to list the guard as a terror organisation in response to the attacks, once it had legal powers in place, and ejected Iran’s ambassador.

The government has now introduced legislation to parliament that will allow groups backed by foreign governments to be designated state sponsors of terror.

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The Government’s legislation to give stronger powers to the Triple-0 custodian to demand information from telcos and recommend improvements to the system has passed the lower house.

But a bid from the Opposition to speed up that reporting and improvement timeframe failed, as did a bid to make the custodian’s reports public.

Ms McIntosh said Australians should be dismayed by the lack of transparency.

The bill can’t become law until the end of the month because the Senate isn’t sitting this week.

Shadow communications minister Melissa McIntosh has labelled the series of errors around Optus’ notification of the deadly Triple-0 outage being sent to the wrong email address “a disgrace”.

Emails released to Senate estimates show Optus sent its initial notice to a departmental email address and to someone in the minister’s office on Thursday, September 18, but Minister Anika Wells told Parliament on Tuesday neither she nor her office found out until the Friday.

“You’ve got the department being advised, you’ve got ACMA the regulator being advised, and you’ve got the minister’s office being advised. Yet nobody could open an email and action it,” Ms McIntosh told reporters.

“They didn’t get three email addresses wrong. So what went on? Why couldn’t anyone open this email and act on it?”

Before the Department of Home Affairs confirmed that ISIS brides were back on Australian spoil, Sunrise Host Nat Barr had taken on Housing Minister Clare O’Neil over the return to Australia, after Foreign Minister Penny Wong was accused of a “cover-up” in Senate Estimates.

News broke last week that six Australian women, all partners of members of the terrorist group Islamic State, had reportedly returned to the country after being smuggled out of northern Syria.

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had earlier said reports his government was facilitating the return of ISIS brides were not accurate — a line his Government has maintained.

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Home Affairs has confirmed that six people linked to ISIS fighters have returned to Australia from Syria after Foreign Minister Penny Wong dodged questions on the security matter yesterday.

Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster has told a Senate Estimates hearing on Wednesday that six individuals — two women and four children — returned on September 26.

The women, known as “ISIS brides”, had returned to Australia after smuggling themselves and their children out of Syria following the Islamist group’s collapse.

Ms Foster said it had been “personally arranged travel” that Home Affairs didn’t play a role in coordinating and failed to answer questions about the government’s monitoring and management of the cohort.

Last month, Mr Albanese told Question Time that a media report about a top-secret operation to return them before Christmas was inaccurate.

Opposition leader Sussan Ley has accused the Albanese Government of a “cover-up”.

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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