Australia news LIVE: Liberal leaders face fresh pressure over Nationals’ dumping of net zero; Eleven injured, one still fighting for life after UK train mass stabbing

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has this morning said that the government will “leave the [Coalition] to their chaos and infighting”, as division within the opposition over net zero reaches a fever pitch.

The PM’s comments follow Nationals leader David Littleproud’s announcement yesterday that his party would abandon net zero by 2050 climate targets.

“My government is focused, it’s disciplined, it’s orderly, and the Coalition, I’ll leave them to their chaos and infighting,” the PM told reporters in Canberra this morning.

“Australians shouldn’t pay the price of Coalition chaos when we are looking at the reforms, including environmental reforms, that are before the Parliament at the moment.”

Pressed on whether he was concerned about the shift away from centre parties in Australia and around the world, Albanese insisted that the government remained undeterred by the rise in extremism and would continue to reject such approaches.

“We will continue to govern as a party that is interested in reform but rejects extremes of the right or the left. We reject those approaches, and we continue to put forward things that make a practical difference to people’s lives,” Albanese said.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue has outlined the changes the telecommunications company has made since three people died following a Triple Zero outage in September, including monitoring call failure rates around the clock and employing 300 extra staff.

“Every network change now requires explicit confirmation that emergency call routing is functioning both before and after the work is completed,” Rue told a Senate inquiry into the outage this morning.

Loading

He said 24/7 state-by-state monitoring of call failures would detect problems faster, and daily, manual Triple Zero checks were being done.

“Our contact centre procedures have been overhauled, including a mandatory escalation process for any customer reports of Triple Zero issues,” he said.

“A dedicated critical services team has been established within our network’s function to provide a direct escalation point for frontline teams.”

Rue said the action was an attempt to rebuild trust to ensure Australians can rely on the network when they needed it.

“I fully accept there are aspects to the way events unfolded and how they were communicated over September 18 and 19 that we should have handled better. I assure you, we will learn from these,” he said.

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan has warned his colleagues that the Coalition partners are stronger together after the Nationals voted to abandon the net zero mandate from its policy platform.

Loading

The parties have run separate reviews into their respective energy policies, and Tehan is heading the outstanding Liberal review. The Nationals voted to dump net zero yesterday, risking a split from the Coalition if Opposition Leader Sussan Ley does not follow suit.

“I’ve always very, very strongly and firmly believed in the Coalition. I think together the Liberal Party and the National Party [are] the most successful political force in this nation,” Tehan told ABC’s Radio National.

“All of us, all Liberal Party, National Party, MPs should always remember that… and I think we do the right thing by the nation when we’re at our strongest.”

Tehan said he was focused on the review process to develop the Liberal’s energy policy.

“I never started this process seeking to fail. I want to succeed, and that means we’ve all got to work together,” he said.

Greens senator and spokesperson for the environment Sarah Hanson-Young has delivered scathing criticism of the National Party’s abandonment of net zero targets, arguing that “dumping net zero… is effectively dumping action on climate change”.

“The Coalition have proved themselves to be a party that’s just not serious about the environment. You can’t pretend that you care about the future of our country, the safety of and security of Australia. You can’t even pretend you care about the people in the bush, in the regions, if you don’t have a credible policy on climate change.

“The climate crisis is already here. It’s creating havoc for our farmers, for many who live in the regions, for those in the cities and the suburbs as well those huge weather events, storms, cyclones, floods, droughts that are becoming more extreme and more frequent,” Hanson-Young told ABC’s News Breakfast this morning.

“To not have a credible policy, in fact, to do the opposite, to take the country backwards, to be so anti-science, so anti-environment, so anti-investment in Australia. It is the biggest wrecking of climate action I’ve seen for a very long time.

“The Coalition are a joke… but they’re a dangerous joke. They don’t care. They don’t care about the safety or future of this country,” Hanson-Young said.

Optus CEO Stephen Rue will today front a Senate inquiry into the fatal September 18 Triple Zero outage linked to three deaths. He and other executives are expected to be grilled for the telco’s handling of the outage.

Speaking to ABC’s News Breakfast program this morning, opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh said she expected Rue to “give Australians answers, the answers [they] desperately want, particularly the people that have been impacted by outages”.

McIntosh has been pushing to implement a public register that would display telco outages across Australia in real-time, calling for “an all-in-one system where people can just go online and see what’s going on across the country. Australians deserve to have that transparency.

“Transparency, true transparency would be the government using the legislation that we’ve just passed through parliament to have a custodian overseeing the telecommunication system, to be overseeing a public register,” she told ABC’s News Breakfast this morning.

“I hope that the Senate inquiry uncovers what’s actually gone on and ACMA, the regulator, will also be questioned. They were caught up in the failed process. So let’s see, at the end of today, hopefully we have some answers for Australians.”

Opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh says she sees no reason for the Coalition to split after the Nationals voted yesterday to abolish a climate target of net zero by 2050.

“I have a close relationship with the [Nationals]and what they’re doing is, once again, listening to their communities,” the outspoken Liberal critic of net zero told Sky News this morning.

“I had a glance through the report that they’re referencing, and some of that is very common sense sort of stuff, things that people in my community are telling me as well.”

McIntosh said Opposition Leader Sussan Ley had her confidence, and should be given more time to lead the party through its post-election malaise.

“We’re down in the dumps. It’s not just about the leadership, it’s the whole Coalition and the people that are left,” McIntosh said.

She said she was not reading much into One Nation climbing in the polls, but could feel the pressure from her constituents to “make a strong stand on issues like net zero”.

“If they’re not seeing that from us right now, they might be leaning more towards One Nation, but, you know, but at the end of the day, a two-party system is best. One Nation isn’t going to be able to govern our country.”

Independent MP Monique Ryan has this morning slammed the Coalition for its division over net zero, claiming they are “headed for electoral oblivion”.

Speaking to Nine’s Today show following the National Party’s announcement yesterday that it was abandoning net zero, Ryan said, “[The Coalition] don’t know what they believe. They’re trying to look at, I think polls or the popularity contest. This is an important issue, and Australia, they know that climate change is real. They know that we need to do something about it. They’re looking to political leaders for leadership.

“They are not getting it. And I think they’re just basically driving themselves off a cliff in terms of both their electoral prospects, but also what that means for these political parties. It’s a critical time for the Coalition. They need to, you know, really look to themselves and look to what their guiding principles are, if there are any at all, and get back to those. If they don’t, they are headed for electoral oblivion.”

The Nats’ new policy will focus on climate adaptation and mitigation of carbon emissions, National Party leader David Littleproud said yesterday.

The decision poses a significant problem for Opposition Leader Sussan Ley as MPs return to parliament today. Three sources, who spoke to this masthead on the condition of anonymity, said moderates would prefer to split the Coalition than drop net zero aspirations altogether, and some were willing to quit the frontbench over the issue.

“The Liberal Party has lost two elections on net zero, and it looks like it’s just going to drive itself into an existential crisis here. It’s a bit sad, really, because we need an effective opposition, but we’re not going to get that at this point in this term of government from the Nationals or from the Liberals,” Ryan said.

Nationals leader David Littleproud has today doubled down on his party’s decision, announced yesterday, to abandon its commitment to a net zero by 2050 climate target.

The Nats’ new policy will instead focus on climate adaptation and mitigation of carbon emissions, Littleproud said yesterday.

“We believe there’s a cheaper, better, fairer way to reduce emissions, to live up to international standards, and to try and make sure we take the pressure off Australians who are having trouble to pay their electricity bills. We’re seeing people losing their jobs. This net zero by 2050 will cost Australia $9 trillion putting at risk things like Medicare, NDIS… We should do the right thing, not just in mitigation of emissions, but also in terms of adaptation, making sure that we have a more resilient environment,” Littleproud told Nine’s Today show this morning.

Pressed on whether he was frustrated by the Coalition’s indecision over net zero, Littleproud insisted that the party “respected” its Coalition partners’ process.

“I think you’ve got to work from the premise of respect, and that’s what we work on. This isn’t about personality. This isn’t about Coalition. This is about good policy… rather than politics, and we just hope that this will feed into the process with our Coalition partners, and we’re doing that in a constructive way.”

“It’s important that we just let each party work through their own processes,” Littleproud said.