HAMISH MACDONALD, HOST: To Canberra now. Lots going on today, including these telco bosses being grilled before a Senate hearing this morning. You already heard some of Stephen Rue earlier with his response to some of those questions about why he contacted the bosses in Singapore before contacting the federal government about that big outage. Sam Maiden is here from news.com.au and Labor member for Macquarie, Susan Templeman, very good morning to you both.
SAMANTHA MAIDEN, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR NEWS.COM.AU: Good morning.
SUSAN TEMPLEMAN, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR MACQUARIE: Good Morning.
MACDONALD: So the poll's pretty bad today. Sussan Ley and the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, probably making it not much easier for her. This is him on News Breakfast this morning talking about net zero.
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DAVID LITTLEPROUD, LEADER OF THE NATIONALS: The net zero policy that Anthony Albanese is going to cost the Australian people $9 trillion. That puts at risk things like Medicare, NDIS if we don't have an alternative way. So, we believe in climate change, we believe in reducing emissions, but we should pivot when the world pivots.
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MACDONALD: So where does this all leave Sussan Ley as she tries to land a position that her own party can agree on?
MAIDEN: Well, they're not into it, are they, net zero, the Nats? They're just not into it. Look, I the bottom line is that Dan Tehan, who is running the process for the Libs, or at least leading it, he says that this doesn't preclude them, you know, reaching their own position. Other people in the Coalition have said that as well. The reality is that it creates an impression that they don't support this. Obviously, there are some people within the coalition, within the Liberal Party I should say, that agree with the Nationals on this. Look, I don't think... The jury is kind of a little bit out on whether this permanently, long-term, unequivocally is bad in terms of voters, right? Like, I mean, Australian voters swing around a little bit on, right? So, we don't know whether we will arrive at a point where, for some reason, the public shifts ground or they're concerned about electricity prices. The recent evidence seems to be, I think, that the fact that the Labor Party is committed to climate change action is a net positive for them. There's been evidence of that in the 2022 election and in the 2025 election. But you can't say that that's going to remain the fact, the case forever. There are concerns about electricity prices. That doesn't mean, though, that people don't want to do anything about climate change. I think in the short term, obviously it's a problem for Sussan (Ley) because there's this disunity. There's no doubt about that.
MACDONALD: Susan Templeman, we spoke to someone from just down the road from you this morning, Melissa McIntosh, in the electorate of Lindsay, Shadow Communications Minister. She explained why she's landed on a position where she's not going to support a continued commitment to net zero.
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MELISSA MCINTOSH, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR LINDSAY:
I'm backing my community on their position, which is that they don't support net zero, but we do need to find a pragmatic energy solution. And that's what I'll be working through in the party room and with my colleagues.
MACDONALD: So, can we just clarify, you're saying on the basis of where your community, your respondents sit, you wouldn't support a commitment to net zero by 2050?
MELISSA MCINTOSH MP: Correct. And it's not just about that one survey.
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MACDONALD: Susan Templeman, do you talk to your constituents about this? Do you see some caution from voters who say, well, maybe I think we should do something, but I'm not seeing the cost benefit when I'm getting my power bills at the moment?
TEMPLEMAN: Well, I talk to constituents who were, until recently, Melissa McIntosh's constituents as well, because my electorate now takes part of Lindsay into it. And I talk to... I've been talking to people about this for 15 years, and it's really clear to me that people do want to see strong action to bring down emissions and to increase renewables. But of course, the costs of a whole lot of things are hurting, and that includes electricity. You mentioned insurance. That is the other massive price pressure that my constituents are feeling and that is partly because we haven't brought emissions down in previous years and climate change is exacerbating the experiences of people with natural disasters. So it's not a simplistic thing and I just don't think 1.5% of your electorate is necessarily a great basis for making a decision. It's interesting to note that Chris Bowen, the Minister, and I celebrated 50,000 home batteries being put online at Penrith, at one of the big solar businesses in Penrith, PSC, formerly known as Penrith Solar, for people who might not recognise its new name, and right now, about 1,200 households in Macquarie have recognised that a home battery can reduce their costs and reduce their emissions, and about 715 in Lindsay have done that. So, there are plenty of people taking action in Lindsay in the last four months, you know, putting their money where their mouth is in terms of wanting to do something. So, I just think it's very simplistic to say, oh, well, this is what people say, then we're going to abandon net zero. It's our only credible pathway forward and there is no alternative that's being put forward.
MACDONALD: I suppose the question is about when power bills might come down, if they will ever come down. And I know that's a difficult question for you to answer.
TEMPLEMAN: Well, yes, and we know that all the modelling shows over the longer term it's something like a 20% reduction with renewables.
MACDONALD: And what do you define as the longer term? Like when can people expect to see that?
TEMPLEMAN: It depends which modelling you're looking at, Hamish, and I'm not going to pretend to be the expert in predicting the future on that. But without it, we know that there's going to be less energy in the system. Power stations are closing. Coal-fired power stations are closing. We'll get more energy insecurity. In the last month, renewables outperformed coal. That's two months in a row that we're seeing it. And renewables were at nearly 50% in usage in the electricity grid. That's the highest it's ever been. So, change, we've had three and a half years to be doing these changes and we're really starting to see tangible moving forward on it. We need to keep doing it but I'm really mindful that cost of living is still a big issue for people and that's something as a government we have to stay focused on. As we were in our first term, we have to keep that in our second term.
MACDONALD: Labor MP for Macquarie, Susan Templeman, is here. Sam Maiden from news.com.au. It's 19 minutes past nine on 7.02. At the moment, the Telco boss is fronting this inquiry into the Triple Zero outage, but also a broader look at preparedness. Sam Maiden, obviously, there's still some kind of fury amongst the various parties about the way Singtel and Optus handled this. But what's the broader question they're getting at here? Is it, can we rely on this stuff during a natural disaster?
MAIDEN: Yeah, look, I mean, I've been watching the hearings and it's fair to say it's been pretty brutal. The Optus CEO is getting absolutely dragged along with some of the caravan of characters that he's brought along to give evidence. They've put in a 55-page document outlining this timeline. And, you know, I think the timeline is pretty devastating for Optus in terms of the way that they have handled this. Look, of course, there are concerns about natural disasters, what happens in all those situations. But people, I think, quite rightly keep coming back to the fact that people that called Triple O had people that died in this situation. So they're desperately calling for help. They couldn't get through. And the way that Optus handles this seems to have been riddled with absolutely appalling failures. They knew very quickly, you can see from that timeline, that there was a problem. Obviously, they didn't know immediately that, you know, it was being linked to deaths, but they knew very quickly that there was a problem with Triple Zero and the fact that it took so long to inform authorities who might have had, you know, the channels to inform the public faster to say, hey, this is not working, channels to inform the public faster to say, hey, this is not working. Use another phone, go next door. It's pretty devastating. Devastating.
MACDONALD: Susan Templeman, you obviously live in an area which kind of is the outskirts of a major city, reception pretty patchy, I think, up around the Hawkesbury from what listeners tell us. And this is an issue we've spoken to Kristy McBain about right at the beginning of the year, the emergency response minister, her own electorate, South Coast, impacted by this sort of stuff. There is a bigger question, isn't there, about our capacity in emergencies to rely on this technology. Are you satisfied your government's done enough?
TEMPLEMAN: I've seen a lot of resilience being built into the network. Obviously, Optus has failed appallingly.
MACDONALD: Sure, but I know certainly that today our text line will blow up as we talk about this with people saying, you know, I live even here in the city and I have patchy reception. I don't know what I'd do in an emergency.
TEMPLEMAN: Yeah, well, I've been in an emergency and I haven't been dialling triple O, but I've been trying to communicate with my son at home, working out when he should leave before a bushfire burnt down our house. And so it is absolutely essential in the, not just the more remote areas, but the quite urban areas of the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury that we have a resilient telecommunication system. Now, what I've seen in the last few years has been a significant increase in the number of towers that have gone in. We've got... But we've still got lots of problems, and some of it is ridiculous things like it takes... We're waiting for electricity to be delivered to a site so that the tower can be connected. Or in the Macdonald Valley, which is up around St Albans, argy-bargy about what land it should go on. And the telcos actually have to be as committed to solving these problems as government is, because they're the ones who do the work. And I've had too many occasions where funding's been allocated, and this is over a period of 10, 15 years, funding's been allocated and then it's been a bit too hard, so they've sought to move that funding elsewhere. So it is imperative that we have a resilient system. And that means that for some places right now, we still need those landlines working perfectly. And that is not always something that we see. But a mix of, I think the key is going to be when we get this handset to satellite system that we announced was going to be the target that we have. The telcos are telling me that our timeline is challenging for them, but using the low-orbiting satellites, the LEO sats, is one way Australians would know that no matter where they are, they have a handset that can talk to a satellite. And even in Peri Urban communities like mine, that can be the difference between getting help or being left on your own.
MACDONALD: Susan Templeman, Sam Maiden, thank you very much.
MAIDEN: Thank you.
TEMPLEMAN: Thank you, bye.
ENDS
