What we learned, 21 September 2025
With that we’re wrapping up the blog. Before we go, here are the major stories from Sunday:
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has arrived in New York ahead of a string of diplomatic meetings with world leaders, possibly including Donald Trump.
The federal emergency services minister, Kristy McBain, has blasted Optus outage as “absolutely disgraceful”.
A baby boy has died and a young woman seriously injured after a ute crashed into a parked car on the side of a busy freeway.
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has accused the Nationals of betraying farmers for abandoning net zero.
Bowen has thrown his support behind Australian recognition of Palestinian statehood, saying that he believes “Israel will be truly free and secure when Palestine is”.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue addressed outrage over the telco’s outage that is thought to have contributed to the deaths of at three people nationwide.
South Australian police say the Optus outage was not involved in the death of an eight-year-old boy, but are still investigating its role in the death of a 68-year-old woman.
We’ll pick things up again tomorrow.
Updated
Teen arrested after pursuit in Sydney's west
A teenage boy has been arrested after a pursuit in Sydney’s west yesterday.
In a statement, NSW police said:
About 9.15pm on Saturday 20 September 2025, officers attached to Cumberland Highway Patrol attempted to stop a vehicle – believed to be stolen – travelling on Reservoir Road, Blacktown.
When the vehicle allegedly failed to stop as directed, a pursuit was initiated.
The vehicle allegedly travelled along the M4 Motorway towards Prospect and continued through to James Street, Leichhardt, where it will be alleged the vehicle crashed into a parked car.
Police attempted to remove the driver; however, an officer discharged their firearm at the vehicle, and another discharged a Taser, when the vehicle’s door allegedly hit and injured a police officer.
The driver allegedly crashed into two parked cars and rammed three police vehicles before driving away.
A 27-year-old male officer suffered a minor head injury and was taken to hospital for further treatment. He has since been discharged.
A short time later the vehicle was located abandoned on a driveway on Crystal Street, Petersham.
Following inquiries, about 2pm today (Sunday 21 September 2025), detectives attached to Leichhardt Police Area Command – with assistance of the Public Order and Riot Squad – arrested a 17-year-old boy at a home on George Street, Erskineville.
He was taken to Newtown police station and is assisting with inquiries.
Updated
Independent investigation ordered into triple-zero outage, Optus CEO says
Taking questions now, Stephen Rue says an independent investigation will be undertaken into what happened. In response to another (later) question, Rue said the Optus board is still working through who will oversee this independent review.
Rue says call volumes at the time of the outage “looked normal” and there was “no indication of a general network issue”. Even though they excluded triple zero calls, the failure to connect these calls was not detected. He says the company is now looking at all triple zero calls.
Rue is asked whether he had listened to the calls himself; he said he has not because he is undertaking a “multiplicity” of tasks, but a “very senior member” of the company has listened to the calls and reviewed them.
Asked whether the incident represents a “fundamental problem with the architecture of the Optus network”, Rue says the issue appears to have been a failure of process and that an investigation will determine what occurred.
Updated
Additional customers also affected by triple-zero outage in NSW
Rue says he has been made aware there were two additional callers from New South Wales who were unable to connect to emergency services.
He says the two callers were based near the South Australian border and their calls connected to South Australian towers.
Welfare checks on these calls have been progressed by Optus and the New South Wales police and we are not aware of any further issues.
Rue also outlines how a welfare check process works: he says that Optus will attempt to call affected households two times. When they are unable to make contact, police step in to make additional contact attempts.
It was during these further inquiries that the new information became known.
Updated
'Compulsory escalation process' for reports of triple zero failures to be introduced, Optus CEO says
Rue says he has confirmed that two customers contacted an Optus call centre to report they could not access the triple zero emergency line. The company is reviewing its call logs, and have so far found three other calls about an inability to access the emergency service network.
At the time of these calls, there were no red flags for the contact centre to alert them to any live issues. This is, clearly, not good enough and we are implementing a new compulsory escalation process following any customer reports of triple zero failures through our customer call centre.
Rue says Optus will have technical teams will be monitoring triple zero call volumes and failure rates, state by state and will provide further updates as new information comes in.
The outage affected South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory.
Updated
Optus CEO repeats apology for network failing triple-zero callers ‘in a time of need’
Early investigations show that established processes were not involved when delivering an upgrade to Optus infrastructure that led to an outage that may have cost at least three people their lives.
The Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, is speaking to reporters at a press conference where he has reiterated a personal apology for the infrastructure failure that led to a network outage leaving people unable to reach emergency services “in a time of need”.
I would like to reiterate how sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people who could not reach emergency services in a time of need. Further, I acknowledge that the connection failures created immense additional distress with some of our other customers who attempted to contact the triple zero service on Thursday and the news has understandably created concern for the wider community who rightly want to know that when they need this service, it would be available to them.
I apologise to everyone impacted.
Rue says he has put any further work on the network on hold “until we have a broader understanding of the events that have occurred, so that we can introduce greater monitoring, testing and compliance and reviews of our change process”.
Updated
The Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, is about to speak at a press conference regarding the outage that led to people across the country being unable to access the emergency network and may have been a contributing factor in three deaths.
A video link for the press conference is now live and it appears things will get under way shortly.
Updated
WA police to address media over Optus outage
Western Australian police will speak to media regarding the Optus outage that limited calls to the triple zero emergency services network.
Cmdr Jodie Pearson from the Metropolitan Regional Office will hold a press conference at 2pm local time in Perth on Sunday, or 4pm on the east coast.
We will bring you the latest as it happens.
Updated
Weekend auctions climb again
Auction activity has surged this weekend with 2,675 auctions to be held.
This is a climb on the 2,402 held last week but just under the 2,781 auctions that occurred at the same time last year.
Based on results collected so far, CoreLogic’s summary found that the preliminary clearance rate was 77.9% across the country, which is up on the 75% preliminary rate recorded last week but above the 69% actual rate on final numbers and the 60.7% at the same time last year.
Across the capital cities:
Sydney: 718 of 925 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 77.9%
Melbourne: 1008 of 1322 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 78.6%
Brisbane: 125 0f 174 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 65.6%
Adelaide: 76 of 135 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 85.5%
Canberra: 75 of 105 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 81.3%
Tasmania: Three auctions to be held.
Perth: Six of eleven auctions held.
Updated
Inflation fading but rate cut doubtful at least for now
The RBA governor, Michele Bullock, will face questions from federal MPs on the timing of interest rate decisions ahead of key economic data releases.
Mortgage holders may soon get a better idea of when they can expect another interest rate cut as the Reserve Bank boss defends the timing of its moves.
The appearance will be her first at a parliamentary hearing since the RBA board started cutting rates in February and the first since the federal election in May.
It comes as the Australian Bureau of Statistics prepares to release August inflation data on Wednesday, giving the central bank some indication of Australia’s economic temperature.
Inflation has been falling steadily since peaking in late 2022 and the Reserve Bank predicts consumer price increases will stay around the middle of its 2% to 3%cent target band for the next few years.
Bullock will also face questions about her push to end surcharges on card payments, which the central bank argues are outdated and inefficient.
– AAP
Updated
Optus outage appears not to have played a role in death of eight-year-old
South Australian police say that the family of an eight-year-old boy who died was affected by the Optus outage, but the lack of service does not appear to have contributed to his death.
Police said they would not normally comment on the individual circumstances but the public interest in this specific case “requires this action”.
In a statement released on Sunday, police said that the grandmother of the eight-year-old told investigating police that she attempted to call triple zero using her mobile phone when she was alerted to the fact the child was not breathing.
Her call did not connect but she immediately used another mobile phone in the house and was successfully connected to triple zero.
Police say preliminary investigations suggest the child’s death was not due to any delay in an emergency response, despite the initial fail to contact authorities.
They say they are still investigating whether the outage contributed to the death of a 68-year-old woman from Queenstown, saying the situation is “more complex”.
Updated
Australian singer pulls out of ‘Russian Eurovision’ citing political pressure
An Australian-born singer representing the United States in a Russian song contest has pulled out under political pressure from the Australian government, according to reports.
Vasiliki Karagiorgos is an Australian singer who was born in Darwin to Greek parents and moved to the US in the 2010s before returning to Australia in 2022. Known by her professional name Vassy, her song We Are Young hit number one on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.
The ABC reports that Vassy was expected to represent the US at the Intervision song contest, a Soviet-era competition that was revived in a presidential decree from Russian president Vladimir Putin after Russia was banned from Eurovision after its invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement provided to the ABC, Vassy said she was “still in shock” but would not comment further until she had spoken with the Australian government.
Updated
Manhunt under way after shots fired, police cars rammed in western Sydney
A manhunt is under way after a car rammed three police cars during a police pursuit, with one officer firing his weapon in an attempt to stop the driver.
A suspected stolen car has rammed police cars, sent one officer to hospital and saw multiple shots fired in a dramatic late-night police pursuit.
The chase began about 9.15pm on Saturday when NSW police tried to stop a suspected stolen Citroën sedan in Blacktown, in Sydney’s west.
When the car failed to stop, police followed it through multiple suburbs to Leichhardt where it crashed into two parked cars, rammed three police vehicles and drove towards police.
During the standoff between the occupants and police, the vehicle was reversed into a 27-year-old officer, causing him to fall and hit his head.
He was taken to hospital for concussion and has since been released.
Acting Supt Adam Solah said one officer fired their weapon at the car and another discharged a taser, but the driver was still able to flee the scene.
A short time later, police found the abandoned vehicle in a driveway in Petersham and a search is under way for the suspected offenders.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, acting Supt Solah described the actions of the driver as reckless, fearless and extremely dangerous”.
We’re very lucky that no one was killed, including police.
The police were out there on the street trying to arrest these two balaclava wearing offenders and a number of people were all run over.
– AAP
Updated
Albanese arrives in New York
A few snaps of the PM landing in the US ahead of a big week of tightrope diplomacy.
Updated
Baby dies after horror crash on side of busy Queensland freeway
A baby boy has died and a young woman is seriously injured after a ute crashed into a car parked on the side of a busy freeway.
Queensland police are investigating the fatal crash between a silver four-wheel-drive that was parked on the side of the northbound M1, when it was struck by a grey ute in the early hours of Sunday.
Police say the baby boy, who was in the parked four-wheel-drive, was rushed to the Gold Coast university hospital, but died a short time later.
The driver of the four-wheel-drive, a 24-year-old Ormeau Hills woman, was also taken to hospital in a serious condition.
The driver of the ute, a 51-year-old Loganlea man, sustained minor injuries.
– AAP
Updated
Optus CEO to speak to media about network outage
The Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, is expected to provide an update to media at 3pm AEST about his networks outage and the failure to connect triple-zero calls.
We will bring you the latest as it happens.
Updated
Tony Abbott implores Cpac to give Liberals ‘one last chance’ and condemns party’s ‘factional warlords’
Tony Abbott has urged conservatives to give the Liberals “one last chance” and apologised for the party’s 2025 election drubbing, joining a host of high-profile Coalition figures at a major political conference in imploring voters not to abandon the opposition for rightwing minor parties.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, recently dumped from the shadow frontbench, exhorted the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Brisbane to stick with the Liberal party, and encouraged her parliamentary colleagues to dump a net zero climate target, to cheers from attendees.
Abbott told Cpac in his headlining speech: “We must be a better opposition this time than last time, and we must be a better government next time than last time.
“I hope that you will give us one last chance to prove ourselves worthy of your trust,” he said, later repeating his request for another “chance to earn your trust”.
For more on this story read the full report by Guardian Australia’s Josh Butler:
Updated
Environment minister to give press conference
We are expecting the minister for the environment and water, Murray Watt, to speak to reporters at 12pm in Brisbane.
We will bring you the latest as it happens.
Updated
Revealed: how Albanese tried and failed (so far) to get a meeting with Trump
Anthony Albanese is anticipating his first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump next week.
If it goes ahead, it will be the culmination of a long and complicated process of diplomatic scheduling, according to documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information.
More than 100 pages of government communications reveal the lengths senior Australian officials went to in securing a meeting between Albanese and Trump in June, later cancelled when Trump abruptly left the G7 to attend to a conflict between Israel and Iran. The documents reveal:
Their meeting was locked in just days before;
Officials’ uncertainty over the status of the meeting;
The response among Australian officials when the US president cancelled meetings with Albanese and other world leaders.
The prime minister last week claimed “in the real world, no one cares” when he meets Trump – but a bevy of staff inside the departments of prime minister and cabinet (PM&C) and foreign affairs (Dfat) had worked to secure the June bilateral.
For more on this story, read the full report by Guardian Australia’s Josh Butler:
Barnaby Joyce says only people who live in cities are concerned about climate crisis
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has continued advocating for the Coalition to abandon efforts to tackle the climate crisis, repeating claims that efforts to reach net zero by 2050 would be “devastating” for the economy.
Speaking to Sky news on Sunday Morning, Joyce claimed that Australian efforts to reduce emissions would have no impact on climate change. He did not present any evidence for this claim.
Joyce continued to make similar claims, dismissing the recent National Climate Risk Assessment and alleging that only residents of major cities were concerned about climate change.
They always come up with these Calamity Jane statements. I think Australians are over net zero.
The black summer bushfires burnt at least 7.5m hectares of eucalypt forest, forced the evacuations from multiple regional centres and has been credited in some attribution studies with interrupting climate patterns that led to the torrential raid across northern New South Wales and catastrophic flooding in places such as Lismore and other northern rivers towns.
The Climate Change Authority chair, Matt Kean, rejected Joyce’s claims, saying the best scientific evidence has outlined the existential threat of global heating.
The more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the more heat that we’re creating, and the more extreme weather events that will result from that.
It is having a catastrophic impact, not only on Australia, but globally.
We need to be part of a global effort to reduce the amount of carbon that we put into the atmosphere – to stop or limit global warming – so that we can protect our lives and our livelihoods.
– with AAP
Updated
Australia marks 100th renewable project
Albanese government marks a milestone of 100 renewable energy projects since the May 2022 election as the prime minister lands in New York where he is expected to talk climate change with other world leaders, among other issues.
In a statement released on Sunday, Senator Murray Watt said the government was “setting Australia up for a future powered by renewables” with the 100 projects expected to reduce 53m tonnes of CO2 each year.
The projects included 43 solar farms, 22 onshore windfarms, 13 energy storage systems, 13 infrastructure and exploration projects including for offshore wind and nine transmission projects across the country.
The 100th renewable energy project to be given the greenlight is the Nowingi solar power station, 47km south of Mildura, Victoria. It will include an eight-hour storage battery and a 300mw solar farm.
Watt said the government would “continue supporting the rapid rollout of renewables to meet our ambitious and achievable 2035 target, and to achieve net zero by 2050.”
The Albanese Government is doing its part by approving these 100 projects right across the country.
Importantly, almost 90 per cent of these approval decisions were delivered on time.
During the first term in government the Albanese government approved 27 new coal, oil and gas developments and have approved four new projects since the 2025 election, according to the Climate Council for a total of 31.
This includes a 45-year extension to the North West Shelf gas export project by Watt approved earlier in September, a decision that would allow the associated facilities to operate beyond 2050 and is expected to generate 87.9m tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.
According to the Climate Council, the projects approved since the Albanese government came to power in 2022 would generate 12.8m tonnes of climate pollution in 2035.
Updated
New Russian ambassador confirmed after high court challenge over embassy
The Australian government has accepted Russia’s nomination for its next ambassador in Canberra, Mikhail Petrakov, after months of strained diplomatic relations.
Petrakov’s predecessor, Alexey Pavlovsky, departed Australia in early April, leaving his deputy as the most senior diplomat in the country.
Russia featured during the federal election campaign after unsubstantiated reports the country was seeking a military presence in Indonesia. At the time, Russia’s ambassador to Indonesia warned Australia “had no cards” to stop its military activity in the Indo-Pacific, which was mocked by Anthony Albanese as authoritarian “propaganda”.
Petrakkov’s confirmation comes just weeks after Russia told the high court its embassy lease in Canberra was illegally cancelled by the Australian government.
The Albanese government rushed laws through parliament in 2023 to cancel Russia’s lease on a plot of land where it planned to build a new embassy. Albanese cited advice from national security agencies about the proposed embassy’s proximity to parliament when justifying the action.
Russia at the time rejected the cancellation as “Russophobic hysteria” and an official even squatted on the land after the decision to frustrate any Australian effort to reclaim the plot.
The high court has reserved its decision.
Updated
Problems go beyond Optus in regional communities: Littleproud
Nationals leader David Littleproud has joined the government in condemning Optus over the outage of an essential service that is thought to have led to four deaths across the country.
Speaking to Weekend Today on Sunday morning, Littleproud described the failure by the company as “abhorrent behaviour”.
They have a responsibility. This is a universal service and a universal right for Australians to be able to use in our hour of need. The fact that Optus has just in some blase way ignored the risks that are there for Australians to be able to ring 000 is just beyond belief. And they do need to face penalties for this. The government needs to crack down.
Littlerpoud said other towns have also suffered similar outages from other providers. In one example, he said the town of Dalby didn’t have mobile service for two weeks from Telstra.
You couldn’t make a triple-zero call on a mobile phone. No one cared about us out here.
Thargomindah, just to the west of me here in St George, went under. Two hundred and fifty lives were at risk and they had no mobile service because Telstra didn’t update the tower. So it’s not just Optus, we need to actually lean into these telcos.
We need to make sure that we have the regulatory guardrails around them, to make sure they’re doing the right thing in terms of maintenance, but also that we’re building in the redundancy for things like 000 when they do maintenance.
Littleproud said that maintenance was necessary but “you need to have redundancy built into it” and describe the failure to plan properly as a “failure of these telcos”.
Updated
Spectre of black summer bushfires hangs over Optus outage, minister says
McBain said the spectre of the black summer bushfires hung over the Optus outage, particularly given reports that the incident lead to at least four deaths.
The minister is asked about an ANU study that found communities affected are still grappling with the long-term effect of that disaster.
Everyone is impacted and, as I said, sometimes those impacts can be uneven, but the trauma of an event like the black summer bushfire will remain with everyone in the community, whether they were impacted directly or not.
McBain said a skills shortage for essential trades has slowed reconstruction and repair efforts in regional areas.
I think the other thing we’ve seen, obviously during Covid, was we’ve had a number of people from our more metropolitan areas buy up in regional areas because they love the lifestyle that we get each and every day, but that’s had an impact on people trying to recover from bushfires as well.
The minister said that high insurance premiums have been an issue for some time but the government had created the “hazard insurance partnership” with insurance companies to meet regularly and discuss the issue, was “investing in disaster risk reduction” to bring them down and has initiated a “review into disaster funding arrangements and disaster responding arrangements”.
There is more work to do in this space, but it’s really important that those communication lines remain open, and I’m really keen to work with the assistant treasurer to make sure insurers are also holding up their end of the bargain when we are investing in mitigation and disaster risk reduction.
Updated
Optus outage 'absolutely disgraceful', says emergency management minister
The federal minister for emergency management has blasted Optus outage as “absolutely disgraceful”.
Speaking to the ABC on Sunday morning, Kristy McBain said this was the second in “only a couple of years” and “not good enough” from the Telecom.
The fact that no state or federal government was advised of this outage I think is beyond reprehensible
The minister said the last outage prompted a review that delivered 18 recommendations that were adopted by government.
Optus clearly needs to review its protocols. No doubt that they will be employing crisis communications specialists to come in and help them, but what they need to be doing is getting their systems in order so that Australians can have confidence that when they dial triple-0, it’s going to get through to one of our emergency operators.
Updated
Republicans warn Australia of ‘punitive measures’ over recognition of Palestinian state
Anthony Albanese says he will push for improved global peace and security during meetings with world leaders this week, as allies of Donald Trump warn Australia’s recognition of Palestine could spark “punitive measures” from the US.
Albanese arrived in New York on Sunday morning, Australian time, ahead of the UN general assembly and his possible first meeting with the US President.
Australia will use the UN talks to formally recognise Palestinian statehood, in concert with countries including France, Canada and the UK, but the decision has sparked a backlash from Israel and allies of Trump in Washington.
“What we want to see is increased peace and security and stability around the world,” Albanese said. “Australia plays an important role. We are a trusted partner and an ally.”
A group of 25 senior Republican lawmakers, including Texas senator Ted Cruz and Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik of New York, have written to the prime minister, as well as French president Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer of Britain and Mark Carney of Canada, urging a rethink.
The letter was sent to Trump and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
This is a reckless policy that undermines prospects for peace. It sets the dangerous precedent that violence, not diplomacy, is the most expedient means for terrorist groups like Hamas to achieve their political aims.
For more on this story, read the full report at Guardian Australia:
Updated
Low tariffs not dependent on sit-down meeting with Trump, Bowen says
On the potential for a meeting between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump, Bowen has poured cold water on whether any charm offensive by the Australian PM might have turned the US from its present course.
There are plenty of world leaders who have met with Donald Trump who haven’t had good outcomes, who have got very high tariffs. Who have come over, had meetings, left optimistic and then they’ve got high tariffs. The way Anthony Albanese has managed the relationship, we have the world’s lowest tariff on Australia.
Asked whether the meeting or results matter, Bowen says:
Results matter, David. Of course, the prime minister has made it clear he’s very happy to meet, but results matter. And this prime minister and this foreign minister and this government have delivered pretty good results when it comes to the bilateral relationship.
Asked whether a sit-down meeting is a priority, Bowen adds:
It’s not my place to announce these things, David. I’m a humble cabinet minister.
Asked whether it is not a priority, personally, Bowen says:
Of course a meeting with the president is always a good thing. But I’ll tell you what’s even more important is results. I’d much rather Anthony Albanese get a great result for our economy with the world’s lowest tariff without a meeting, than to have a meeting and get the opposite result, which is what many other world leaders have found themselves in that situation.
And that’s a wrap.
Updated
'Israel will be truly free and secure when Palestine is,' Bowen says
Chris Bowen is asked about Australia’s decision to support Palestinian statehood and a letter written by a number of US Republicans warning that any such move would threaten Israeli security and that “there could be consequences for doing so”.
Bowen is asked whether that worries him “at all”.
Well, we obviously have set Australia’s foreign policy based on our interests and our values. And while everyone is entitled to their views, we will determine Australian foreign policy, not anyone else. And we’ve determined a couple of things – that the time is right, in concert, as you said, with like-minded states.
We have been waiting 80 years for a two-state solution, and that we now see recognising Palestine as a step towards a two-state solution, not the result of negotiations.
And to your question, I believe that Israel will be truly free and secure when Palestine is. That’s what I believe. And vice versa. That these two states have to come to a peaceful coexistence, understanding we’re a long way from that as we speak.
And we believe, as other countries have reached a similar conclusion, that recognising Palestine this week is a meaningful step forward to that two-state solution which has eluded us for 80 years.
Updated
Australia talking privately to Turkey about rival bids to host Cop31 summit, Bowen says
On Australia’s bid to host an upcoming international climate conference, Bowen said the government is talking to their Turkish counterparts about their competing bid.
We have overwhelming support for our bid. This situation hasn’t really changed for a while, David. We have the overwhelming support from countries around the world for our bid.
The process, as Bowen suggests, relies on consensus and so “the two bidding countries sorting it out”. If they can’t …
Otherwise it goes to Bonn. I’m not going to discuss with my Turkish counterpart through you on the lawns of the UN. I will do it privately through him.
Updated
‘I don’t have much respect for those in federal politics who engage in climate change denial’: Bowen
Bowen is asked about Donald Trump’s view on the issue – which is largely that it isn’t an issue at all and countries should pursue fossil fuel extraction at all costs.
Bowen:
The president has views about this, about climate change. I have my views. I’m not here to comment on the views of others in other political systems. I will comment on the views of my opponents and colleagues in Australia. And I don’t have much respect for those in federal politics who engage in climate change denial, soft or hard.
The minister is asked whether Treasury modelling assuming the US will also play its role in climate action is “out of date”.
I opened with the fact that renewable energy is double fossil fuel investment, for example, and that renewables will surpass coal this year as the world’s largest source of energy. The Treasury modelling isn’t based on any political decisions by any other countries – United States or anybody else – it’s based on the practical, real market facts.
Updated
Bowen accuses National party of betraying farmers
Bowen is asked about calls from the Coalition and commentators on the right wing of Australian politics to abandon the country’s commitment to pursuing net zero – and specifically whether he thinks the loudest voices are “cranks and crackpots”.
I think they’re both. I think there are people of bad faith in Australian politics exploiting this issue. The National party, they are, in my view, betraying regional Australia. The national risk assessment I put out during the week showed people in regional Australia have a lot at stake in dealing with climate change. Farmers know that. I think the National party betrays farmers and people in regional areas when they engage in this cheap politics.
Bowen says points to several figures within the National party – Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan and others – and says they are promoting “disinformation”.
There are people who engage in climate change denial, who just ignore all the science, and I think that’s deeply unfortunate. I don’t have any respect for that.
For genuine Australians going about their business, listening to debate who are confused, of course, I have respect for what they are concerned about and the need to give them the correct and factual information against the disinformation they hear from so many on the right of politics.
Updated
Bowen says of the 60,000 Australians with home batteries: ‘Many of those people will never get an energy bill again’
Bowen is being grilled by skilled on the expectations for any transition of the Australian economy away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, particularly the need to quadruple offshore wind and boost EV sales uptake.
It is worth reminding that the existential threat posed by global heating requires a rapid, global transition away from fossil fuels in order to limit the worst effects. There are very real constraints on this process – skills, investment, and even, in some cases, regulation – and in many cases Australia’s efforts today have suffered from a failure to act in the past.
The minister acknowledges there are problems but is bringing the conversation back to the broad sweep of technologies that are making a change a reality but is trying very hard not to commit to specific numbers – and not be drawn on whether there may be more public spending to help it on the way.
In one example, Bowen points to the rollout of home batteries:
We’re already seeing impacts of policies with downward pressure on prices. So, for example, the 60,000 Australians who put a home battery in since 1 July, that’s helped them. Many of those people will never get an energy bill again.
Even though some people can’t afford them right now, Bowen says the effect of this is already being seen as those people have, largely, exited the grid during periods of peak demand. Asked whether the public can expect the price to come down, he says:
We’ll see over coming years. This is not a political promise. The Australian Energy Market Operator, with all their work, and this has effectively been backed by the Treasury, found energy prices coming down 13% if we stick with the plan of rolling out more of the renewable energy over the next decade.
Updated
‘Renewable energy investment is continuing at a rapid pace,’ Bowen says
The global embrace of renewable energy is continuing with twice as much investment as fossil fuels, even as governments appear to be falling behind on their climate goals.
The energy and climate minister, Chris Bowen, is speaking to ABC Insiders host David Speers live in New York where he acknowledged that efforts to reach the Paris climate target are lagging.
Renewable energy investment is continuing at a rapid pace – $2tn, double the investment in fossil fuels. Some time this year, renewables will surpass coal as the world’s largest source of energy. Some time next year, wind and solar separately will surpass nuclear as sources of energy.
So, massive amounts of renewable energy investment, including obviously in China and in India and in the global south, in developing countries.
But you’re right. The world’s action has taken us from a track of 4C warming 10 years ago to now somewhere between 2C and 2.8C. That’s good progress but not yet enough, so we’ve all gotta keep going.
Updated
PM lands in New York ahead of possible meeting with Donald Trump
The prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has arrived in New York for the UN general assembly and a series of meetings with world leaders.
The PM left Sydney early on Saturday morning and will be away for 11 days, with the trip including stops in London and the United Arab Emirates.
Albanese said climate change will be front and centre in New York – days after federal Labor announced its 2035 climate targets in Australia.
“What we want to see is increased peace and security and stability around the world,” he said. “Australia plays an important role. We are a trusted partner and an ally.
We are a country that plays a positive role in our region, in the Pacific, as well as of course, with our Asean neighbours, and our traditional allies, such as our five eyes partners, including the United States and the United Kingdom.
Albanese said he will take the opportunity to interact with counterparts gathering in New York.
We also have particular issues to advance, such as our social media ban, where Australia is leading the world.
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Chris Bowen on Insiders
The minister for climate change and energy, Chris Bowen, will speak to ABC Insiders host David Speers this morning.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has appeared on Sky News this morning to talk about climate change followed by the Climate Change Authority’s Matt Kean.
We will bring you the latest as it happens.
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Good morning
And welcome to another Sunday morning Guardian live blog.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has landed in New York ahead of a meeting of the UN general assembly and a possible one-on-one with the US president, Donald Trump. The PM left Saturday morning with stops in Dubai and London.
Optus has pledged to investigate a 10-hour outage that stopped emergency calls being connected during which at least four people died. The outage was caused by a botched firewall update to the telecom’s network and acknowledged it had been contacted by the industry ombudsman.
I’m Royce Kurmelovs and I’ll be taking the blog through the day.
With that, let’s get started …
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