Federal politics live: Communications minister to ‘lay down the law’ to Optus owner Singtel

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has invited Emirati “hypermarket” chain LuLu Group to set up shop on Australia’s shores and take on supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths.

Albanese confirmed the invitation to LuLu Hypermarket chairman Yusuff Ali while on a pit stop through the United Arab Emirates, as a free trade agreement with the Middle Eastern nation takes force.

“One of the great things about the [LuLu Group] chairman’s company, there are 300 supermarkets just like this one, I have encouraged him to come to Australia as well,” Mr Albanese said.

“I have encouraged him to come to Australia as well, we need more competition in the Australian supermarket sector, and we have had a little discussion about that.”

Continue reading friend of the blog Jake Evans’s report at the link below.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is hopeful a deal between Israel and the United States will could end the war in Gaza.

“We all want to see the war end. We always knew that the only peace that could be brokered would be brokered by the US. There is hope today,” she told Seven.

“We want to see the terrorist group Hamas dismantled, aid and humanitarian relief flow into Gaza. Something set up for an enduring peace.”

The White House has released a 20-point peace plan that would encourage Palestinians to remain in Gaza, see hostages and prisoners released on both sides, and see the Israeli military end its attacks, recently labelled a genocide by a UN Commission of Inquiry.

It follows talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.

Ley also questioned whether the PM had “any insight” into the agreement ahead of time.

US and Israeli leaders say they have agreed on a 20-point plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza.

Dave Sharma, Australia’s former ambassador to Israel and current Liberal senator, has described it as the “most comprehensive and detailed plan” that’s been put forward since the conflict started.

“I think it does have a good chance of success. I think the real difficulty here will be for Hamas to agree,” he told Nine.

“Hamas is being asked to sign its own extinction warrant here.”

Sharma said Qatar has most influence on Hamas, and Türkiye and Egypt to a “lesser extent”.

“Trump met with the leaders of all those three countries last week in New York. So they are part of this plan.”

“Depending on the level of military pressure they are feeling right now in Gaza City, and bear in mind they’ve lost a lot of their senior military leadership, that might be an attractive offer for some of them to take.”

A pair of triple-0 outages will be the topic of discussion when Communications Minister Anika Wells meets with Optus boss Stephen Rue and chief executive of the telco’s parent company, Singtel, today.

Yuen Kuan Moon was summoned for a meeting with the minister to explain Singtel’s role in an emergency network outage on September 18 that’s been linked to the death of three people.

The meeting follows another outage affecting triple-0 calls on Sunday near Wollongong on the NSW south cost, that led to nine failed calls. 

Ahead of the meeting, Environment Minister Murray Watt said Wells was prepared to “lay down the law” with Singtel.

“I’m very confident that Anika will really lay down the law the parent company, [Singtel], CEO,” he told Nine.

“She’s obviously already had discussions with Optus themselves, but escalating that now to the parent company demonstrates how seriously we are taking this.”

The government has ordered the Australian Communications Media Authority to get to the bottom of the outages.

Asked if Australians could still have faith in the triple-0 system, Watt said people were right to have questions and called for Optus to “come clean” on what it knows.

“I don’t think it goes as far as people needing to lose faith in the system.”

Greens leader Larissa Waters, who was also on the panel, called for the communications minister to put the conditions of Optus’ telco licence under review.

“The
minister’s got the power already without any further reviews or inquiries, to simply appoint an independent technical expert to look at the capacity of Optus to service that triple-0 emergency call.”

Hello, and welcome to our federal politics live blog! I’m Courtney Gould and I’ll be guiding you through the morning.

Anthony Albanese has held talks with the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan last night on the final stop of his 11-day trip which also covered the US and the UK. He’ll be making the final leg of the journey home today.

Speaking of home, Communications Minister Anika Wells will be meeting with Optus chief Stephen Rue and Singtel boss Yuen Kuan Moon later today.

I’ve got some 2010 dance hits pumping in my headphones, so let’s get blogging.

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