What we learned: Monday 3 November
We will wrap up the live blog here for the evening. This is what made the news:
Independent MPs are pushing for changes to Labor’s proposed new nature laws, with one claiming the bill contains “gigantic loopholes that you could drive a heavy hauler through”.
The Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, was questioned over the telecommunications company’s triple zero outage, which left multiple people dead after they could not reach emergency services.
Sussan Ley says the Nationals are “entitled” to make their own position on net zero emissions targets, and says she and the Liberals will join their partner in developing a joint position on energy.
Senior Liberal frontbencher Andrew Bragg says net zero emissions must be retained “in some form” and is confident the Coalition will agree on such a position – despite the Nationals’ decision to abandon its commitment to the climate target.
Bragg said the Coalition had ditched its super for first home buyers policy due to the pressure it would place on demand.
Liberal frontbencher Melissa McIntosh has admitted Australians aren’t happy with the opposition amid low polling numbers.
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, says Australia shouldn’t be a “laggard” on emissions reduction, but we also shouldn’t be “streaking ahead”.
Barnaby Joyce isn’t completely sold on the Nationals’ energy policy despite being one of the most vocal advocates to scrap net zero emissions.
The deputy Liberal leader, Ted O’Brien, was booted from question time after shouting at the prime minister responding to a question.
Almost all of the users of video game chat platform Discord who were caught up in October’s data breach are located in Australia, Guardian Australia has confirmed, making up 68,122 of the disclosed 70,000 users.
We’ll be back for another sitting day tomorrow bright and early – until then, enjoy your evening.
Nokia engineers relied on old manual in upgrade that caused Optus outage
The 55-page Optus submission to the parliamentary inquiry goes into deep detail on what caused the triple zero outage – and why the company did not realise it sooner.
Optus’s network provider, Nokia, was upgrading its firewall in Regency Park, South Australia. Optus sent Nokia instructions on how to do the upgrade by off-loading phone traffic elsewhere while the upgrade was taking place. Nokia personnel instead relied on an “outdated method of procedure” document that did not include this step, and when the upgrade was commenced, calls could not connect.
Automated email alerts just after the outage commenced were also just dismissed as normal activity during an upgrade.
The submission reveals of the 605 unique numbers that attempted to call triple zero during the outage, 150 had successful calls, 65 connected through another Optus exchange, 19 were ultimately successful in connecting after a delay, and 66 connected via emergency camp-on to other mobile networks.
Optus said 455 did not connect to triple zero.
