Trump has a plan for peace. Will it work?

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In the last few months, Donald Trump seems to be chasing something.

We need the rare earth, and we have some here, but we don't have enough.

He's on the brink of signing a huge rare earths deal with Ukraine.

It's a very big deal.

It could be a trillion-dollar deal.

It could be whatever.

But does this deal actually make any sense?

I'm Matt Bevan, and on my show, if you're listening, we've been fossicking through the past for clues about the big news of today.

New episodes on ABC Listen every Thursday.

Donald Trump famously claimed he'd deliver peace in the Middle East as soon as he stepped back into the Oval Office.

Well the months have rolled on but now he's talking up an agreement with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu that he says will rid the region of tyranny forever.

for eternity.

It's a bold claim for a region that's been steeped in conflict.

So will the pair's 20-point plan end the war in Gaza?

And Optus has met with the government, but is anything actually happening?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Brett Worthington, filling in for PK.

And for the first time on Politics Now, I'm Olivia Caisley.

Liv, it is wonderful to have you here.

We will get to some of the developments coming from Optus and also find out what is going on with AUKUS very shortly.

But let's start with Donald Trump.

It was full Trumpian antics that we saw in the White House today.

He was raging about the teleprompter again from the UN last week.

There were swipes about Joe Biden.

But the meat here was this deal that he has struck with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu.

It feels like we're always hearing about new peace plans for the Middle East.

Where are we sitting this new agreement in terms of where we are at in this conflict?

Well, I guess, as we know, U.S.

President Donald Trump likes to talk a big game and here today he's unveiling his 20 point plan to end the war in Gaza.

This is a hugely significant moment and I guess it's providing a flicker of hope for a peace in the region after

a conflict has dragged on for a really long period of time now.

Obviously though there's a big question mark about whether this will go ahead given there have been multiple negotiation talks and peace plans announced over the course of the conflict.

Yeah, so if we look at what's meant to be in this deal, if it goes ahead, so Gaza would be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza.

If both sides agree to the proposal, the war would immediately end.

The Israeli forces would withdraw to agreed-upon lines, and you'd also see a ceasement of the military efforts that are playing out there.

You'd see the return of all the Israeli hostages and then further discussions about Gazan prisoners being released.

It sits in an environment where on the back of recognition for Palestine happened at the UN last week.

There was a somewhat pessimistic tone last week about whether or not any breakthroughs could be made within this region.

You had Emmanuel Macron, the French president, really trying to drive forward efforts in there.

He was trying to get Donald Trump together with Muslim and Arab leaders to try and broker a deal here.

The Australian government essentially is saying it's not a big player in this region, but it is clearly closely monitoring what is happening here.

And we saw the Prime Minister last night talking with the head of the UAE during his stop over there, where we know Gaza was being discussed.

Yeah, I guess you can sort of see Australia's position in this, is that they're part of this big international movement trying to put more pressure on the Netanyahu government to, I guess, end this conflict.

As you say, we have now recognised Palestinian statehood alongside a number of our allies, such as France and the United Kingdom.

And just just listening to what

we heard from the Acting Prime Minister Richard Miles this morning, he's certainly welcoming this as an important development.

And this has been something that we've heard too from the likes of the opposition leader Susan Lee.

I guess there is support within the government to see an end to the conflict as soon as possible.

So they're backing in Donald Trump's proposal here.

Yeah, and probably perhaps unsurprising that the coalition would be quite supportive of steps that the US government is taking here.

They, like Labor, both adamant they want to see peace delivered in the Middle East, but we saw Susan Lee writing to those Republican politicians to say, look, we're not supporting recognising a Palestinian state now, but we ultimately do want to see peace delivered in the region.

Do you think this will start to factor into the discourse we're seeing back here about the ways in which the war is playing out, if this peace deal could well be achieved?

Well when it comes to the the coalition's perspective, we've seen that it has been a really fractious issue here.

As you mentioned, this extraordinary step or this letter that Susan Lee wrote to the United States essentially saying that they'd withdraw recognition.

So it has been a contentious issue here.

The coalition is pretty forthright in their support of Israel more generally.

But speaking with coalition sources sort of behind the scenes, there is a sense though that they do want this conflict to end.

And I I think that they don't want to get bogged down, I guess,

in the politics of this and have it sort of being their kind of their focus, I guess, moving forward over this term of government and ultimately a focus on more sort of domestic issues in general.

They've certainly put the government under pressure over securing a meeting with US President Donald Trump, which has now come to pass.

But on the issue of Israel, they do seem to be happy with this plan that's come through.

And we did hear from Dave Sharma, for example.

He's a Liberal senator, Australia's former ambassador to Israel, and he's described this as a comprehensive and detailed plan.

And certainly, I guess there's more support for this.

that we've seen this morning.

Yeah, one of the other interesting elements that jumped out to me was Benjamin Netanyahu offering that apology to the Prime Minister of Qatar, the suggestion that our colleague John Lyons, the America's editor, was really kind of suggesting that that was Trump behind the scenes, a sign that wanting to push Benjamin Netanyahu to get to a place where you could see

the delivering of peace within this region, but clearly a long way to go here.

In the short term, Anthony Albanese was in the UAE where he wanted to talk up trade and those closer ties with Australia and the UAE, but that work with which he is doing to focus in on broad parts of the Arab League and the ways in which Muslim and Arab leaders might be able to help shape what this new direction going forward will look like, I think is an interesting one where Australia probably will be a smaller player.

And looking at some of what Donald Trump had to say, he himself is going to be playing a key role in helping to deliver peace, he's saying, in the region, but we know the Prime Minister spoke with Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister.

He too would likely be part of this potential governor's type situation that could be put forward.

But very early days, as we're recording this, it's mere mere hours after Donald Trump stood up.

And like you say, at times has been known to celebrate things a little bit earlier before we get here.

So it'd be definitely one to watch in these coming hours, let alone in the coming days.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, I'd just say, you know, we've seen sort of

interesting language from Donald Trump in the past on Gaza.

He's been quite flippant saying that he'd like to see the creation of the Riviera of the Middle East and that kind of thing.

His commentary today was still,

I I guess, hopeful, suggesting that this was going to be some kind of major breakthrough.

But your comments there about Netanyahu,

I think the pressure on him internationally is undeniable.

And we have just seen this groundswell of different nations coming together, traditional allies of Israel and those that wouldn't be, essentially saying that enough's enough now.

And we have also seen, as you say, you know, Anthony Abenizi meeting with the various Arab states who too have been willing to come to the table call out October 7 for example call for the release of hostages and you are seeing people trying to move to somewhat of a middle ground on what is such a complicated conflict but really just to get and strive towards peace there.

Yes and we're going to see the Prime Minister flying out of the UAE in the hours to come.

He's coming back to Australia where you can guarantee he's all but certain to want to get back onto talking about domestic issues.

It's been a big week on the world stage and one of which he's probably quite happy with how it's all fared.

But he is coming home to this saga with Optus.

We've seen this morning the communications minister Annika Wells meet with the company.

We know Singtel, which is the parent company of Optus, is out here.

There were some talks yesterday.

There were talks today.

Before we get to what came out of the those talks this morning, how are you assessing where this issue is sitting in terms of it's obviously a big issue when it emerged last week about the three deaths, but do you think it's one that will be cutting through to households across the country?

Yeah look I think so.

I mean being able to

call emergency services if you're having you know a medical problem or a police problem it's

it's an essential, it's a no-brainer.

It's something that every Australian expects and I do think that it is deeply concerning for a lot of people.

I do think that Optus has had some significant examples over the past couple of years where their services haven't been up to scratch.

So whether that be the massive cyber attack that there was late 2022, there was a separate emergency hotline failure, if you like, a similar issue just a couple of years ago as well, 2023.

And then now we've had this one too.

So there might be some pessimism around how Optus is handling this in general.

But I do think that really pressure will be mounting on the government now and its response about how it's, I guess, forcing a private company to do the right thing.

We saw a lot of flurry in the immediate aftermath.

So ACMA, the independent regulators, called in to look into it.

Optus says it's going to review it as well with Kerry Schott looking into it.

There'll be those separate police inquiries that then go to the coroner for the deaths.

But as we're kind of a week on from it now, we sort of had these statements that were made by the minister and from the company today.

And you kind of got to the end and you were like, wait,

what's happening?

Who's doing what?

And

whether or not Annika Wells will come to regret being asked what assurances can you give the public about triple zero and her deflecting that and saying, well, that's a matter for Optus to answer for.

It's unclear to me what is exactly happening in this moment right now.

I completely agree with you.

I sort of, I was watching this press conference playing out.

Annika Wells,

she's on the street,

you know, talking to reporters about this.

And I completely agree with you.

From what I could ascertain, we know that there's going to be, or she's, I guess, calling for these independent reviews that will go underway.

But I don't really understand what's going to happen next per se.

She was certainly talking a tough game, saying that Optus is on notice over this, it's not good enough, but what exactly the government's going to do to compel them or

force change in this space, that wasn't very clear.

Yeah, because there's an obvious element here of the government said there will be consequences.

And well, that's clear because there will be fines as a result of breaching your obligations.

Now, that's pretty standard and to be expected, given as soon as it became clear there had been this issue, that ACMA was frustrated at the way in which Optus hadn't notified it in a clear and transparent way enough.

And the South Australian Premier, remember Peter Malinowskis, was scathing of Optus about the ways in which the state government found out about it.

But there are these growing calls from even parts of the coalition and the Greens wanting for a more comprehensive investigation.

The coalition argues that ACMA has questions to answer and wonders how it can be the body that is overseeing this investigation.

But the general sense that we're getting from the government, both from the minister today and from Jim Chalmers yesterday, was they're not really in the appetite for calling for another investigation again.

but they might not be able to stop a Senate inquiry from getting up if it is that, say, the coalition and the Greens were to push ahead with that.

Yeah, that was my sense too.

And I also didn't get a sense that there'd be additional penalties, if you like.

So, Optus, in the past, they were fined $12 million for a similar failure for emergency services back in 2023.

So, they've had to use these kinds of punishments, if you like, or penalties in the past.

I didn't get a sense that there could be

a ramping up of that in particular, or

what else the government will do.

And there were those calls initially for the new, relatively new CEO of Optus to go.

That's the company sounds like it's firmly backing him in.

He's not been in the job for a year.

Perhaps unplanned, Annika Wells sort of also said, Well, I'm a new minister as well in this portfolio.

And I think what will be really interesting is if the coalition can find clear arguments of attack here and less talking about itself will help because it will be able to focus its minds.

But as much as Annika Wells is, yes, a new minister in this portfolio, these are not new issues for the government.

So back in 2024, the former minister, Michelle Rowland, received those recommendations into that outage that happened at Optus.

She said one of the key priorities was rolling out a triple zero custodian.

We've talked a bit about it here on the podcast.

And the whole point of that job is to oversee the whole network so that if there are issues with one telco you can make sure there's a seamless transition and it's still unclear to me to this day when the government will be fast-tracking the legislation that it's talking about to give it teeth now the parliament will be coming back in the coming weeks is that going to see the legislation going there or not will they be taking steps to really bolster that level of oversight to ensure that the telcos are meeting what they're doing but also to give the community assurances as you head into bushfire season that if you've got an issue, you want to be able to call triple zero and someone will pick up the phone well i think that's probably why there's so much frustration within the community that this is happening again because as you say uh annika wells might be the new communications minister but

sort of each incident we've seen over the past couple of years has been during uh what was

started during the first albanese term of the government so 22 the massive cyber attack that was largely under the purview of former home affairs minister claire o'neill but then you had a national outage also i believe in 23 another in 24 as well.

So, I mean, these aren't new issues to the government, and you'd think that she'd be sort of, I guess, ready to go.

Do you think that's fair to say?

Yeah, and I think that one of the other ones, so you've got both Annie Colls being new to the portfolio, but you've got Kristen McBain also being new to the emergency management portfolio.

And if we go back to that early period of the new Albanese government, you had Murray Watt, the then emergency management minister, and Michelle Rowland as a communications minister, vowing that within 18 months they'd be rolling out new technology that could send alerts to people's phones to say there's an issue, you need to be ready.

Here is an emergency warning.

And the technology was meant to be able to override, do not disturb.

As long as you had a SIM card, it would be getting there.

And we found out earlier this year that that technology is nowhere near being ready.

And that's going to be not until the end of next year.

So these portfolios have these big issues that go right to the heart of community concerns.

And the government has set an expectation for itself that it would be doing all these innovative things to ensure the safety.

So, whether or not they can meet the own standard that they've set for themselves, I think will be a really interesting test for both the new ministers.

Yeah, and when you go to the sort of pure politics of this, when it was the opposition Labour government, they really managed to successfully prosecute.

It was a bushfire, it was a bushfire season that transformed Scott Morrison's prime ministership.

Exactly.

Like, so soon after being elected.

I don't hold a hose, it's a flippant remark.

Yeah.

But it goes to that point you're making about it.

That is what people are concerned about.

Exactly.

So they managed to keep that front and centre, really,

I guess, hold the former Morrison government to account over its lack of accountability and inability to, I guess, respond to that crisis effectively or urgently enough.

And so they certainly sense a political opportunity here to hold the now Albanese government to account over these optus shortage issues.

And I think given that there's been now a number of them, especially to do with Optus over the past couple of years, there will be enormous pressure on the Communications Minister Anna Kawells to respond to this and not just, I guess, pass the buck to Optus and say it's their problem.

Yeah, that's right.

So the Prime Minister comes back into the country and so last week he was keen to say, look, I'm over here, I'm dealing with these issues.

He sort of likes to deflect the local issues when he's abroad, but that won't cut it when he comes back.

So it'll be interesting to see what he's doing to get across this issue and ways in which he's going to drive that change within his own government.

One other issue we do need to get to, though, is AUKUS.

What on earth is going on?

I feel like I wake up every day and there's a different,

it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off.

Where are we at?

So interestingly, this morning we woke up to these reports in international media.

So Nikkei Asia suggesting that the United States has signed off or given the green light to the AUKUS PACT.

So as we know, earlier this year, Washington under the Under Secretary for Defence, Elbridge Colby, was going to

undergo a review of that.

And that obviously ruffled feathers or I guess caused apprehension both in London and Canberra over the future of the pact under the Trump administration 2.0.

These reports this morning suggesting that everything's all tickety boo

and everything's going to go ahead as planned.

However, the Pentagon or the US Department of War, I should say.

Yes, the new branding is dropping, isn't it?

Has responded and they very much said this is not a green light, it's still an amber light and that ultimately the review is still underway and there are no announcements in this space.

So I guess we're kind of back at square one.

We're still, everything is still, I guess, up in the air.

I guess though what we're seeing is

more positive signs from within the government and also publicly as well that they are really confident about the future of AUKUS and certainly speaking with sources behind the scenes, there's a real confidence, I'd say, too, in the United States' ability to ramp up its submarine manufacturing processes.

Because under Pillar One, Australia is due to get three Virginia-class submarines by 2032.

And certainly, government sources I've spoken to are really confident or hopeful about that.

So, ultimately, we don't know what the review is.

I've been trying to find out whether it is.

You could fall off the back of the truck.

Your email is open and yes, exactly if anyone wants to send it to me if it's uh all sorted yeah please do but um i think what is most likely is that they time the release of that review around uh anthony albanese's trip to washington he's got his long-awaited meeting with donald trump on october 20 and my sense is that we'll likely see the review released around then and it will likely be positive um but it's clear from the united states perspective that

they don't agree with this report or maybe it's a bit premature.

And so the Defence Minister Richard Miles, when he was talking about it, he's been adamant that Marco Rubio and the US government has been keeping him abreast of where that review is at.

He seems to be suggesting that there's confidence there.

Do you think we've moved a long way from those early days of that review given Elbridge Colby was the person looking into it, that there was a bit of a sense that this could be a line going through this and there's no plan B for Australia's plans for subranitaries.

Elbridge Colby, he was sceptical about AUKUS, namely because he was concerned about the United States being exposed that if it starts

giving submarines to Australia the US wouldn't be able to meet its own requirements and there was concerns about the US shipyards ability to manufacture.

So given what I'm hearing from the Australia, perhaps those concerns have been allayed.

Perhaps he's done this review.

As you say, he was initially a sceptic.

Perhaps he's realised that this is a good deal for the United States.

I'm not sure.

But I do think that we're certainly getting more positive feedback than we did or we were getting just a couple of months ago.

And I think the fact that we've also got this meeting now being given the green light,

it seems like

things are on steadier footing, perhaps.

And I think the fascinating bit for me is the way you see the use of language.

So in this reporting, AUKUS is safe, and you've got Richard Miles talking about AUKUS going ahead is great.

But that point that you made, it's the pillar that we're talking about within.

AUKUS is so much bigger than what submarines might well be.

So there is a world with which submarines could be delayed or submarines could be an issue or maybe a future administration decides not to release submarines.

But AUKUS as a broad vision that brings together Australia and the UK and we heard from the UK

in in recent days about reinforcing that is that shared vision about

you're not allowed to say it countering China's expansion throughout parts of the Pacific working closer together to kind of make sure that the the intelligence sharing is happening within those levels of those three countries yeah definitely and as you say there is a question mark um or I guess you've got to add the caveat safe for now because you never know what's going to happen in the future, what potential administration is.

So even though we we might get assurances now, it does still feel a little bit up in the air.

But ultimately, we're going to have US troops situated in Australia, in Western Australia, HMAS, Sterling and Henderson from 2027.

So that's really not that far away.

It really is ramping up significantly and the government's doing a lot of work to, I guess, progress this deal.

And as much as there's focus about what's happening in the US, back home in our own backyard, backyard,

your reporting is showing us that there are issues going on with AUKUS that is sort of underneath the terrains in all this focus about Donald Trump.

What have you been learning?

So I trolled through AUSTENDA, which

you know how to have fun.

Yeah, it's, yeah,

less I say about that, the better.

But basically,

it's got a whole list of government contracts and where they're spending money.

And so this particular one caught my eye.

So basically, the Australian Submarine Agency, it was set up to

roll out this $368 billion AUKUS submarine deal.

And ultimately, it's been beset with, I guess,

allegations of governance issues, high workplace turnover.

There was an Australian public service audit basically last year, or a census that said that the levels of staff dissatisfaction were pretty high.

So, the government, understandably pretty concerned about that and so they got Dennis Richardson, a former senior bureaucrat to conduct an independent review.

But supplementary to that they've also been shelling out quite a lot of cash on consulting firms.

So Boston Consulting was meant to do a sort of a snap four-month review

to look at how everything was running, ensure everything's all fit for purpose.

It's meant to cost $2.7 million.

That has blown out substantially by five times to $12.1 million.

Now, I know that figure in the grand scheme of things, drop in the ocean, no pun intended, when it comes to AUKUS, but it does raise kind of broader questions about what kind of cost blowouts are we signing up for with what is already a very, very expensive submarine deal.

And if you talk to other departments, if they had a cost blowout like that, there is that frustration in other parts of the public service that defence is a protection with which you can see these blowouts, the lack of scrutiny, and the lack of questions.

That unless you have reporting like this, it doesn't come to earth.

But say social services, if you saw a cost blowout like that, there'd be no shortage of yelling from the top of the roof.

100%.

And look, going to the Australian Submarine Agency, saying, look, what's exactly happened here?

They say they just want to make sure that everything

is running properly.

And I think, you know, one of the things they did say say to me was, look, we've got a rotational force that will be based in Australia from 2027.

Things are moving very quickly.

That's very soon.

And they, again, are projecting confidence that AUKUS is on track and working well.

So they're working frantically behind the scenes to ensure that everything's ready to go as if AUKUS is...

has been given the green light, I guess, by the United States.

The only certainty we have is that there will be no shortage of stories for you covering defence, given that the state of the AUKUS agreement and what is going on.

Liv, thank you for joining me on Politics Now.

Thanks so much.

I appreciate it.

Between now and when we're back tomorrow we will see news from the Reserve Bank.

The expectation as we're recording now is that rates are going to remain on hold.

It sets up that the November meeting could well be a chance for a cut if it's to roll around.

But given how quickly the world changes, who knows what will happen between now and then?

And we will bring you the latest that you need to know about the Reserve Bank all across ABC platforms.

And I'll be back for another politics now tomorrow, but you can always send us a voice note, the partyroom at abc.net.au, and Mel Clark and I will get to them when we bring you the party room on Thursday.

See you, Liv.

Bye.