Transcript - ABC Radio Sydney Mornings - 7 October 2025

Melissa McIntosh MP
Shadow Minister for Communications
Shadow Minister for Women
Federal Member for Lindsay

7 October 2025

Transcript

ABC Radio Sydney Mornings with Hamish Macdonald

Topics: Pro-Palestine rally; 7 October terror attacks; Triple Zero outage; Triple Zero inquiry; immigration; Andrew Hastie.

E&EO …

Hamish Macdonald

The bosses of Australia's biggest telcos are being summoned to Canberra today to face the Communications Minister and answer questions about their preparedness for emergency situations in the wake of the Optus Triple Zero outages. You're going to hear about that in just a moment. The Shadow Communications Minister is Melissa McIntosh, also the Member for Lindsay, which includes Penrith here in Sydney.

Melissa McIntosh is here. Very good morning to you.

Melissa McIntosh

Good morning, Hamish.

Hamish Macdonald

Before we get to Optus and telecom outages, you may have heard the tail end of some of those conversations about rallies and marches planned here in Sydney both today and on the weekend. Just on the march planned for tonight in western Sydney, what's your view of this? Is it appropriate given some of the wording language that's being used in the flyers?

Melissa McIntosh

Awful and un-Australian is my immediate reaction, particularly the response of your previous caller. Just completely dismissing your questions around the appropriateness of it. People are really mourning today, and Jewish Australians are feeling really uncomfortable in their own country and afraid, frightened. The fact that this is going on today is beyond words, saying disrespectful isn't even a strong enough term. It's really disappointing that people, Australians, would be wanting to behave on this very day when over 1,000 Jewish people were slaughtered.

Hamish Macdonald

And do you think that the rally in western Sydney should be prevented this evening?

Melissa McIntosh

I hope that the New South Wales government right now is exercising all of its powers to ensure that although protests are part of our great democracy, hate protests - they're not even protests are they really - are prevented. I think they need to be ensuring that the full force of the law is applied.

Hamish Macdonald

But people do have the right to protest though and express their views, and there are very strong and very divergent views on this particular issue.

Melissa McIntosh

On this day? When over a thousand Jewish people were killed? Do you think that's appropriate, Hamish? That this is just expressing a view when there's hatred behind it? I don't think so. And I think every right minded Australian would be finding this really distasteful and inappropriate.

Hamish Macdonald

Melissa McIntosh is the Shadow Communications Minister. Obviously, the Communications Minister has called the telco bosses to Canberra today to face questions over their emergency preparedness. Anika Wells says that she will be laying down the law literally to them in relation to their obligations. Do you support her in doing that?

Melissa McIntosh

I would have been more supportive if she didn't go overseas and actually did this three weeks ago when the disaster happened and this crisis began. It's three weeks too late. It feels more like a photo opportunity and a bit of a PR stunt. We'll be waiting to see what comes out of those meetings. It would be better if it was a public meeting where Australians could see what was going on, rather it being conducted behind closed doors. We've got to remember, four people died during this crisis of Optus’s making. We have big questions that need to be answered. We're calling for an independent investigation. We have legislation that's coming on that should have happened a year and a half ago. Now the dying days of the Parliament for the year we're having to rush through legislation. I received a draft last night of the legislation which we're meant to - the government would love us to - support today. Do you think that is the right way to conduct business when it's around people's lives? I don't think so.

Hamish Macdonald

So, you won't be supporting the legislation?

Melissa McIntosh

No, I didn't say that. I'm saying the inappropriateness of having legislation at the end of the Parliamentary year when the recommendations to the government came a year and a half ago after Optus first outage in 2023.

Hamish Macdonald

To be fair to the government though, it says it's implemented 12 of the 18 recommendations from that review into the original Optus outage, that work was already underway on the remainder of those recommendations. None of them had been rejected or set aside. I mean, is there anything tangible that you're saying this government should or could have done that it’s not?

Melissa McIntosh

One of the things that I've been calling for on behalf of the Opposition is to have a public register. So, at any time that there is a triple zero outage it has to be transparent. The public needs to know about it. Well, I'm going through the legislation now and at first glance, it doesn't look like it really does anything different to what was already in place. It feels like the government is trying to put this through for political reasons as opposed to having real outcomes for Australians in their greatest time of need. So, we'll be looking at it thoroughly. It has to go through all of our party processes, giving us less than 24 hours over a very serious piece of legislation, which they've had a year and a half to do, is showing the priorities of this government towards the Australian people.

Hamish Macdonald

Melissa McIntosh is the Shadow Communications Minister, the member for Lindsay. There's more headlines in the newspapers today about the Liberal Party and a broken relationship between Peter Dutton and Andrew Hastie in the lead up to the last election. I know you've expressed some support for Andrew Hastie’s position, or at least some understanding with his decision to leave the Shadow Cabinet. Do you acknowledge that the Liberal Party looks like a bit of a mess at the moment?

Melissa McIntosh

Your words, not mine. We are a bit of a gift that keeps giving to ourselves right now, which is disappointing when things that are meant to be confidential are leaked to the media. Some of this that's being said is normal organisational stuff, like a manager may not approve of a staff member, or a staff member may have a different point of view. It's just that all of it's getting aired publicly and it shouldn't be. They were confidential reviews. But, in regards to Andrew making his decision, I was clear on that. I think he did it with the right intent. He had issues around his particular portfolio area of Home Affairs, wanting to have more influence on immigration, so he stepped aside and I support him as a colleague.

Hamish Macdonald

You've expressed some sympathy, I think it's fair to characterise it, for his position on immigration. But he did post on social media that he believes we're starting to feel like strangers in our own home, that was the term he used. Do you agree with that sentiment? You live in a big, diverse dynamic part of Sydney. Is that, do you think, how your constituents feel about the city, the place they live in?

Melissa McIntosh

I can't speak for Andrew's comments on that specifically. In my community, I know that, they talk to me, I'm on the ground all the time. It's part of what I love about my job. But people do feel that things are strained. Infrastructure is strained with high population growth in western Sydney.  A lot more people are moving to western Sydney, it's a fact.

Hamish Macdonald

Sure, but is it right to blame these pressures on immigrants?

Melissa McIntosh

I don't know that he was particularly blaming. I'm not going to speak on behalf of Andrew. It is a contributing factor, of course. Higher population growth does cause strain on infrastructure, on our hospitals, and you could have a caller from western Sydney, from Penrith, from my patch, they can call in and I think a lot of people would be very supportive of that position.

But in regard to my community, I love my community. It is a very diverse community, and I feel it's representative of the heartland of Australia.

Hamish Macdonald

Melissa McIntosh, really good to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed.

Melissa McIntosh

Thank you, Hamish.