I’m pretty sure Nine was using a SD link-up for Peter Overton’s shot. Personally I was more distracted by the fact that Pete had a partially unbuttoned shirt (I know not to expect studio-levels of presentation at the scene of a bushfire disaster, but still slightly unprofessional looking IMO)!
Although interestingly enough, there was a live cross to Bega in native HD:
For what it’s worth, only the first 15 minutes or so of the bulletin + a couple of crosses back were presented by Peter Overton from Tathra with Deborah Knight doing “the rest of the days news” from Studio 1 at Willoughby as per usual.