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Coalition senators walked out of the first Optus triple zero hearing declaring they had “more questions than answers” after revealing the telecommunications company experienced 10 system failures and its CEO waited hours to inform regulators about an outage that killed three people.
Senator Sarah Henderson called the testimony “shocking” during a press conference following day one of the Senate inquiry into the September outage. She disclosed that Optus never detected the emergency services failure, five calls to an overseas call center went unescalated, and CEO Stephen Rue delayed notifying authorities about the crisis.
“The CEO sat on his hands, and for many hours didn’t inform ACMA, the regulator, and the minister’s office about the true scale of catastrophe, with three people confirmed dead as a result of what happened on that terrible and fateful day,” Henderson told reporters.
The revelations intensified pressure on Communications Minister Anika Wells to testify before the inquiry, with Opposition MPs accusing both the company and government of catastrophic failures that made the deaths potentially preventable.
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12-Hour Delay in CEO Notification
Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh revealed Rue wasn’t alerted to the outage for 12 hours after it began, then took another six hours to inform ACMA and the minister’s office about the full scope of the disaster.
“How does it occur that he, as the CEO, the top of the pile, doesn’t get alerted of this catastrophic outage for 12 hours and then another six hours later he informs the Minister and ACMA?” McIntosh said.
The timeline raised questions about internal communication failures at Australia’s second-largest telecommunications provider and whether management structures allowed critical information to reach decision-makers during emergencies.
Henderson said Optus admitted the failures stemmed from personnel issues rather than technical problems.
“Optus never detected the outage, which is shocking,” Henderson said. “There were 10 different points of failure.”
Overseas Call Center Failed to Escalate
The inquiry uncovered that five separate calls reached an Optus overseas call center during the crisis but were never escalated to senior management or emergency response teams.
The revelation sparked fresh debate about whether telecommunications companies should maintain triple zero operations offshore. McIntosh previously questioned whether offshore call centers impacted the outcome during the hours-long outage.
Liberal Senator Dean Smith emphasized the significance of personnel failures over technical malfunctions.
“Very revealing, though, that we’re told these were failures of personnel,” Smith said. “Often we’re told that they’re technical failures, that these are network outages, that not even the very best of technology can correct for. But the Optus CEO made it very, very clear that these were failings on the part of Optus personnel.”
Regulatory Failures Under Fire
Henderson accused both ACMA and Wells of “drastically” failing Australians by delaying implementation of safety rules that could have prevented the deaths.
New regulations introduced in April required telecommunications companies to test triple zero services whenever conducting system upgrades. Those rules didn’t take effect until Nov. 1, six months after they were announced and after the September outage occurred.
“Why did the Minister sit on her hands for six months?” Henderson demanded. “Why did the regulator allow this to happen? They are just simply not tough enough.”
The Coalition senator said testimony revealed Optus conducted a firewall upgrade without testing whether emergency services remained operational during the changes.
“Can you imagine doing a system upgrade after what Optus put Australians through two years ago, after the recommendations of the Bean Review, and they could not even test to make sure the triple zero service was working,” McIntosh said.
The Bean Review followed a previous Optus outage two years ago and made recommendations for improving telecommunications reliability and emergency service access.
Deaths ‘Potentially Preventable’
McIntosh said testimony indicated the three deaths might have been avoided if reforms had been implemented earlier.
“We even heard today that reforms, had they been implemented earlier, that these deaths were potentially preventable,” she said.
Two of the three victims were from Western Australia. Smith, a West Australian senator, said the inquiry committee expected to travel to that state to understand the local context of the tragedy.
“As a West Australian senator, it was tragic that there were two West Australian lives lost,” Smith said.
CEO Faces Contempt Charge
Henderson suggested Rue could face contempt of parliament charges for refusing to answer questions about the company’s communications with victims’ families.
“We are shocked by what we heard this morning, including that Optus could not provide basic answers about their communications with the families of those who died,” Henderson said. “And I have cited that they could even be in contempt of our committee for failing to answer certain questions.”
The senator said she asked specific questions about compensation, meetings and communications between Optus and bereaved families but was told the company would take the questions on notice rather than answering during the hearing.
“We were point blank told that we would take these questions on notice, which I believe is in breach of Senate rules,” Henderson said.
She invited affected families to submit confidential or public testimony to the inquiry.
“If you do want to reach out to us, either confidentially or otherwise, we are here to hear your story, because this is part of our inquiry,” Henderson said.
Prime Minister’s Office Questioned
Smith revealed the inquiry uncovered limited information about what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office knew about the crisis and when it sought information from Optus.
“Clearly, what did the Prime Minister know?” Smith said. “In the Optus submission, it makes no reference to what the Prime Minister’s office sought from Optus or what it might have known.”
A single entry buried in the timeline attached to Optus’s submission showed the prime minister’s office made an inquiry by email to the company.
“Why didn’t the Prime Minister’s office make an inquiry to the Minister’s office?” Smith asked, questioning why the PM’s office contacted Optus directly rather than going through official government channels.
The revelation suggested potential gaps in communication between different levels of government during the emergency.
Minister Urged to Testify
Coalition MPs repeatedly called on Wells to appear before the inquiry to answer questions about the government’s response and regulatory oversight.
“We say to the Minister, this is not good enough,” Henderson said. “We deserve answers. Three people died. This was a catastrophic outage. And it is time, Minister, you fronted the inquiry and gave Australians the answers they deserve.”
McIntosh said the Labor government initially resisted establishing the Senate inquiry and had to be pressured into action.
“The Minister needs to front up to this inquiry,” McIntosh said. “There is no question about that.”
She added that an independent investigation beyond the Senate inquiry was necessary to hold ACMA accountable for its role in the failures.
Confidence Crisis
McIntosh said Australians were losing confidence in both Optus and government oversight of telecommunications companies.
“I said very early on that customers and Australians generally were losing confidence in the triple zero network and they were losing confidence in the CEO,” she said.
Henderson expressed doubt about Optus’s commitment to making victims whole.
“I am concerned that Optus said we will do the right thing and please be assured we will do the right thing,” Henderson said. “And I don’t have the confidence at this point in time that Optus will do the right thing.”
She said Optus faced “huge liability” for the deaths and demanded answers about what the company would do for affected families.
Inquiry Continues
The Senate committee will continue hearings over the summer break before issuing its final report early next year. Smith said the inquiry’s work had only just begun.
Optus committed to providing the committee with its internal review of the incident. ACMA’s investigation will also be made available to senators before they deliberate on findings.
McIntosh said the Coalition sought an independent investigation into the entire telecommunications ecosystem, not just a parliamentary inquiry.
“This Senate inquiry is the very first step in finding out what has gone wrong here,” she said. “We find that there have been 10 failures in the process of this Optus outage. We don’t want this to occur anymore. Australians deserve better.”
The outage occurred during Australia’s approach to disaster season, when extreme weather events increase the likelihood of emergencies requiring triple zero access. The incident exposed vulnerabilities in systems designed to protect public safety during crises.
Henderson ended her remarks with an emphatic call for accountability across government and industry.
“Optus, Telstra, ACMA, the Minister herself and the Prime Minister all need to be held to account,” she said. “Their feet to the fire. Lives have been lost. This should never have taken place.”
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