Opposition communications spokesperson Melissa McIntosh said: “This ‘new’ minister, as she called herself this morning, should be across the brief and responding urgently in times of crisis, such as the heightened community concern over multiple Triple Zero outages. “Hiding behind human error, technical error and compliance issues, which apparently caused Optus’ outage over a week ago, is not good enough. “If the minister is still finding her feet, she should have stayed here in Australia to deal with this Triple Zero disaster, rather than a promo tour trip to New York. Optus CEO Stephen Rue after a meeting with Communications Minister Anika Wells in Sydney on Tuesday. Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong “The lacklustre performance by the communications minister this morning speaks volumes about what action she has been taking on this incredibly important issue. This is disappointing given we are at a time when Australians feel let down and are lacking confidence in the Triple Zero network – their lifeline in a time of need.”
Legislation is being drafted to give the Triple Zero custodian role, which already exists, more teeth to enforce compliance. But the window to introduce the bill this year is shrinking as parliament will sit for only four more weeks before it rises in December. The role was proposed in April last year as part of an independent review into the November 2023 Optus failure that lasted for 14 hours. A Senate inquiry reaffirmed calls for the custodian’s creation last September. A third of the laws that were recommended in that review have not yet been introduced. Rob Nicholls, a telecommunications expert at the University of Sydney, said the government could have Triple Zero custodian legislation ready within a fortnight by crafting an exposure draft – taking “a few days” – and sending it to a limited consultation period – “a week or 10 days” – before legislating. “If the government said it’s a priority then the parliamentary draftspeople will be working on it right now. So an exposure draft can be produced in a few days,” Nicholls said. “There are a limited number of sitting days before Christmas. But if it’s a priority, you prioritise.” Wells said she had asked Singtel to appoint an external accountability partner to “make sure that Australians can take advice not just from Optus themselves but from an independent and external party that the systems in place will serve Australians when they needed them most”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese publicly backed Wells on Tuesday. “Minister Wells has been very strong, as is entirely appropriate here, for what is an unacceptable failure of service by Optus to its customers,” he said on Tuesday. Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the government had been too slow to act. “[Optus] left people in a deadly situation, and they must be held accountable for that. The government cannot continue to blame change of ministries or anybody else for the fact that they have not implemented these recommendations. It’s just it’s not good enough,” she said. Meanwhile, the head of Optus’ parent company Singtel refused to give chief executive Stephen Rue his full backing and said the fatal outages were due to a staff issue.
Optus chairman John Arthur, Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon and Optus CEO Stephen Rue speak to the media on Tuesday morning in Sydney. Credit: Flavio Brancaleone Yuen refused to give a straight “yes” or “no” answer at a press conference when asked if Rue had his full backing. Loading “We brought in Stephen 11 months ago to transform Optus, to really address the issues that we have had since 2022-23,” he said. “It is very early days, it takes time to transform a company … the 18 September incident is due to a people issue and it takes time to transform and change the people. He is here to provide the solution.”
Asked whether the fatal outage was related to underfunding in the carrier’s Triple Zero system, Optus chairman John Arthur said: “We recruited Stephen specifically to fix the issues at Optus. He has been in the job 11 months. The board is satisfied that he is making progress, but it is a work in progress.” He said consultancy giant Kearney would be appointed to oversee the Optus network. Australia’s second-largest telco is bracing for a wave of customer losses and long-lasting reputational damage after the Triple Zero failure on September 18, and a further incident in NSW this past weekend. Industry insiders have warned that the telco’s credibility has been shredded and its governance structures exposed, and the outage is now the subject of multiple investigations. Rue has blamed human error by staff at home and abroad for the catastrophic Triple Zero failure that cost at least three lives. The executive last week told journalists that emergency calls were not diverted away from the core part of the network in what he described as a “process breakdown”. He said the network engineers were based across Australia and Chennai, India. “The first step in the process was not followed,” Rue said.
[SRC] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/serious-lack-of-confidence-minister-slams-optus-after-high-stakes-meeting-20250930-p5myvt.html
