Pressure is mounting for the head of Optus to fall on his sword as the under-fire telco tries to move forward from a devastating outage.
But sacking chief executive Stephen Rue following a service interruption linked to multiple deaths would only give the illusion of action and not address systemic failures in the emergency network, a governance expert says.
Opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh added her name to the list of politicians who want Mr Rue out at Optus, saying Australians had lost confidence in him and the network.
“He should seriously be considering his position … every Australian is rightly calling for him to step down,” she told the ABC.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously said he would be surprised if Mr Rue was not considering his position, while Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young also said he should go.
Real accountability at Optus would entail fixing a broken system beneath the leadership, Swinburne governance expert Helen Bird said.
Former chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned 12 days after a similar 2023 outage before Mr Rue took over in 2024.
“History is repeating itself at Optus … the 2023 and 2025 failures were strikingly similar, both linked to routine maintenance, both resulting in system-wide outages, and both followed by slow and opaque communication with the public and regulators,” Ms Bird said.
“A new chief executive won’t solve those deeper problems.”
Optus will be in the Federal Court on Wednesday, where the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will ask it to impose a $100 million fine for unconscionable sales conduct, including for pressuring customers to buy mobile goods they did not want or need.
The sustainability of Australia’s emergency network could be challenged by redundancies at Triple Zero Victoria, according to a union representing laid-off workers.
Communication Workers Union assistant secretary John Ellery said between 30 and 40 back-of-house staff – including planning and forecasting and training workers – had been let go in recent months.
“That back-of-house underpins the functioning of the operations workers … if you haven’t got calls being answered, that blows out response times before it even goes from the call takers and dispatches out to emergency services,” he told AAP.
After the telco’s 2023 outage, a review recommended the government implement a triple-zero custodian with oversight and responsibility for the emergency network, including monitoring its end-to-end performance.
Communications Minister Anika Wells conceded the role was yet to be fully implemented, although it had been set up.
Labor is yet to legislate powers for the custodian.
In accepting a recommendation in April 2024, the government said it recognised the need for a single body to oversee emergency call services and said it would have key co-ordination and decision-making authority during crisis events.
“It’s beyond frustrating that it has taken another triple-zero network outage to find out those urgent recommendations have not been implemented in full, including the triple-zero custodian role,” Ms McIntosh told AAP.
The custodian role will be performed by the communications department and the requisite legislative changes could be fast-tracked after the latest Optus calamity.
The outage on Thursday, which Optus only revealed late on Friday, came 18 months after rival Telstra also failed to comply with emergency call rules during a triple-zero network disruption.
An eight-week-old boy from Gawler West, north of Adelaide, was among the deaths linked to the fault.
SA Police say the outage was “unlikely to have contributed” to his death because his grandmother immediately used another phone to contact triple zero.
The other deaths include a 68-year-old Adelaide woman and men aged 74 and 49 from Perth.
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