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Appearing before a Senate inquiry into the incident on Monday, Mr Rue offered an unreserved apology over the incident linked to three deaths. “As the CEO, I am accountable for Optus’ failings, and I am deeply sorry. We are all deeply sorry,” Mr Rue said. “The tragic deaths of people during this outage will stay with us as individuals and as a company as we investigate the incident and build on our response while progressing a sweeping transformation of Optus.” During the hearings Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson asked the CEO, “Three people died. Were these deaths preventable?” “Senator, there is no doubt that it was disappointing that on the day of the 18th that the errors that were made in upgrading a firewall led to triple-0 calls not being in all cases, being able to be answered,” Mr Rue replied. “More than disappointing, It was devastating. The consequences of this were devastating,” Ms Henderson replied. “Surely this is a wake up call for Optus. You’ve got to deliver the best possible service to ensure this never happens again.” Mr Rue was also dragged over the coals by Greens Senator Sarah Henderson for not informing the government sooner. “In my home state, in South Australia, families, lost loved ones,” Liberal Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said. “You thought it was better to call your board to let the SingTel board and CEO know, and to get your ducks in order before even telling government authorities?” Mr Rue insisted that he did want to make the information public. “It was very much a determination of mine that that information would be public. But it was important to have the facts so that I had the information I could accurately provide to both the ACMA, the federal government, and the department,” Mr Rue replied. “It was more important to you and to your executive team to make sure your corporate ducks were in order, that your profits would be in order, then people’s safety and transparency with the government. That is what your timeline shows,” Senator Henderson said. “Senator, I don’t accept that characterisation you made there, but there is no doubt, there’s no doubt that the timeline shows that there were delays, there were mistakes made,” Mr Rue said. Health Minister Mark Butler said the hearings would provide important transparency. “That is the proper way this parliament works. We welcome the inquiry,” Mr Butler told ABC Breakfast. “We think it is another good opportunity for Optus to be held to account. People are angry about what happened with that triple-0 outage.” Last month, Communications Minister Anika Wells said she was “laying down the law” to Optus over the fatal triple-0 outage mess now linked to multiple deaths. After penning letters to Optus and other telecommunications chiefs warning more needs to be done to restore faith in the critical service, the Albanese government is pushing ahead with reforms to ensure any future outages are properly reported. “I will literally be laying down the law and we will be bringing more laws to the parliament later this week,” Ms Wells told Sunrise. “Australians need confidence in the reliability of our triple-0 system. “Telcos need to do need to do better and they will be getting tomorrow to make sure that we are all, from our individual positions, doing everything we can to make sure that Australians do and can have confidence in triple-0 ahead of the natural disaster season.” “I absolutely lose sleep over this,” Ms Wells responded. “As the steward of the system, I do take very seriously my responsibility to make the system work as well as it possibly can. If we have to accept that outages will occur, we should not accept that the system fails.” Last month, Ms Wells ordered telco CEOs, including the under-fire Optus chief, to front up in Canberra to explain how they will ensure the triple-0 failures linked to multiple deaths never happens again. The fallout from the triple-0 outage One of the people who died following a botched Optus network upgrade was an eight week old baby. The upgrade resulted in a technical failure impacting triple-0 calls in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The deaths involved an eight-week-old boy from Gawler West and, a 68-year-old woman from Queenstown. Optus chief executive Stephen Rue said a network upgrade has sparked the technical failure that impacted triple-0 calls. “This resulted in the failure of a number of triple-0 calls … our investigation is ongoing but at this stage I can confirm that approximately 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through,” he said. ‘Unacceptable’ Ms Wells has previously slammed the outages as “completely unacceptable”. “I sought assurances from both Optus and SingTel that their utmost priority is restoring the confidence of Australians in their triple-0 system and that they are taking steps to make sure that these things do not continue to happen and impact Australians when it matters the most,” she said. SingTel chief executive Kuan Moon Yuen said an independent review would be held. Mr Yuen said Mr Rue had been in the role for 11 months to “transform Optus” and to “address the issues we’ve had since 2022-2022”. “It is very early days, it takes time to transform a company,” he said. “(Mr Rue) is here to provide the solution.” Ms Wells said she asked SingTel to provide external accountability to “make sure that Australians can take advice, not just from Opt us themselves but from an independent and external party that the systems in place will serve Australians when they’re needed the most”. “This is for Optus to take accountability for, they will take accountability for it and we will ensure the Australian government holds Optus to account and you will hear from them shortly,” she said. The outage came less than a fortnight after a suspected botched firewall update prevented hundreds of triple-0 calls from Optus users across South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and NSW. Normal calls were largely unaffected; however, about 600 triple-0 calls were blocked from connecting to emergency services. The company suffered a triple-0 outage in 2023 that impacted 2145 people.
