During a committee meeting, Rue revealed that Optus was first notified of a fatal incident at 8:43 PM on September 18. However, senior management was only informed after midnight.
Rue explained that he had been engaged in a series of meetings with his team, focusing on gathering information and conducting welfare checks. He acknowledged, “the timeline clearly shows there were delays and mistakes were made.”
Optus is facing criticism for taking 17 hours to inform Communications Minister Anika Wells about the fatalities, prompting public scrutiny.
Senator Hanson-Young expressed dissatisfaction, stating that the 17-hour delay in communicating the outage’s severity was “unacceptable.”
He emphasized the need for accurate information, saying, “It was crucial to have the facts so that I could provide accurate details to the ACMA and the federal government.”
“Australians can be assured we have those controls in place. People effectively didn’t do their jobs,” Rue told the committee.
“There were, I think 10 failures here, 10 failures. And if you’re asking me whether I am alarmed at that, I can assure you I am,” he said.
