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At a committee hearing, Rue revealed that Optus was notified of the first casualty at 8:43 PM on September 18, with the information reaching senior management only after midnight.
Rue explained that during this period, he was engaged in a series of meetings with his team to gather information and conduct welfare checks. He acknowledged the timeline indicated delays and errors in their response.
Optus faced criticism for taking 17 hours to inform Communications Minister Anika Wells about the fatalities. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
Senator Hanson-Young condemned the 17-hour delay in communicating the outage’s severity, stating it was “not good enough.”
“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.
