Optus CEO Stephen Rue faced intense scrutiny during a Senate inquiry regarding a significant outage of the triple-zero emergency service that resulted in three fatalities. The incident, which occurred in September, was attributed to human error during a routine firewall upgrade. This failure left customers unable to reach emergency services across multiple states and territories.

During the inquiry, Rue acknowledged the mistakes made by the company before and after the outage. "There is no doubt that the timeline shows there were delays, there were mistakes made," he stated. He expressed remorse over the tragic deaths, emphasizing that the company is committed to investigating the incident thoroughly. Rue admitted that the response to the outage was inadequate, saying, "I fully accept there are aspects to the way events unfolded and how they were communicated over September 18 and 19 that we should have handled better."

The timeline presented during the inquiry revealed that Optus executives were aware of the outage and its severity but failed to inform the government and regulatory bodies promptly. Rue explained that the initial error occurred when the wrong process was selected for the firewall upgrade, which inadvertently locked equipment responsible for routing triple-zero calls. He noted that this mistake was compounded by a lack of proper control measures and failure to act on alarms.

Rue insisted that the company did not intend to mislead anyone regarding the extent of the outage. "I wouldn't characterize it as misleading; it was information as we knew it at the time," he said. However, he acknowledged that the information provided was ultimately incorrect.

The fallout from the outage has been severe for Optus, which has faced ongoing criticism for its handling of critical infrastructure and offshore call centers. Rue, who took over as CEO in 2023 following a previous nationwide outage, is under pressure to improve the company's operations. Two executives have already resigned in the wake of the incident.

Optus Chairman John Arthur expressed his support for Rue, stating, "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 emphasized that Rue was brought in to rectify these issues and expected him to fulfill that responsibility.

In response to the inquiry, Rue announced that Optus would be making significant changes, including moving call centers handling emergency calls back to Australia. He stated, "We will take back calls that relate to triple-zero calls and relate to vulnerable customers… and ensure that they are dealt with onshore in Australia."

The Senate inquiry, initiated by the Greens and the Coalition, aims to investigate the actions of other telecommunications companies and government agencies to identify necessary changes to the triple-zero system. Rue has committed to cooperating with a review of Optus's internal processes, led by Kerry Schott, to prevent similar incidents in the future.