Jessica Page: Blame goes beyond Optus as regulator’s approach to triple-0 system clearly terrible mistake

The heat is rightly on Optus and chief executive Stephen Rue is the target of public and Government wrath, but he should not be the only target of scrutiny. Less than a year into the job, he’s not the cause of the outage. But he failed to prevent it, and made it worse by initially keeping it quiet. Was under-playing it a deliberate cover-up or incompetence? Either way, it’s a sackable offence. “Quite clearly, Optus’ behaviour is completely unacceptable,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. From Communications Minister Anika Wells: “Optus has perpetuated an enormous failure upon the Australian people … Optus will be held to account.” Hear, hear. The Australian Communications and Media Authority said it is “deeply concerned” and pointed out the obvious. “Triple Zero and emergency call services are a fundamental requirement for all telcos,” ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said. But it is equally also, surely, a fundamental requirement of both Government and the regulator to keep the telcos in check, and ensure a life-or-death necessity is properly in place, and backed up. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They’ve got to do more than take their word for it, or wait for disaster to repeat. We’ve all been subjected to fire drills at school, or at work, meant to ensure crunch time isn’t the first time that emergency wardens have to dig out the manual and remember the evacuation pathway through smoke and panic. It’s unclear whether the new triple zero protocol rolled out after an Optus outage in November 2023 was put through its paces, before it was needed last week. Asked what checks, balances or audits were done, and whether the Government response would form part of the investigation this time, the Federal Government ignored the question. “Optus has clearly failed on a number of fronts,” a Government spokesman said. “We are working to ensure that this is thoroughly investigated, and that Optus is held to account.” I’m not sure the Government or ACMA could have, or should have, done anything different but it’s a question that demands an answer and a public airing. There must be a public inquiry, independent of ACMA’s own. If the Government and ACMA were misled or, worse, lied to, over the implementation of emergency protocols then any penalty must be multiplied. Minister Wells has described emails alerting her office to a “minor” outage (the day after it happened) as “pretty perfunctory.” The first at 2:45PM AEST on Thursday identified a suspected cause, promised the matter is “urgently being worked through”, that welfare checks and emergency protocols were in place. There was barely time for a follow-up call before the next email arrived at 2:52PM, advising that work to rectify the issue was “complete, services have returned to normal” and estimated the damage at only 10 unanswered calls. Email silence followed, until 24 hours later. The protocol did not require Optus to pick up the phone. At 3:40PM on Friday, Minister Wells’ office was told a total of about 100 calls were affected. Only after 4PM, it became clear that number was more like 600 and lives had been lost. I want to know who asked what questions during the 24 hours in the middle. ACMA has insisted that, after the protocol was agreed, the onus was entirely on Optus. If so, hindsight suggests that was a mistake. “The ACMA consulted telcos during development of the rules and made their obligations clear,” an ACMA spokesman said. “Telcos are responsible for ensuring they have established the necessary systems and processes to meet their regulatory obligations.” This time people have died. It’s impossible to put a price on that, but the $12 million fine meted out last time clearly wasn’t enough. Optus spent more money putting it’s name in lights on Perth’s stadium. The 10-year deal for naming rights was sold by Mark McGowan as necessary to reduce state debt, but there were strings attached. “I would love to see a West Australian company take up the opportunity,” Mr McGowan said, days before the 2017 election. He rejected the idea of the Reject Shop or Red Dot buying the rights. “No, that’s not going to happen. It will be a reputable firm.” Radio commentators baulked at calling it Optus Stadium during Sunday’s WAFL grand final. But when she was asked ked on Sunday whether the 10-year-deal could be ripped up, Treasurer and Sports Minister Rita Saffioti said that’s not her current focus. Out of all the questions remaining, that one should be easy. Yes.