CANBERRA, Australia — Optus CEO Stephen Rue told a parliamentary inquiry that the company had a “culture of carelessness”. In the lead-up to a triple-zero emergency-call outage that exposed serious operational failures, Feb. 26, 2026.
Rue agreed with the characterization after Liberal Sen. Sarah Henderson asked whether the telco’s internal culture contributed to the breakdown.
“Yeah. I agree with that, Senator,” Rue said. “I think the transformation program that I put in place on this from when I started, actually, which is always going to take time, I’m afraid. But a key component of that is culture. It’s culture and risk.”
The admission came as Optus executives appeared before the inquiry examining the September outage that disrupted Australians’ ability to reach 000, the country’s emergency number.
During the hearing, former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Kerry Schott told the inquiry that Optus had processes that should have managed a triple-zero failure, but that a “culture of lack of care” meant they were not followed, particularly within the networks division. Schott said some technical staff failed to grasp the essential, life-saving nature of the service, treating their work “like cogs in a wheel,” according to reporting from the inquiry.
Rue said fixing that mindset would take time and described steps Optus says it has taken since the outage, including moving some call center jobs back onshore and automating welfare checks. He also told the inquiry the company is trying to simplify internal structures to break down business silos that contributed to errors, and to bolster compliance, security and legal resourcing.
The outage has been tied to deaths, though public accounts have varied over time. In September 2025, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Optus had confirmed three deaths during the failure. In November 2025, Reuters reported Optus said its emergency line disruption affected thousands of people and that four died as a result of being unable to contact emergency services. Reporting from the current inquiry has described the outage as linked to two deaths.
The inquiry is expected to continue probing whether management and technical controls were adequate for critical communications infrastructure, and what regulatory or governance changes may be needed to prevent a repeat.