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Optus CEO agrees company had ‘culture of carelessness’
Josh Taylor
Optus executives spoke earlier to the parliamentary inquiry on September’s triple zero outage.
The chief executive, Stephen Rue, was asked by Liberal senator Sarah Henderson whether he believed the company had a “culture of carelessness” leading up to the outage.
Rue said:
Yeah. I agree with that, Senator. 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. It’s culture and following processes, culture and having process in some cases, it’s culture around customers, around the fact that, as I always say to people that you can get caught up in technology, but actually what really matters is the service you provide to people to to run business, to do their health care.
He said culture is ingrained and change takes time. Rue said Optus has onshored some call centre jobs and automated welfare checks since the outage.
Earlier, Dr Kerry Schott, said the company, particularly the networks division, had the culture of carelessness. Some employees in technical roles failed to see that their work provides an essential service, acting instead like cogs in a wheel, she said.
Key events
Petra Stock
Record-breaking rain for desert towns as monsoon low lingers
Desert towns near the intersection of four states and territories were headed for one of their wettest Februaries, as a near-stationary tropical low dropped a deluge on usually dry outback centres.
Several towns clustered near the border of New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, had received more than 100mm of rain in the past four days, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. The month wasn’t over, but rainfall totals for February were already breaking records in places.
Senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury said:
This is a hugely significant amount of rain for these areas, which are usually so, so dry. That’s obviously why we’ve seen the flooding that has spread through those areas.
Almost 270mm of rain fell in the remote NSW town of Tibooburra, making it the wettest February on record, according to the BoM.
Kalamurina, on the South Australian side of the border, had recorded about 254mm over the month, the highest ever for February, she said.
More downpours were expected, with the monsoon low expected to linger for another couple of days, before gradually moving south.
Stunning image shows ‘unprecedented detail’ of the Milky Way
A team of researchers, including those from the Australian National University, have released a new image of the Milky Way in “unprecedented detail”.
ANU said the area captured by the image captures stretches more than 650 light years, surrounding the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy, and is filled with dense clouds of gas and dust, hidden from ordinary view. The university said the photo “offers an unprecedented look at the cold gas – the raw material from which stars form – inside the Milky Way’s Central Molecular Zone (CMZ).”
Dr Ashley Barnes from the European Southern Observatory in Germany said in a statement:
It’s a place of extremes, invisible to our eyes yet now revealed in extraordinary detail. It is the only galactic nucleus close enough to Earth for us to study in such fine detail.
The image was captured using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma) in northern Chile. It is the largest Alma image ever produced.
Scientists will use the image to examine how stars form and change in the most extreme parts of the galaxy.
NT police commissioner speaks after shots fired in Alice Springs CBD
Sarah Collard
NT police are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding an incident that led police to discharge their weapon in the Alice Springs CBD. A 38-year-old man allegedly drove toward a police officer and struck an occupied police vehicle.
At about 10.30pm, police responded to reports of “skirmishes” on Todd Street involving multiple people outside the Todd Tavern.
Police then alleged a man drove “at speed” towards an officer standing near the footpath, hitting a parked police car before a police officer allegedly fired three rounds into the vehicle.
The man was not injured in the incident but was transferred to Alice Springs hospital for assessment. The officer in the stationary police car sustained minor injuries and has since been discharged from the hospital.
The NT police commissioner, Martin Dole, and assistant commissioner Travis Wurst told reporters that Crime Command detectives are investigating and the incident was “traumatic” for officers.
“Driving a vehicle at police is extremely serious and a dangerous act. Our officers are entitled to protect themselves and others when faced with an immediate threat,” Dole said.
“The deliberate targeting of our hard working officers is absolutely abhorrent and we will not stand for it.”
Wurst said the incident was confronting for officers: “Those officers are stuck with that in their minds, forever knowing what could have been.”
Charges have not yet been laid and the man is in custody.
Catie McLeod
Coles v ACCC hearings finish, with judge reserving decision
Hearings for the consumer watchdog’s legal case against Coles have wrapped up in the Victorian federal court.
Justice Michael O’Bryan adjourned the court in Melbourne about half an hour ago, after hearing closing submissions from both the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the supermarket.
The ACCC alleges Coles broke the law by offering “illusory” discounts on hundreds of everyday products through the misleading use of its “Down Down” promotion program.
The ACCC is seeking large penalties and community service orders against Coles, which, along with Woolworths, controls two-thirds of the Australian grocery market.
Coles is defending the ACCC’s allegations by arguing the changes in pricing were a response to increased costs from suppliers.
The judge reserved his decision, so we won’t know the outcome until a later date.
Josh Taylor
Optus headcount to increase, despite more than 200 jobs to go
Optus chief executive, Stephen Rue, has confirmed reports that between 200 to 300 jobs at the telco will be cut following consultations. However, he stated that Optus’s transformation of Optus will increase headcount from around 6,000 today to 7,500 in the next couple of years.
Rue told the parliamentary inquiry on the Optus triple zero outage that the job cuts are spread across the entire business, with some staff to be redeployed into new roles.
He said the headcount increase will come from onshoring 300 of the 3,000 call centre roles in Australia, and adding more capability to the network team.
He said the role changes aim to “simplify” the Optus structure to break down the silos in the business that partly caused the errors during the outage.
He said the compliance, security, legal teams will need “greater attention” and will receive more resources.
Optus CEO agrees company had ‘culture of carelessness’
Josh Taylor
Optus executives spoke earlier to the parliamentary inquiry on September’s triple zero outage.
The chief executive, Stephen Rue, was asked by Liberal senator Sarah Henderson whether he believed the company had a “culture of carelessness” leading up to the outage.
Rue said:
Yeah. I agree with that, Senator. 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. It’s culture and following processes, culture and having process in some cases, it’s culture around customers, around the fact that, as I always say to people that you can get caught up in technology, but actually what really matters is the service you provide to people to to run business, to do their health care.
He said culture is ingrained and change takes time. Rue said Optus has onshored some call centre jobs and automated welfare checks since the outage.
Earlier, Dr Kerry Schott, said the company, particularly the networks division, had the culture of carelessness. Some employees in technical roles failed to see that their work provides an essential service, acting instead like cogs in a wheel, she said.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian premier says her children have encountered suspicious strangers on Roblox
Jacinta Allan says she’s had conversations about potential online harms with her own kids. The Victorian premier said:
I’ve had to have this conversation with my own kids. You want them to be technically literate and involved in the world around us, but I have seen as a parent, how grooming has reached into what you think is their very innocent engagement on platforms like Roblox.
… They say they’re playing the game with their schoolmates or other friends you know, and then they come and say, ‘Hey Mum, we’ve had someone enter into our group, someone we didn’t know.’ We’ve had to have these conversations as parents with our kids about how you’ve got to shut that down, how you report it.
… Groomers can [also] reach in and manipulate the platform to offer prizes online to kids who come and engage with them. So this is where we’ve got to address tackle this challenge in all platforms and in all forums, both online and in community and also from a parent point of view.
Many in the justice sector have reported young people in Victoria are being recruited to steal cars or carry out firebombings. A parliamentary inquiry into tobacco regulation in 2024 heard children were being paid as little as $500 to commit arson amid the tobacco wars.
Benita Kolovos
Organised crime groups using Roblox to groom kids, Victorian official says
Organised crime groups are grooming young people on gaming platforms such as Roblox, according to the head of Victoria’s violence reduction unit, Andrea Davidson.
Davidson joined the premier, Jacinta Allan, earlier this morning to announce $1m in funding for community crime prevention group Think Village to roll out an “anti-gang program”.
The program will include workshops to help recognise online grooming, which Davidson said is occurring on social media, encrypted apps and gaming platforms. She told reporters:
Young people are describing pressures and approaches that feel sophisticated, persistent and hard to escape. What they’re describing is grooming and exploitation, where children and adolescents are being approached, targeted and recruited by adult offenders, gangs and organised crime – drawn into violence, drug distribution, online harm and offline coercion, often long before anyone recognises what’s happening.
This harm I’m describing often begins subtly. It can start through gaming platforms, encrypted messaging apps or social media spaces.
Asked if she was referring to the gaming platform Roblox, Davidson said:
Exactly. We also know that young people can often gather through gaming platforms now, which can be a real sense of belonging for them, but also is an opportunity or a vulnerability for them to be groomed as well.
She said this can occur through the platform chat function by people who “pose as other young people.” Davidson, the former head of youth justice, said:
They can disguise themselves within certain settings, build relationships up and really tap into that vulnerability that is there amongst young people.
Similar concerns regarding alleged grooming on Roblox were expressed earlier this month by Anika Wells, the federal communications minister.
Police recover alleged hostage victim in Dural
Natasha May
Police detectives have recovered an alleged kidnapping victim and arrested a man following an operation in Dural today.
About 6.15am on Tuesday morning, officers received a report that a 53-year-old man had been taken from outside a tobacconist in Mt Pritchard. In a statement NSW police said:
Police were told four unknown males in balaclavas approached the man before assaulting him and forcing him into a Hyundai hatchback.
The state’s serious crime squad were notified and commenced a covert operation to recover the 53-year-old man, they said.
About 10.30am this morning detectives attended a property in Dural where they recovered the 53-year-old man and arrested a 16-year-old man.
The 53-year-old man was assessed by paramedics, before being taken to hospital in a stable condition.
The 16-year-old was taken to Castle Hill police station where inquiries are ongoing, police said.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert says she was threatened by Iranian regime supporter last year
Adeshola Ore
British Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert – who was held for 804 days by the Revolutionary Guards – says she was approached by a supporter of the Iranian regime last year and “implicitly threatened”.
Moore-Gilbert is appearing at a hearing for the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which is reviewing the listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a state sponsor of terrorism.
She says she reported the incident last year to the national security hotline:
This was to my face and in a professional context … I don’t know if this person works for the IRGC or another wing of the regime. It’s very difficult to determine.
Moore-Gilbert said Australia expelling Tehran’s ambassador to Canberra had not made “much of an impact” because transnational repression was largely coordinated from Iran.
She added that Australia’s enforcement of sanctions on Iran is “sometimes lacking” and needs more attention. The academic pointed to reports in The Australian last week that the daughter of a sanctioned Iranian military leader was granted permanent residency in Australia.
Josh Taylor
Schott describes ‘terrible’ calls to Optus during triple-zero outage
Dr Kerry Schott, who reviewed the September Optus outage that prevented people in three states from calling triple zero for several hours, told a parliamentary inquiry into the outage that she listened to tapes of the calls to customer service during the outage and said they are “just terrible to listen to”.
She said the call centre had no knowledge of an outage at the time, so they assumed the five people who called into the centre during the outage were just experiencing technical difficulty.
She said:
Listening to the calls is particularly distressing because, with the exception of the first caller, the callers had distress.
They had managed to get through to 000 on some other line or call. But they were actually ringing to alert Optus that there was a problem, with 000, and all of them described the problem accurately, which was they couldn’t get through and all they had on their mobile was silence. And they had been through considerable personal distress and were basically doing a public service by ringing up to say what was wrong, and then to have people trying to discuss with them a technical fault at that time.
The calls are just terrible to listen to.
She said that after the call centre raised the issue higher up in Optus following awareness of two fatalities, staff were “extraordinarily distressed”, and senior staff spent an hour calming staff down.
Schott said management of the call centre was inadequate and changed soon after. Optus is due to appear later this morning.
Donna Lu
AI data centres should power operations with new renewables, energy groups say
Operators of AI data centres should be required to invest in new renewable energy to power their operations, according to a proposal put to the government by a coalition of energy and environment groups.
The plan, whose endorsers include the Clean Energy Council, Electrical Trades Union, Australian Conservation Foundation and Climate Energy Finance, warns that a surge in energy demand from data centres “risks pushing up retail power prices, significantly increasing climate pollution, slowing the transition to renewables”.
It proposes:
To ensure the maximum public benefit with the lowest amount of public harm all new data centre developments must: be powered by 100% additional renewable energy; strengthen grid stability; be appropriately sited to minimise impacts on nature and land use.
Data centre power demand is forecast by 2030 to exceed the energy used by electric vehicles.
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said on Wednesday:
People who are building data centres do need to build new energy to go with it, and that energy will be renewable. But we also want to ensure that energy use has flexibility and redundancy built in.
Josh Butler
Shen Yun says performances will continue despite bomb threats
Shen Yun, the traditional Chinese dance and music group, says it will continue its Australian tour despite claims that it received bomb threats against Anthony Albanese unless its performances were cancelled.
Albanese was evacuated from The Lodge after threats were reported to the federal police. Falun Dafa, a spiritual group banned in China which is associated with Shen Yun, said it received threats in Mandarin – from unknown senders – that The Lodge would be targeted if the dance tour went ahead. Reports emerged on Thursday of an earlier bomb threat against a Gold Coast venue due to host one performance.
“We will not be intimidated. Shen Yun performances in Australia will proceed safely and successfully,” a Falun Dafa spokesperson told Guardian Australia.
We call on the Australian government to conduct a comprehensive investigation, publicly address the national security implications of these incidents, strengthen counter-foreign interference safeguards, and hold responsible actors accountable under Australian law.
The spokesperson alleged the Chinese Communist party was linked to the threats. Shen Yun performances worldwide have been the subject of bomb and threats, the Falun Dafa spokesperson said.
In an emailed response, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Canberra rubbished the claims:
We have noticed relevant reports but have no knowledge with what happened. China always opposes all forms of violent attacks.
Josh Taylor
eSafety study to follow 4,000 children and families in social media ban
eSafety has started an evaluation of the under-16s social media ban to understand how it is working in practice and the impact it is having on children and families.
The study will follow more than 4,000 children and families for more than two-years, including surveys of children and young people between 10 and 16, their parents and caregivers.
There will also be opt-in smartphone use tracking, capturing information on app use, time spent and time of day use.
The assessment will also build on external data including Naplan data, Medicare data, and PBS data.
The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said:
The study will explore a wide range of outcomes, including children’s wellbeing and mental health, their exposure to online risks and harms, and their digital habits and social media patterns.
It will also examine help-seeking behaviour, family relationships and parenting experiences and, the early experiences and impacts on young people under 16.
The findings will be released progressively starting later this year.
Lisa Cox
Autumn bushfire outlook shows heightened risk for much of Victoria
Large parts of Victoria face a heightened bushfire risk through autumn due to long-term rainfall shortages.
Some parts of eastern, central and southern NSW, southern Western Australia and South Australia could also experience increased fire danger, according to the seasonal outlook.
Rob Webb, chief executive of the Australian and New Zealand council for fire and emergency services (AFAC) said:
The increased bushfire risk is driven by increased long-term dryness and persistent soil moisture deficits.
For many parts of southern Australia, autumn sees the gradual reduction in fire risk and opportunities for prescribed burning can increase. However, these programs may be delayed in some areas because of the underlying conditions.
Webb said even with anticipated rains in the south-east of the country in the short term, much more would be required to overcome the long-term moisture deficits.
He said fires could and would still occur in areas across Australia identified as being at average risk. He urged communities to stay alert and follow advice from their local fire authorities.
