00:00I guess the first thing you always have to say when you hear about these announcements
00:05is who's funding them and when it is the company that's in trouble that's funding the independent
00:10report, you always have to look with a little bit of scepticism at it. It's not necessarily
00:14a complete waste of time but we would like to see somebody more robust and independent looking into
00:20it. I have to say that the ACMA, the Australian Communications Media Authority, has previously
00:27reviewed the arrangements for 000 service at Optus and in fact imposed a $12 million penalty on them
00:35last year as a consequence of what happened the last time it failed in 2023. So my expectation is
00:41that in the fullness of time there'll be another inquiry and no doubt another penalty imposed. I
00:46don't for a second suggest that's enough but I am saying that there is a process underway
00:51outside of what the company is doing. Now the CEO Stephen Rue has apologized for the deaths that are
01:00and he has said that the deaths are tragic. It is the norm though you know during such a fiasco for
01:08the head of the company to resign to make an exit. I wonder though because it occurred on his watch
01:15should he be weathering most of the blame? Look I think it is a case that you're asking a question
01:22that is about the organization as a whole and asking one person to take responsibility for it
01:26and on the last occasion where the CEO of Optus stood down there were a number of scandals that led
01:32to that. It wasn't just the one and therefore I think we have to give some credit to Rue because
01:37he's only been in the job since May this year. In those circumstances it's very difficult to blame
01:43him I'm sorry May 2024 to blame him entirely for this but what I will say is that there is a failure
01:50of governance going on here because what's actually happened until now is that the ACMA gave a very
01:56detailed review of the triple of the triple zero issues after the last occasion and they stood down
02:02a number of requirements to be met and one of them in particular was to have regular checking of the
02:07system to make sure if there was a problem that they were immediately transferred to the other carrier
02:12so it meant no matter what if you were calling you could get through to triple zero and finally
02:16there needed to be proper communication and that's not just to the people who are affected and we can
02:21argue about that too but also to all relevant stakeholders and I draw from the newspaper that
02:26that's the very last thing that Optus did. For example the South Australian Premier said it was terrible
02:31they had to find out through the press release itself which was delivered at 5pm when the issue
02:36was known at 12 30 the day before 12 30 a.m the day before. Yeah you point out there that this is
02:42the second time that this has happened you point out too that there have been recommendations that the
02:47company should have implemented you point out that this is a failure of governance we know that Optus is
02:53a subsidiary of a Singapore-based company Singtel how much is risk or disaster management the responsibility of
03:02this parent company? Well it should I understand that what Singtel has attempted to do since 2022 is
03:09devolve management away from its centralized operation and they did set up a more robust board than
03:15previously existed last year for Optus in Australia but the fact of the matter is that because it's a
03:21private company we know none of the detail no it is provided about how they manage their risk no
03:27information is provided about how they are made accountable the remuneration packages for the staff
03:32involved none of those things are available for us to look at now that's because it's a private
03:36company if you want to find out information of that kind you have to go back to Singtel
03:41and it is very generic and it's impossible to know what of that it deals with the issues in Australia
03:46the second thing we would say is that this is a piece of critical infrastructure and in particular
03:51the access to the triple zero number is incredibly important so it's not something that we should just
03:57be able to say oh it's a private company and we don't need to know I think they should have had
04:01some kind of risk management program available on their website so we can see how these things are
04:06managed in at least a basic way well in fact the truth of the matter isn't because they don't have
04:11any legal obligation they're not subject to their sex corporate governance listing practices yeah we
04:17know nothing well we thank you very much for taking time to speak with us Helen Bird their law and corporate
04:24governance specialist from Swinburne University we thank you so much for sharing your insights
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