Former Telstra chairman John Mullen has delivered a stinging attack on what he calls the self-serving moral outrage of some politicians following last week’s nationwide outage, defending chief executive Vicki Brady as an exceptional leader who is entitled to take a holiday.
Brady and chief financial officer Michael Ackland are expected to appear before a Senate hearing in Canberra on Friday over the outage, which crippled the company’s network and blocked more than 600 people from calling emergency services.
Mullen, current chairman of Qantas, Brambles and Treasury Wine Estates, appointed Brady as Telstra chief executive in 2022 and served as its chairman from 2016 to 2023, after almost two decades on the board.
He took aim at the “chest beating” from certain political critics, saying this was of little practical use in addressing the issue.
“The confected, self-serving moral outrage expressed by some politicians and other commentators seems more about outdoing each other with the fervour of their invective for public consumption that ‘Telstra must pay’ and that ‘Telstra must be punished and further regulation imposed’, than dealing with realities,” Mullen said on Tuesday.
Brady, who cut short a family holiday and flew into Sydney early on Friday morning – two days after the outage began– said she accepted full responsibility and apologised to Australians, their customers and small businesses.
Former Telstra chief executive David Thodey has also backed Brady, stating: “Like us all, she is entitled to a vacation.”
“CEOs are human beings and there is nothing wrong with occasionally having a holiday,” said Mullen, adding that Brady was an exceptional CEO.
“From what I can see from the outside, she reacted entirely appropriately in that she immediately abandoned her holiday and returned home to help deal with the situation and lead from the front.
“I do not know what more could possibly have been asked of her.”
South Australia Police have dismissed claims that a woman died in hospital as a result of the outage, after South Australian Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle said she had received a report of a death linked to the outage.
However, Friday’s hearing into the telecommunications failure is expected to be a fiery affair.
There are new reports that the outage was likely to have been caused by a server that had reached the end of its supported life almost a decade ago and was never replaced, despite newer devices costing less than $30,000.
Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells warned that Telstra would “face the music” and that the government would hold its leaders’ “feet to the fire”.
Education Minister Jason Clare warned Telstra could face fines of up to $30 million, claiming “people could have died”, while Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has demanded the telco pay dollar-for-dollar compensation to cover the costs of giving commuters two days of free travel after the state’s V/Line train lines were disrupted.
Mullen, who last month also defended professional services firm KPMG despite allegations of data misuse and invoked the Gospel of St John to declare “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”, said politicians and some of Telstra’s critics needed a reality check.
“Of course the outage was damaging and inconvenienced many people in many walks of life,” said Mullen.
“Telstra seems to have fully taken this on board, is immensely remorseful, and by all accounts is pulling out all stops to address the issue and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
The former chairman said Australia’s mobile networks remained among the best in the world.
Outages were exceptionally rare considering that in Australia the industry as a whole handled about 100 million mobile calls a day, 90 million text messages, 8 billion to 10 billion emails, and perhaps 2 billion digital messages, he said.
“Australia’s mobile networks – the industry collectively, not just Telstra’s – are consistently ranked in the top 10 mobile networks in the world.
“Anyone who has travelled in the UK or even the US where there are still dead spots in relatively major population areas, would appreciate that … across the board in Australia the industry delivers an extremely high level of service quality and reliability.
“If this was happening every week or was the result of gross negligence then it would be fair to be super-critical, but that is not the case at all; networks have never been more reliable.
It would therefore behove us all to be more realistic and accept that from time to time these things will occur and that unfortunately is part of life.”
Constructive engagement between government and industry, and working together to enhance defences against technology vulnerabilities would benefit Australians so much more, said Mullen.
Source: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/former-telstra-chairman-slams-canberra-s-self-serving-outage-outrage-20260714-p60f3w