Australia news live: Optus CEO ‘not focusing’ on her future at company; half of high school students say pandemic hampered their education | Australia news

Optus CEO dodges questions on report suggesting she may resign

Josh Taylor

The Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has dodged questions on an AFR report suggesting she may resign from the job as soon as next week.

Liberal senator Sarah Henderson: “Ms Bayer Rosemarin, this morning there’s been a media report that you intend to resign as CEO. Is it your intention to resign?”

Bayer Rosmarin: “Senator, I’m sure you can appreciate my entire focus has been on restoring the outage issue.”

Henderson: “Can I just ask you to answer that question?”

Bayer Rosmarin: “It has not been a time to be thinking about myself.”

Henderson: “Could you address that question? Are you intending to resign?”

Bayer Rosmarin: “I thought I answered the question. My focus is on the team, the customers, the community. My focus is not on myself.”

Henderson: “So that report is not correct.”

Bayer Rosmarin: “I haven’t seen any reports today, I’ve been preparing for being here.”

Victorian education secretary apologises for ‘catastrophic failures’ at abuse inquiry

Adeshola Ore

The head of Victoria’s department of education has apologised for its “catastrophic failures” to protect children who suffered historical sexual abuse in government schools.

Jenny Atta, the department’s secretary, is appearing before an inquiry investigating allegations of historical child sexual abuse at 24 government schools during the 1960s to 1990s.

She says she is “profoundly sorry” for the “shocking abuse and injury” inflicted upon victim-survivors:

I deeply regret the catastrophic failures of the government school system and the department of education.

The inquiry previously heard there was evidence of the department transferring teachers to other public schools after they were accused of child sexual abuse.

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Caitlin Cassidy

One in two high school students say the pandemic hampered their education, Australia’s largest survey of young people has found, with warnings a “major cohort” needs to be caught up in their education.

The 10-year study, led by the Australian National University (ANU), examined the experiences of more than 18,000 year 10 students from 300 high schools nationwide.

The first wave, conducted in 2022, found 52% of students felt their learning had suffered due to Covid-19, and 59% didn’t feel prepared for school.

Lead researcher professor Ben Edwards from ANU said “unsurprisingly”, students from states and territories with the longest shutdowns – New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory – were more likely to say their schooling progress had been hampered (66% compared with 43%).

This sentiment was also particularly acute for students with disabilities living in states and territories that had high school closures, with 34% of these students saying they fell behind compared to 16% of students with no disability.

Clearly we have a major cohort of young students, who are now coming to the end of their high school education, that we need to make sure are supported to catch up in the vital learning and opportunities they missed during the pandemic.

The survey also found females were more likely to attend university after graduating, at 79% compared with 65% of males. Health professions were the most popular professions amongst women, while design, engineering, science and transportation were the leading choice among men.

Optus could be exposed to ‘national security concerns’ if cyber-attack report released, CEO says

Josh Taylor

Optus could be exposed to “national security concerns” should a Deloitte report on the company’s cyber-attack be released following a court decision in the class action case last week.

CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told the Senate hearing on Friday that the report, which the court ruled was not subject to legal privilege, “contains a forensic investigation into our cyber defences and is highly sensitive in its material.”

She said:

We are conscious that that attack is still the subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation, and that the contents could be so sensitive that they expose us to national security concerns. So the team will be looking at whether they appeal that decision.

Josh Taylor

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has told the Senate inquiry that 8,500 customers and small businesses have contacted the company about compensation for losses amounting to $430,000, and the company has already applied $36,000 in compensation.

She said Optus was keen to have a “broad” discussion about consequential losses as a result of the outage, noting that it would have wider implications for the NBN and other sectors for outages going forward:

We felt that this was an issue that’s much more broad … should government choose to look into this.

We’d love to be part of that conversation. But there is no precedent for telcos or other essential providers covering consequential losses, and we are very conscious that this would have far-reaching implications not just for Optus, but not just for all telcos including the NBN also for other essential services, utilities, government services, and that this needs to be a much broader conversation than us unilaterally determining how to go about that.

The South Australian police commissioner, Grant Stevens, is speaking about the death of brevet sergeant Jason Doig in a fatal shooting at Senior, near the Victorian border:

An incident occurred last night were three police officers attended an isolated rural property about 15km north of Bordertown. On arrival, the police officers in attendance were confronted by the occupant, a 26-year-old man.

Upon being confronted, the occupant has a shot and fatally wounded the sergeant and he later died at the scene. The occupant also shot Sergeant Michael Hutchinson who received non-life-threatening injuries and he has been conveyed to hospital in Adelaide.

The third police officer was not injured during the incident. The 26-year-old man was shot by police and he is also conveyed to Adelaide and is under police guard at this time.

Hundreds of triple-zero calls during Optus outage did not go through

Josh Taylor

A total of 228 Optus customers attempted to call triple zero and were unable to connect on their mobile phone during last week’s outage, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has told the Senate inquiry.

She said Optus has since conducted welfare checks on those 228 people “and thankfully everybody is okay”.

She noted that the issue with triple zero did not affect every customer, but the 228 were those who tried and could not connect.

Normally when a mobile network is out, customers should be switched onto another network to connect the call.

She said Optus is still investigating why it didn’t work for those customers, and welcomed the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) investigation into why it happened.

When asked whether there should be a penalty for Optus, Bayer Rosmarin said it is too early to say where the issue occurred:

The triple zero system is supposed to be able to pick up the traffic when we have an outage like this … We don’t run the triple zero system, we participate in the triple zero system.