From rebuilding the Storm to COVID: Who is Optus chief Stephen Rue?

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When Stephen Rue was appointed Optus chief executive in November last year, his top priority was restoring the nation’s trust in its second-largest telecommunications company.

After a string of public relations disasters, most prominently a major cyberattack in 2022 and a major network outage a year later, Rue’s successor, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, stood down with pressure mounting locally and from Optus’ state-owned Singaporean parent company, Singtel.

Rue was the man they called on. He had been at the NBN for the past decade, and for the past six years as its chief executive, leading the initial roll-out of the network. At the time of his exit, he was the highest paid public servant in the country, with a full package of $3 million in his final year.

Coming into a company in crisis, the Irishman had experience at one of the most vexed public institutions, navigating both a complex political and infrastructural minefield, alongside deep corporate experience across several sectors over a long career.

His success in leading the NBN project and managing the various stakeholders was a key factor in him being chosen as the man to get Optus out of its public relations hole and make up ground on the market leader, Telstra.

A month before Rue arrived, the company was taken to court by the corporate watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, over allegations it had exploited some of the nation’s most disadvantaged people.

The last outage in 2023 left more than 2000 Australians unable to make triple zero emergency calls, but this time there were fatal consequences. On Thursday last week, a triple zero network failure affected about 600 Optus customers across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, leading to the deaths of three people, Rue told a press conference on Friday evening. That figure later rose to four.

Among those to have died was an eight-week-old boy. On Saturday, Communications Minister Anika Wells said Optus’ handling of the saga had let Australians down, the company having acted slowly and waited more than 40 hours to tell the public.

Rue said the outage was caused by a routine firewall upgrade and promised an independent investigation into the incident. He said the company had held off informing the public until they had conducted 600 welfare checks and had all the detail at hand.

Stephen Rue was considered a safe pair of hands as Optus chief executive.

Optus’ response, and that of Rosmarin, was slammed at the time of the last outage after she was hesitant in explaining the full details, not particularly forthcoming with media and defensive when criticism was put to her.

Her predecessor is known for wanting to be clear with communications and own up to faults when they happen as opposed to shirking from responsibility.

Rue was born in Dublin and arrived in Australia in the early 1990s. Trained as an accountant, he joined News Corp where he spent 17 years, 10 of those as its chief financial officer in Australia.

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin stood down after Optus’ major outage in the wake of a nation-wide outage.

During this time, he was appointed to several boards, most prominently NRL giant the Melbourne Storm, which was facing a crisis of its own. Rue was made chair of the Storm after the salary cap scandal, in which the club was stripped of its two premierships in 2007 and 2009. News Corp was at the time the owners of the Storm, ultimately moving into new ownership in 2013 after Rue had helped stabilise the club’s finances and corporate reputation.

For a company such as Optus, being prepared for the worst is essential as lives are relying on services they provide.

While running NBN, Rue got his team working in overdrive and preparing for the worst when initial reports of the pandemic began in early 2020, the Financial Review wrote.

Then-communications minister Paul Fletcher said Rue and his team war-gamed every possible outcome, and in the end, his “calm and capable” leadership helped the NBN manage millions of Australians being stuck at home, relying on high-speed internet.

“He’s not one of these people with a big ego, he’s not somebody who needs to dominate the conversation ... he’s got very good EQ,” Fletcher said.

Those skills are facing the ultimate test.

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