Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would be “surprised” if Optus chief executive Stephen Rue was not considering his position, while the opposition and the Communication Workers Union have called for the executive to resign after last week’s fatal Triple Zero outage linked to multiple deaths.

Rue was formerly the head of NBN Co, and joined Optus in November 2024, promising to stabilise the company and rebuild customer trust after Optus suffered a major data breach in 2022 and then a nationwide outage that cut millions of Australians off from Triple Zero in 2023.

While Rue has been in the job for less than a year, Albanese said on Monday he expected the chief executive to be considering his position.

“Optus has obligations, as do other communications companies, and clearly they haven’t fulfilled the obligations that they have,” Albanese told the ABC from New York.

“What we want is to ensure that something like this shouldn’t happen.”

When asked if Rue should be considering his position, he said: “I would be surprised if that wasn’t occurring.

“That is [why] … we want to see the investigation take place.”

Rue and Optus have faced widespread criticism for their handling of the outage, and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said he had never witnessed “such incompetence”. The outage is now the subject of a number of investigations.

Opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh on Monday became the first MP to call for Rue’s resignation.

Speaking on 2GB, McIntosh called Optus’ failure “an absolute disgraceful” breakdown that cost at least three lives. When asked if she thought Rue should resign, she said that “most right-minded Australians are calling for his head today”.

“Perhaps the CEO will resign. But what else can we look into around the responsibilities of these big companies that have a lot of money? They’re letting their customers down, but not only that, right now, we’ve seen that four people who have sadly passed away,” McIntosh said.

“Every single Australian should be really, like, be in an uproar, like real uproar, about what’s going on. And every single telecommunications provider needs to guarantee Australians that the very least they can get [is] that Triple Zero service. And we want the government to make sure they’re pulling every single lever they can to sort this out, so it never ever happens again.”

The union representing Optus workers, the Communication Workers Union, also echoed those calls.

“Accountability has to start at the top – and if that means the CEO, then that’s where it should fall,” CWU Secretary Shane Murphy said.

“This isn’t a small error – it cost lives. Leadership must take responsibility, right up to the CEO’s office.

“When a company fails this badly, it’s not just a systems failure, it’s a leadership failure.”

Rue said late on Monday that fresh analysis of call logs uncovered an additional seven customers who were unable to connect to emergency services in the early hours of Thursday morning, in addition to the 600 customers already reported.

“Our investigations have revealed there was a period from 12.17am to 12.30am, as the upgrade was being readied for deployment, during which the ability of these customers to get through to emergency services was affected,” Rue said in a statement.

The telco has since conducted welfare checks and Rue confirmed “three of the households have confirmed they require no further assistance”, while two cases have been referred to South Australia Police and two to Western Australian Police after contact attempts failed.

At a Friday press conference, Rue did not answer questions about whether he should resign. “Today is not about me, this is about the people who lost their lives,” he said.

Optus should “expect significant consequences” over the outage, Communications Minister Anika Wells told journalists on Monday, as she said the telco had “perpetuated an enormous failure on the Australian people”.

Wells, speaking in Brisbane, said an investigation into last week’s system outage linked to multiple deaths would be a priority, but that the company’s performance was ultimately “not good enough”.

“Our focus is getting to the bottom of what went wrong before we determine what happens next, but Optus will be held to account,” Wells said.

Carol Bennett, the chief executive of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), has demanded the federal government use its powers to appoint an independent technical expert to oversee Optus.

“It’s a shocking situation … Our hearts go out to the people who have lost family members and the people who couldn’t contact Triple Zero during this emergency,” Bennett told Sky News on Monday.

“What we would expect is some pretty immediate action from the federal government. We want to see the federal minister use her powers … to implement a statutory appointment right now of a technical expert, an independent technical expert that would oversee the operations of Optus and ensure it can meet its Triple Zero obligations.

”Because at the moment there is this question mark. The consumer cannot have confidence that Optus can meet its obligations. It’s quite unclear what’s happened in this situation and whether it could occur again, today, tomorrow, next week. So that’s the most important thing we think needs to be done.“

The appointment of an emergency custodian would add “another layer of safety and assurance that this wouldn’t be able to happen in the first place”, said Bennett, but it would require the government to fast-track legislation through parliament.

On Sunday, Optus confirmed at least five customers tried to warn it about the Triple Zero outage now linked to the deaths, but call centre operators did not escalate those concerns because there were no “red flags” in the beleaguered telecommunication giant’s system.

Rue on Sunday revealed the outage had affected two emergency calls made by NSW residents near the South Australian border.

As pressure mounted on the executive over why Optus waited 40 hours to inform the public about the Triple Zero failure that affected 600 customers, he said a review of call logs had found a further three customers contacted Optus to warn it about the outage, in addition to the two customers who had made earlier warnings to the company.

But Rue said those warnings were ignored because the company was not already aware of the problem.

“As we had not detected the Triple Zero failures in our network at the time of these calls, there were no red flags for the contact centre to alert them to any issue,” he said on Sunday. “This is clearly not good enough.”

Rue said at the press conference that Optus would now implement a compulsory “escalation process” for any reports of Triple Zero failures.

Optus has said it will appoint an independent reviewer to examine how a routine firewall update triggered the failure of the Triple Zero network and why there were no systems in place to alert it to the problem.

Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said: “The bigger picture goes beyond Optus.

“This tragedy exposes systemic weaknesses in Australia’s telecoms sector. The industry has resisted national roaming and network gateways for decades, prioritising competitive advantage over resilience. Now, with lives at stake, that argument is no longer tenable.

“Triple Zero is sacred. Optus will need to show not just apologies but concrete action: transparent audits, redundancy investments, and a willingness to co-operate on national solutions.”

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