The Chaser Report - Optus's CEO Outage

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

CEO of Optus, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, has resigned to spend more time with her burner phones. In the meantime, Charles and Dom talk about how India lost the cricket world cup due to out-woking Australia - as will soon be reported by SkyNews. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, amazing news from Optus, which is, I don't know whether you saw this. Have you got an Optus phone? I've got an Optus phone, so I don't really keep up with the news anymore. Yeah, I think a lot of our podcast numbers have been affected by this. Um, Kelly Bayer, Ross Marin, uh, resigned as, as CEO yesterday, Charles.

Oh, yeah. I mean, technically, uh, I think she sent the, the resignation email the moment she could see the floor, but, being on Optus. Yeah. It just came to be done, didn't it? Yeah, I, I nearly tweeted it. And then I thought, is that too obvious? And then the chaser came right in on chaser.com.

That are you with that one. It had to be said. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I immediately texted it. John, who's the editor with that gag, this morning. Yeah, right-thinking people agree. I think right-thinking people agree that it was the appropriate move.

Well, I think, look, she is a very strange passenger that woman, was criticised when it happened for leading possibly the worst PR disaster ever in that it was, they didn't even try it to come up with a narrative for what had happened. It was just like, oh, yeah, oh, it's terrible. Oh dear. I think my favourite bit of publicity, because this just keeps coming on, my favourite bit of publicity is that she's been carrying around not only Telstra Sims, but Vodafod Sims, in case there's another outage. She literally admitted that she's in the Senate inquiry that she's been relying on other carriers.

So that's one thing to look out in today's news. We'll get into Kelly and her not only one, but two massive outages of various telcos. But possibly the biggest news today is that the Australian cricket team, which, as we all know, if you've been listening to any News Corp columnist, is too woke to win anything. Too woke. Rita Panahi told me there was no chance I could win a thing because Pat Cummins, far too busy being woke and self-righteous rather than going and winning cricket games like Steve. Steve War wasn't woke, Charles.

No, exactly. And look at all the cricket matches that he captained to victory. Yep, yep. And mental disintegration. Where was that in the World Cup final? Well, it was on the face of every Indian player by the end. Unfortunately, we'll talk about that as well. But I've got a theory about why India a lot.

Of course you do. Despite the fact that Charles is going to outline a theory, you should probably listen after this. Okay, so which one should we do first? I kind of feel like the cricket's going to be funner than the Optus one. Well, I think it would be fitting for Optus if we left it till the end. Yeah, or just do it. I didn't get to it at all.

Okay. So we may not actually get to that point. But as an Optus customer, which is why you can find on my personal details on the dark web, I do have some venting to do. but let's start with the cricket. Charles, did you stay up? I stayed up until about 11 when it was about... India was already looking bad.

It was like 210 for 7 or something. At that point, the commentator said, I think India would be very happy with 240 at this, right? And that is actually what they ended up getting. That was pretty impressive, wasn't it? I stayed up. I stood up for the whole thing. Oh, the whole thing?

I mean, admittedly assisted by the fact that I have, in one of the worst pieces of timing imaginable, just returned from India. Oh, really? Mending that my body clock was on Indian time, which is why I feel so deeply unwell today. But it meant it staying up until three or whatever it was was absolutely fine.

And, yeah, I actually drifted off at a key moment between Australia looking like they were going to lose because they really did at the start of the Australian banion. Yeah, it was like four for 70, no, four for 27. Yeah, three for 20 odd. Just after Steve Smith got out, and by the way, he was in no way out, it was a terrible mistake not to challenge.

I thought, well, and I texted Jazz, actually. You know, Labashane and Head could do this, but the bowlers run, playable. Particularly, Bumra was just absolutely impossible to play. Yeah, and the wicket was rigged. The wicket, it was very favourable. Not reed so much as what every team does. Yeah, it was very much chosen to benefit. No, in the tradition of cricket.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And my favourite thing about this is that, you know what defeated India at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Do you? Yes, they were talking about that when I drifted off to sleep. I love how we get coverage news. Yeah, when did you fall asleep?

Yeah, that's right. I briefly drifted off. But no, I woke at the perfect time with about 30 or 40 still to get. But they were saying, oh, well, you know, what if there's due? There might be some Jew. But they didn't explain why that would be so advantageous to the Australians. Well, this is the thing. I kind of love this.

Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, has this massive stadium named after him. It's a temple of his ego, essentially, 130,000 people can fill it. I don't think it was actually full for the final. They keep saying about 93,000 in, but a massive crowd and hugely one-sided, right? Well, it was all dressed in blue T-shirts. Everyone was dressed in blue India kit. But, I mean, I've been to India-Australia contests in Australia, and the atmosphere is electric until India start fucking up.

And then, honestly, you can hear a pin drop. When Mitch Marsh unleashed a monster six before getting out cheaply, I've never heard, I think, a six get absolutely no reaction. Like the Aussies would have been booing, let's be honest, but there was no applause. There might have been one person just with a golf clap. I think the Aussies were all asleep, but I think. And so Maudi built this massive showpiece.

And by the way, this is the place where he and Albo, earlier in the year when Australia played a test there, we're riding around in some sort of weird golden chariot. It was a very odd bit of political stage management. That's right. It's a completely strange. So this was basically the crowning victory for Modi's India in the Modi Stadium at the Modi World Cup with the trophy presented by Modi, defeated by Dew.

And so India can kind of basically take over world cricket and have a lot of the key positions on the ICC. They can, I think they're having the World Cup again in eight years. It's basically the Indian game. run the cricket now. They do, and all the revenue comes to the IPL. I'm fine with that. It's a nation of a billion people.

It's really a good thing in many ways. But I love that even this massively controlling prime minister who's had cricket as part of his brand cannot guarantee a World Cup victory because of due. Yeah, well, you could say it was due, but I've actually got another theory. I want to explain why due is a fact that. It was never actually, I managed to discern it from Ricky Ponty. The witness means what? It's pretty simple.

So Pat Cummins saw the forecast. And that's why he said, he won the toss and said he was going to bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which everyone thought, what the hell? You never bowl in one day cricket. You're always bad. I just thought it was because he was a bowler. Oh, I thought they're asking me what I do.

Sorry, it's a language barrier thing. What do you want to do? Oh, well, I like to bowl. I'm a bowler, yeah, yeah. No, no, it wasn't that at all. And this is the crazy thing about cricket is because, you know, he won the toss, got to choose. It's all very well to kind of prepare a pitch that favors your slower bowlers and spin and so on. But unfortunately, if there's due,

the ball gets soggy so the ball gets hit along the ground picks up moisture and unless you've got some sandpaper handy and this is the thing that would have been so useful if we needed it I'm sure we had some ready unless you got that sandpaper handy or the kind of the mints

you know those strong mints that they chew and rub the ball. Unless you cheat the ball gets soggy and so what happened in the Australian innings when the dew started to arrive it was forecast to come in the second innings was that India's amazing fast bowlers and seamers and so on

and spinners went from being unplayable and getting nicks. I mean, at the start of the Australian innings, they've bowled so well that the Australians couldn't even connect with the ball to edge it. They just kept swinging and missing because the ball was moving so much.

Well, that was the problem with Steve Smith, wasn't it? That he thought he'd hit it because normally he would have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But actually, it was bold so well he didn't. Well, it was LB, but it was pitching way off, but he just thought, oh, you know, I'm in India. And the crowd cheered massively, and it was very intimidating.

But then as soon as the ball gets waterlogged, It just doesn't spin any more. It's like playing with a tennis ball sweat. It turned into a tennis ball. It was really fun. Head and Lubas Shane lasted for long enough for the cricket ball to turn to a tennis ball. And thereby, Australia, won just because we knew there was due. Slog fist.

Yeah. So what's going to happen, I'm very confident, between now and the next World Cup, is he going to build a roof over to Ramadi Stadium? And I suspect, look, you might have heard, Charles, that Gujarat, which is the place where Ahmedabad is, the state, it's a dry state. You can't get booze. there. And I now think it's going to be even dry. I think Jew's going to be banned in the

state of Gujarat after this. Well, there's a very moody way of dealing with it. It's just ban it. Yeah. I mean, just point out that it's not patriotic and basically it should probably move overseas. All the moisture should probably go over the border to Pakistan. Yeah, exactly. That's right. So well done Australia.

Yes. A great kind of asshole victory really in that a country was so, it meant so much to India. And we didn't need, we've already got five. We've got five. We've got five, but also we did it in such a shit way in that we lost, we lost the first two at least. Yeah, first two against India, which looked really bad for us and then against South Africa. So we were looking like we couldn't mix it with the best teams.

Yeah, and it was just like the whole beginning of the tournament was a complete disaster. Like I actually made a comment on this podcast about how terrible Pat Covensey is. Is that why we won? But it was also his wokeness. See, he stopped being fucking woke and paid attention to the team. So this is my theory, Dom, about why India won. India lost. This is my theory for why India lost.

Breaking news, India lost, just to be clear. Which is, they're too woke. See, the problem is not that Australia was too woke to win. It's that they got outwoked by India, and that's why India lost. And I haven't yet caught up with Sky News' take. But I am presuming that will be their take. I don't need to. I don't need to watch Sky News.

because what you're saying sounds so correct. Not politically correct, are you wrong? No. But correct, correct, correct as in not woke. Yeah, yeah. Just like you weren't woke during the final. You weren't watching it all. So I think, I mean, I think this is a wake-up call for the Australian team.

It's a woke-up call, Charles. It's a woke-up call because the thing is that now they've played against a more woke team than them. And so if they learn from this, anything, it's that they should stop being so what? Yes, and I really think particularly, India should not have gotten involved in the referendum campaign the way that they did. Just focus on the cricket, mate. We don't want your opinions about everything. I'm hoping that they'll all be given shows on Sky News, which could, you know, could potentially use a bit more diversity, tough. What do you mean?

What do you mean? A certain podcast. Do you reckon we should now move after this? The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. So, the thing that I love about this story, Charles, is the revelation that she actually presided over not one but two debacles. We're talking about the Optus CEO. Kelly, not anymore.

Kelly, Bayer, Ross Marin, the now former. CEO of Optus. My favourite point in this whole saga was a few weeks ago, she'd been criticised for not keeping ahead of the narrative when Optus went out and there was no Optus services for 24 hours. And so she went on ABC RN Radio National the next day to sort of apologise. And she was, you know, she was quite forthright. You know, we apologise and, you know, we can do better and blah, blah, blah.

And then Hamish McDonald was the host that day. And he said, so has anyone else to ask you to resign? And she went, oh, I think I've given you enough. Okay, see you. Bye. The line's faking up, which admittedly is a plausible excuse for your office. It wasn't like, you know, normally you'd expect some evasion or just a witticism to sort of deflect. But instead she just didn't, it was so strange.

That never happens, especially on Radio National, where people go, oh, bye-bye, and then just hang up. Well, you don't have to answer the question. Yeah, but she obviously had already then. But did she have to resign because a couple of days ago it came out that the whole problem was upstream? Like it was the Singtel was actually, well, the Optus's spin was, the root cause was upstream. And my wife actually even said to me, you think it's wise for Optus to blame it on their owners? Their owners, yeah. Well, the great theory I think I mentioned before was that the board of Singtel were in town.

literally having a meeting here, because Australia is a much bigger market than Singapore. Singapore's got, I don't know, four and a half, maybe five and a half million people. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, no, it's a lot of country. So by virtue of owning optas, I think Singtel has more customers. I always think of Singapore is sort of better than us in every way. Well, they're so rich that they're all worth more than us. Yeah. But, um, no, the Singapore's population is much smaller. I think it's, yeah, about five and a half million, something like that. Um, well, it is just one city. It is. Do you know one of the best things about, because I was just in Singapore on the way home, you know one of my favorite things about

Singapore? The authoritarianism. Yeah, of course, and I have to say that. No, it's that addresses are just a street name and number. Oh, yeah, because you don't need the city. Because there's only one of every street. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't need to say which suburb. It's like, no country, no city.

Oh, right. So they don't have two George streets. That's it. Yeah, so it just be, and I haven't come across one anyway. So you tell a cabby, I'm going to Club Street or something or Mosque Street or whatever it is. Yeah. And that's it. Yep.

They know where that is. It's pretty efficient. We should definitely do the show there. Yes. I think we could be based there. and talk about the Australian government. I think they wouldn't mind if we did that. It's a lovely place to live.

Yeah. I know a few people who lived there for a while and weren't in any way political and all of them ended up fleeing the place. Because I said something. No, yeah, just going, actually you realize after a while just how horrible it is. There's this sort of sinister underbelly

that you don't see for the first 10 years. You won't hear that comment if you're downloading it faroptist. Yeah. We haven't really ever discussed the issues with, you know, number two telco being owned by a foreign government. Singapore, by foreign government. And the whole question, Charles, the thought that I had was, well, why the fuck don't networks roam to each other when they go down?

I mean, Telstra, and I was a Telstra customer when this happened too, so I seemed to follow network to network with the debarcles. Maybe you're the reason. I think I'm the problem, yeah. I mean, when they went down, why can't you roam onto Optus? Why can't they have a special thing that they switch on, where everyone's phone just switches over to it on the network? But wouldn't they have to pay for that?

Yes. Yes. Good. Yes. No, but... I mean, the telecommunications minister could just require it. It wouldn't be complicated. They could just say,

Optus customers have to be able to access Telstra. But wouldn't that mean you'd have a whole lot of shit, shithole freeloader clogging up the network? No, I don't mean permanently. I just mean you flick a switch. Yeah. Oh, but the problem is Optus wouldn't flick the switch for hours. They wouldn't be able to. And the switch would be in Singapore.

I'd know it'd be able to call. But also, wouldn't that be... I mean, I've got Vodafone. Like, my norm was... network usage is that the phone doesn't work. The switch would be permanently flicked to Telstra.

They literally... Well, Telstra did go down at one point for a day and I think twice actually in the same year, a few years ago. And had to give everyone free stuff. I love that Optus's solution is to give everyone more Optus. 200 gigs free data.

Whereas Amazing, which is on the Optus network, gave everyone a free month. Yeah, actually go have them free... That's actually a nice. It's actually a useful thing. Because the one thing, the one thing, Optus customers don't want is more Optus. They're all leaving for Telstra. Yeah, I'm thinking of going to... I'm not even on Optus. I'm on Vodafone.

I think I actually at the beginning of this episode pretended I was on Optus. You did? I actually am. I'm actually on Vodafone, partly because you can't get Telstra where I am, but I don't know what to do. I don't care. Just get rid of your phone. Maybe I should just... Everyone's got your number. It's a liability at this point, Charles. If you think Charles should switch to your telka, I-419-282-1-8. What next for this Optus CEO? And who's the new CEO going to be? Well, but what's her qualification?

Her qualifications are, she's good at leaking stuff onto the dark web and stuffing things up. I'm thinking either a major pathology organization, like they all leaked all their data. Oh, yes, that's good. Yes, she could run a Medibank private. Medibank private would be perfect for her. I think Qantas, I mean, they've just got a new CEO, but the whole, I mean, they leaked data and also they, they, network doesn't work at all. Yep, that works.

That would work well. I mean, basically any Australian corporation she could walk into, and with those qualifications, she'll be seeing in a moment. I mean, what about government? She could take over Centrelink and fix RoboTess. And who are they appointing now? I mean, I haven't heard who the new CEO of Optus is going to be. Well, it's Alan Joyce, yeah.

Of course, it's Alan Joyce. I thought you were going to go without default joke of 2023 and say, well, it's obviously Ben Robert Smith. Because cutting people off is his thing. Hey. That doesn't quite work. I think actually... Rapid disconnections.

What happened was they were trying to work out who to appoint as CEO. Turns out Scott Morrison has already appointed himself here. Hey. Just listen to any other previous episode of this podcast for the same place being made. Thank you for joining us. We're at the Australian Podcast Awards tomorrow. We've been nominated for Best Comedy. Yes.

It's been a thin year for comedy. Yeah. Dan Litch will win again with a rational fear, but it's nice to go and congratulate him. It was his birthday today, actually. Happy birthday, Dan. As a gift, we got you at a fourth fucking trophy. You spoiled so-and-so. Our gears from Road. We are part of the Iconiclass Network. Catch you tomorrow.