Telstra chairman Craig Dunn faced strong criticism at the company’s annual general meeting in Sydney on Tuesday over the handling of a nationwide network outage in July. Investor Peter Starr challenged Dunn for not taking a more visible leadership role alongside Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland, who appeared unprepared during media briefings in the absence of Chief Executive Vicki Brady.

The outage, which began on July 8 due to a GPS card reset that reverted the network’s digital clock to 2006, caused extensive service disruptions, cutting off millions of mobile customers and resulting in over 600 failed emergency calls to triple-0. The incident triggered widespread concern about Telstra’s internal controls and crisis management.

Brady was overseas when the outage occurred but cut short her holiday to oversee the response. As a result, she forfeited $607,000 in short-term incentives for the 2026 financial year. Nine other executives also lost a combined $1.3 million in bonuses. Despite these deductions, Brady received total remuneration of $6.84 million for the year. Shareholders approved future incentive awards, although there remains uncertainty over upcoming bonuses pending the outcome of a formal review.

Telstra commissioned an external investigation by Technology Audit Partners, which was released on September 2. The review found that systemic internal failures allowed an incorrect date to propagate through the network, causing multiple node failures and overload. Telstra has accepted all the findings and has committed to strengthening its infrastructure to prevent similar incidents.

In her address to shareholders, Brady acknowledged that the outage "should not have happened" and praised the transparency of sharing the investigation’s results. She emphasized the company’s ongoing efforts to enhance network resilience and reliability. “When things do go wrong, we’re committed to taking accountability, giving people clear information, and fixing issues as quickly as possible,” she said.

Dunn told the meeting that Telstra had resolved approximately 99 percent of the 33,000 complaints and redress requests generated by the outage, at a cost of $1 million. While defending Ackland’s role as the public point of contact during Brady’s absence, Dunn rejected criticism that he should have been more involved publicly. “I appreciate you’ve got a different view about me being involved,” he told Starr, who maintained that the reputational damage suffered by shareholders was severe.

The episode has spotlighted challenges in Telstra’s crisis management and raised questions about executive accountability, even as the company moves forward with planned improvements.