Telstra’s outage sparks China fears, public relations battle

Within hours of Telstra’s massive outage on Wednesday, speculation about the true source of the national chaos was outpacing evidence.

One Nation deputy leader Barnaby Joyce suggested that Chinese hackers may have been behind the outage, attributing the outage to Beijing’s known cyber capabilities and broader strategic assertiveness in the region.

“I don’t want to be paranoid or a conspiracy theorist,” Mr. Joyce said. “But we know that China has the capacity to influence this type of software or network.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor was more cautious, saying he had “no idea” whether there was any connection between the outage and the missile China launched from the sea in the South Pacific this week. But he also said he understood why Australians were “making that connection”.

The problem is that no evidence has been presented linking China or any other hacker group to Telstra’s outage.

Telstra says it knows the problem, not the cause

Michael Ackland, the telecommunications company’s acting chief executive, told the media that the $57 billion telecommunications giant knew about the problem behind the outage but did not know the root cause.

The issue stems from a failure to update servers in two Telstra-owned data centers in Melbourne and Sydney. But why they failed is a mystery the company is trying to answer.

“We don’t know the real reason yet [of the outage]We are urgently investigating and will provide updates,” Mr Ackland said. “We have nothing to indicate malicious activity at this stage, but we are in contact with all regulators and government agencies to this effect.”

Australia has reason to take China’s cyber threats seriously. In 2024, the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber ​​Security Center warned about a group called APT40, which was linked to, among others, Chinese state cybersecurity capabilities.

“APT40 has repeatedly targeted Australian networks, as well as government and private sector networks in the region, and the threat they pose to our networks continues,” the agency warned.

China is also the country’s key trading partner and an easy punching bag in Australian politics.

A country that is powerful, authoritarian, strategically assertive and subject to public suspicion. A mysterious blackout, a missile launch in the South Pacific and an agreement between Australia and Fiji make it easy to jump to far-fetched conclusions in what Mr. Joyce calls paranoia.

There are even traces of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch hunts in 1950s America in Wednesday’s political theater. Later accusations were often made with little evidence, and public fear became a political weapon. Those who raised the alarm presented themselves as defenders of the nation. Those who called for caution risked being dismissed as naive.

Telstra faces tough week

Whatever the source of the outage, Telstra’s management now faces a tough week ahead after chaos spread across the country on Wednesday morning.

Rail networks in Victoria and New South Wales were closed and customers in all major cities were unable to access the internet or make calls.

Telstra owes full disclosure to the public and its shareholder base.

Additionally, the company said it was not aware that any triple 0 or emergency calls were not connected due to the outage and that it was overseeing this reputation-sensitive outcome.

In November 2023, Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned after a nationwide outage disrupted mobile, internet and phone services, including some emergency calls, for around 14 hours.

In 2025, Optus came under tighter scrutiny after another outage was linked to emergency call failures and four deaths. He eventually blamed the outage on human error or that his staff did not follow instructions during the firewall update.

All this means Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady’s absence from annual leave is inconvenient timing.

Mr Ackland had to face the music as acting chief executive as the company tried to explain a crisis it did not fully understand.

Opposition Leader Mr Taylor urged Ms Brady to return to work. Telstra’s board will also understand that leadership visibility is important when infrastructure fails.

Shares were down 2.3 percent at $4.96 in afternoon trading.