Optus cuts comms roles as NBN Co alumni move in
Optus CEO Stephen Rue, reading the 000 apology (Sky News) last September
Optus is overhauling its communications and corporate affairs structure and has cut up to nine roles, as former NBN Co staff join its comms and marketing leadership ranks.
Australia’s second-largest telecommunications provider has cut up to six roles in its internal communications unit and removed three positions in external communications, with those in the latter required to reapply for their roles.
All new hires into the external unit are contractors rather than full-time staff, Mumbrella understands.
The external unit was previously overseen by associate directors of media and corporate affairs, Kathy Lipari, who resigned from Optus in January and joined News Corp two months later and Nicole Higgins, who is now on maternity leave.
Mumbrella understands Lipari’s role has not been replaced, while Higgins’ maternity leave vacancy has recently been filled by Amber Scotto de Perta.
The changes to the external team are understood to form part of a broader restructure overseen by Jane McNamara, who joined Optus as VP of external comms and stakeholder engagement last October. She came from NBN Co.
Mumbrella understands the changes reflect a wider strategic reset rather than a straightforward cost-cutting exercise, and at least one of the affected in McNamara’s team has been deployed within Optus.
“Optus has made changes to its communications teams focused on how the teams are structured to support the business and its transformation program,” an Optus spokesperson said in a statement.
“For privacy reasons, we don’t comment on individual employees or employee matters.”
Jane McNamara, head of external comms at Optus
McNamara is among several former NBN Co communications and marketing leaders to have joined Optus since former NBN Co CEO Stephen Rue took the helm at the end of 2024.
Others include Felicity Ross, Optus’ chief corporate affairs and marketing officer, and Rebecca Kington, director of strategic enablement within corporate affairs and marketing.
The telco is also understood to have hired additional NBN Co alumni, Scott Whiffin and Jennifer Beauvillain De Montreuil, to work across communications and engagement, although their roles have not been publicly announced.
The changes follow several years of public relations crises for Optus, including a cyberattack in late 2022.
Two years later, the network experienced a nationwide outage that contributed to the resignation of then-CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.
More recently, Optus was hit by a major emergency services outage across parts of South Australia and Western Australia during which four people died, with two deaths directly linked to the network blackout.
Writing about the Triple 0 outage at the time, crisis communications expert Peter Wilkinson described Rue as “a poor communicator, that’s clear, so he relied on his communication team, and the crisis was beyond them.”
When a company with a trust deficit cuts comms roles and fills the top ranks with the CEO’s old network, it does not scream transformation. It screams control.