Telstra CEO Still Earned $700K More! | Dirt Report

Telstra’s financial result and executive remuneration

Telstra released its full-year financial results on Thursday 13 August 2026. The company reported a profit attributable to shareholders of $2.24 billion, up 3.2 per cent from the previous year. Mobile revenue reached $11.37 billion, while Telstra increased its final dividend and announced a further $1 billion share buyback after completing a previous $1.25 billion buyback in June.

Customers also paid more during the year. Most post-paid mobile plans increased by about $4 per month in May, while prepaid plans rose by $5. Mobile income increased by around $300 million over the financial year.

Against that background, Vicki Brady’s total remuneration was reported at $6.8 million, compared with approximately $6.1 million the previous year. That represents an increase of about $700,000. However, the financial year ended on 30 June, before the major outage on 8 July, so most of the remuneration related to performance before that event.

Bonus reductions after the outage

After the outage, Telstra’s board used its discretion to reduce Brady’s bonus by $67,000, representing a 20 per cent cut. The former Global Networks executive also received a 20 per cent reduction, while other senior executives had their bonuses reduced by 10 per cent. The reductions across the executive team totalled $1.3 million.

The outage affected almost 45 per cent of calls and mobile data sessions at its peak. Telstra later said that maintenance had restarted a network time protocol server in Melbourne, which reset its date to 2006. The server was around 15 years old, and its manufacturer had advised Telstra that the software needed to be updated in 2002 and again in January 2026. The update had not been installed, and a previous design change had not been properly documented.

Telstra acknowledged that its controls and processes had failed. The issue therefore involved more than a single operational mistake, with asset management, software maintenance, documentation, redundancy, monitoring and management controls all relevant to the failure.

Compensation and customer impact

At a Senate inquiry in July, Telstra had received around 8,000 compensation claims and paid roughly $100,000. One month later, Brady said more than 30,000 customers had requested compensation. Telstra had paid nearly $1 million while continuing to assess claims.

Customers must make a claim and demonstrate their loss. Businesses affected by problems such as failed EFTPOS payments, missed contacts or disrupted operations may need to provide evidence, including invoices or sales records, showing what the outage cost them.

Brady said Telstra saw only a small impact on customers leaving and no material overall impact. The company lost about 7,000 direct post-paid mobile subscriptions during the financial year, while prepaid and wholesale services grew. Network coverage remains an important consideration, particularly in regional Australia.

The broader question about executive accountability

Telstra’s financial performance gave it capacity to announce another $1 billion share buyback. Returning capital to shareholders is not inherently problematic, but the decision sits alongside questions about whether ageing infrastructure, software updates and operational controls received enough attention before the outage.

The central issue is not whether the CEO personally restarted or failed to update the server. Senior executives are responsible for building systems and controls that reduce the chance of one error causing a national communications failure. The debate is whether a $67,000 reduction, leaving total remuneration at $6.8 million, represents a meaningful consequence for an outage involving communications, transport, payments and access to triple zero.