A police officer who had a firearm held to his head by a colleague for threatening to spoil the latest Top Gun blockbuster says he has completely lost trust in the force.

Constable Dominic Gaynor was ordered to perform community service after admitting to pointing his gun at his junior colleague, Morgan Royston, and threatening to shoot him at a Sydney police station in May 2022.

A magistrate on Thursday said he was unconvinced the 30-year-old was sorry for his actions, which the victim said left him afraid and anxious.

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Gaynor was on duty behind the front desk of Day Street police station in Chinatown when then-probationary constable Royston began discussing Top Gun: Maverick, which he had seen the night before.

The older officer told him not to ruin the movie, to which Royston replied: "I'll spoil it for you."

According to court documents, Gaynor responded: "Don't spoil the movie, c—."

Gaynor then threatened to shoot Royston before laughing and taking his Glock out of its holster.

He pointed the weapon towards the other officer for around five seconds without his finger on the trigger.

Royston, who has since left NSW Police, said the incident forever changed his life and made him lose all trust and admiration he once held for the state's police force.

"My shift (that day) was initially unremarkable," he told a sentencing hearing for Gaynor at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court.

"I had no idea that the course of my life was about to change forever.

"Suddenly I was staring down the front of a loaded police pistol."

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The former officer said he will never forget the "overwhelming shock and fear" he felt as a gun was pointed at his head.

Royston described the months of anxiety and hyper-vigilance that followed, falling into a deep depression and having regular nightmares of being shot and killed.

He said he was torn between reporting the incident and "a desire not to break the police brotherhood of dobbing on another colleague".

According to a tendered police statement, Royston froze and didn't know what to do before he reported the incident to a supervising officer around a week later.

"I completely lost the trust and admiration I had for the NSW Police Force," Royston told the court.

"I thought I would be safe around my trained colleagues … it's put the permanent fear of harm into my mind."

According to the NSW Police handbook, which Gaynor accepted he was aware of, police should treat all firearms as if they are loaded and be conscious of where the muzzle is pointed at all times.

He pleaded guilty to carrying a firearm with disregard for the safety of himself or others.

Several other charges against him were dropped, including a charge of common assault and two counts of stalking or intimidating.

Lawyer Chris Micali conceded Gaynor misused his weapon but said he was otherwise a "fantastic" member of the force.

"This is a remorseful man who made a grievous error that will cost him dearly," he said.

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Magistrate Michael Maher said Gaynor displayed "clearly dangerous reckless judgment" and noted his position as a police officer was "in peril" due to his actions.

While he acknowledged the suspended officer had taken responsibility for his actions, he remained unconvinced as to his remorse.

"I am somewhat guarded as to his understanding of the true impact that he's had to his colleague," he said in sentencing Gaynor.

He convicted Gaynor, and handed him a two-year community correction order and 100 hours of community service.

Maher added he was confused why the victim was allowed to continue to work alongside Gaynor in the same police station after the offence.

"The impact on the victim looms large," he said.

After millions of Australians were hit hard by the massive Optus outage, the telco has announced it will offer a bonus 200GB of data as compensation for the 13-hour downtime.

There had been calls from across the country, including from the federal government, for Optus to provide compensation to many of its estimated 10.2 million customers – and not everyone is happy about the offer it's made.

This is what we know.

READ MORE: What we know about the massive Optus outage

Can you get compensation for the Optus outage?

Depends what you mean by compensation.

If you're after a monetary refund, Optus isn't offering anything, but it has announced customers who were impacted by the outage will receive 200GB of bonus data.

"From Monday, 13 November, eligible postpaid customers, both small businesses and consumers will be able to access 200GB of extra data, and customers have until the end of the year to activate," it said.

"Eligible prepaid customers will be able to access unlimited data on weekends until the end of the year.

"From Monday, customers can go to optus.com.au for more details on how to add the offer to their plans."

READ MORE: Optus outage costs Sydney woman chance to say goodbye to dying mum

What are people saying about Optus' compensation?

The 200GB offer hasn't been well received by some customers.

Rachel, a Sydney woman who due to the outage was unable to be contacted by a hospital when her mother was dying, costing her a chance to say one final farewell, was none too happy with the compensation.

"What would I do with it?" she told 2GB radio.

"It's a bit late to use my data now. What would I need data for now?

"I need for them to actually back up and say, 'We did something wrong and we need to apologise to these 10 million people.'"

https://omny.fm/shows/the-drive-program/rachel-lost-her-mum-during-the-optus-outage-and-sh/embed

"This compensation is no compensation," Michael, a Sydney funeral celebrant impacted by the outage, told 2GB.

"You pay for a plan with a suitable amount of data in it so you never go over it, so offering an extra 200GB costs (Optus) nothing and we won't use it."

The federal government had previously called on the telco to properly compensate those affected by the outage, with Communications Minister Michelle Rowland saying it's what Australians expect.

"Accountability is of the utmost importance here," she told Today.

"I think most reasonable Australians – and knowing what I know about the telco sector and outages that have occurred in the past – it would seem very reasonable for Optus to look at how they can attempt to recompense people for this.

"I haven't seen a definitive announcement in this respect yet, but again that does not obviate their obligation under existing Australian Consumer Law, under contracts and also the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) scheme."

The TIO says it is ready to help customers seeking refunds.

"If you have contacted Optus and you are unhappy with the response, you can make a complaint with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman," it said shortly after the outage began.

"If you have not contacted Optus, or you have been unable to contact them, we can forward your complaint to Optus on your behalf.

"We can help you with refunds for the time you have been unable to use your service, compensation claims and disputes about your contract."

READ MORE: Hospitals, banks and businesses 'crippled' as Optus outage hits millions

A public Senate inquiry into the outage has been announced by the government, and the Greens say the issue of compensation will be investigated during the hearings.

"The question of compensation will be asked," inquiry chair Sarah Hanson-Young said.

"It's our hope that the CEO will have the answers that Australians and 10 million Optus customers expect and deserve.

However, Shuttleworth Telecommunications Fellow Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen said the telco is unlikely to face a significant financial hit for the breach.

"Omissions by the mobile network operators are because there is no immediate financial incentive to do so," he said.

"For example, Optus is unlikely to face any significant financial penalties for today's outage compared with the cost to society of the outage."

READ MORE: Optus network collapse to face federal review

What can you do to seek compensation?

Optus says more information about claiming the 200GB of bonus data will be on its website from Monday, November 13.

It has also told business customers who may have lost income as a result of the outage to get in touch.

"We understand some businesses were uniquely impacted and encourage any with concerns to contact their Optus business centre or business care," it said.

Rowland has previously advised customers to keep track of how the outage has impacted them in as much detail as possible.

"It is important, especially for small businesses, to keep receipts, so that any recourse and any redress that may be available to them has that evidentiary base," she said during the outage.

Money expert Effie Zahos echoed that message.

"Receipts, emails or customer complaints, keep a record of that," she told Today.

READ MORE: How the Optus outage impacted Aussies from Perth to Canada

"Look at your takings last Wednesday, compare it to this Wednesday…

"Gather your records, contact Optus and then go to the telecommunications ombudsman from there – they can help you with your loss, business, non-financial loss and financial loss."

The Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA) says customers who have been impacted by a mobile or internet outage should file a formal complaint with their telco.

READ MORE: All the services impacted by mass network outage

What rights do you have after an outage?

According to ACMA, you may be entitled to a refund or compensation depending on your contract.

"If the outage is only minor and short, it is unlikely you will receive any compensation or refund," it says.

"But the telco may be breaking your service agreement, depending on the reasons for the outage (and) the terms of your contract.

READ MORE: When the Optus boss is forced to call in to address a crisis via WhatsApp you know it's bad

"Some contracts allow you to apply for a refund or rebate when you can't use a service because of an outage. This is usually only for major outages that you did not cause.

"Sometimes a telco will offer compensation for the loss of service, even if they don't have to."

You also have rights guaranteed under Australian consumer law.

This is what ACMA says about them:

"If the service outages are frequent and/or major, you may be able to: ask for a refund or rebate for the period you were without service; cancel your contract without a penalty; (and/or) ask for compensation for any loss that happened as a result."

Dozens of calls for help have been made to the SES as heavy showers and storms hit Sydney.

As of 5pm crews said they had had 77 callouts for help, including to a church in Liverpool where the roof partially caved in due to rain.

Trees and tree branches have also been smashed in the storm.

A gum tree has been split in half in Hammondville and a tree branch has hit power lines in Petersham.

READ MORE: Drought 'already here' as Australia has driest three months ever

Lightning has hit overhead wiring at Casula in the south-west, impacting trains.

Trains are not running from Glenfield to Liverpool in that direction on the T2 Inner West & Leppington Line and the T5 Cumberland Line due to urgent repairs.

Storms have already dampened parts of north-west Victoria, southern New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania overnight, with thunderstorms expected to continue this afternoon and evening.

While a thunderstorm warning has been lifted for Sydney, warnings of flash flooding remain for much of the NSW coast.

Bankstown has had more than 20mm of rain this afternoon.

The temperature at Sydney Harbour has dropped to 18 degrees from 27 earlier. 

Hail has hit areas of the Hawkesbury, with images from Bilpin showing lawns covered with ice.

Large hail and damaging winds have also been forecast by Weatherzone, and Marine Wind Warnings have been issued for NSW, Victoria, and Tasmania by the Bureau of Meteorology.

The expected thunderstorms are part of a "prolonged storm outbreak" that has been lingering over Australia's east coast since last week.

Overnight, Albury, on the southern New South Wales border, saw 41mm of rain, breaking a three-week drought.

https://twitter.com/BOM_NSW/status/1722457040809754951?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Braidwood, east of Canberra, had 31.6mm of rain, marking the heaviest day of rainfall in a year.

Lightning is expected to spread over the region later in the day into the evening.

Showers and storms are expected to stick around for the next week, as humid easterly winds and low-pressure troughs fuel the wet weather.

Queensland and New South Wales detected more than a million lightning strikes over the weekend.

The weather is in stark contrast to a recent report which revealed Australia just had its driest three months on record, and it's not going to let up soon.

The Bureau of Meteorology's November drought statement showed just how parched the country is, with some areas experiencing record-low levels of rainfall.

Nationwide, October rainfall was the fifth-lowest since 1900 – down 65.4 per cent on the long-term 1961-1990 average, and every state and territory except Victoria dropped below their own averages.

A multi-million dollar payout to a child sexual abuse survivor awarded against AFL club the Western Bulldogs has been hailed as a landmark day.

Adam Kneale, 51, took legal action against Footscray Football Club, now the Western Bulldogs, after he suffered abuse between 1984 and 1990 at the hands of fundraising volunteer Graeme Hobbs.

Following a four-week trial in Melbourne's Supreme Court, a jury of six on Thursday found the club was negligent.

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The Bulldogs must pay almost $6 million to Adam Kneale who sued over his sexual abuse as a boy.

Jurors awarded $5,943,151 in damages, the highest amount given by a jury to an abuse survivor in Australia and the first against an AFL club.

The Bulldogs will also have to pay legal costs.

Kneale's lawyer Michael Magazanik said the verdict would be "an earthquake for the legal system", particularly the jury's choice to award $3,250,000 for pain and suffering.

"This is a landmark day for all abuse survivors," he said.

"In bringing his claim, and getting the result that he got, Adam has changed the legal landscape."

Neale said he waited three decades for the Bulldogs to acknowledge what happened.

"I believe there's a lot of people that need to find the courage to come forward," he said.

"It's something that only someone can do when they're ready to do it, whereas I've been ready for a long time."

Adam Kneale was first raped at age 11 or 12 after being introduced to Hobbs through a schoolmate.

READ MORE: Shot fired into windscreen during attempted carjacking in Melbourne

The Bulldogs said they would appeal against the jury verdict "as expeditiously as possible".

"While the club firmly believes it did not breach any duty of care owed to the plaintiff, Adam Kneale, a jury determined otherwise," a club spokesman said.

"Pending the appeal, the club will have no further comment to make."

Hobbs trained under-19s at Footscray Football Club and was a prolific volunteer fundraiser for the club.

He first raped Kneale when he was 11 or 12 at an administration building at the club's home ground in 1984, after being introduced to the boy through a schoolmate.

He would meet Hobbs in a stairwell at the home ground during the start of games and hand over cash and direct him to come back after half time.

As Kneale got older and Hobbs continued to abuse him, the now-dead pedophile told him more about what he and others did.

This included gatherings at farmhouses and "swap meets" where pedophiles would bring their "best boys" to be abused by different people.

When he was 20 and his daughter was born, Kneale realised he had to report Hobbs, knowing he was abusing other children including those "not long out of nappies".

READ MORE: Sydney cop pulled gun on colleague over Top Gun movie spoiler

Hobbs pleaded guilty to sexually abusing Kneale in May 1994 and the local paper splashed the story on the front page.

He received a minimum 15-month prison sentence and died in 2009.

He launched the civil action believing the Bulldogs were vicariously liable because the club gave Hobbs special access to him and it didn't reach out to him when his abuse became public.

The Western Bulldogs told the trial they did not know about the offending.

Former club president Peter Gordon told the court he was first made aware of Hobbs' crimes when a journalist contacted the club in April last year.

Outside court on Thursday, Kneale said telling his story to the court was cathartic and he finally felt vindicated.

"I believe wholeheartedly that they knew what happened and failed to acknowledge to me the pain that I've endured," he said.

Magazanik said he hoped the Bulldogs would see this as a lesson.

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"Don't let your volunteers sexually assault children, and if they do – face up to the consequences, try and make it right, don't run and hide," he said.

"The Western Bulldogs now have six million reasons to regret their abysmal behaviour."

The Bulldogs spokesman said the club acknowledged the pain Kneale "continues to carry as a result of the trauma he has experienced".

But the parents didn’t want her near their children.

Police are appealing to the public to find a man who allegedly followed and exposed himself to two teenage girls in NSW.

The two girls, aged 13 and 15, were walking near Riley Park, Airds, near Campbelltown on Monday when they were approached by a man of Middle Eastern descent, around 4pm.

Police said the man allegedly exposed himself before the girls ran away and reported the incident.

READ MORE: Dozen of calls for help as major storms hit Sydney

As inquiries continue, police would like to speak with a man who may be able to assist them with inquiries.

He is described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, about 180cm tall, with a medium build, short black hair, with a beard and a moustache.

He was wearing an orange fluoro top and trackpants, with white paint on the top and no shoes.

He was seen driving an early model white Kia Cerato.

Police are urging anyone with information or who may have dashcam footage from the area at the time of the incident, to come forward and contact police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

National Geographic Traveller has published a roster of 30 places and experiences comprising its 2024 'cool list.'

These people are bringing Moriori songs into the modern day.

Customers who purchased oysters from Coles have been urged to check the packaging after a batch was sold with the incorrect expiry date.

A number of the 12-pack of Sydney City Oysters – Pacific Oysters sold at the deli in Coles supermarkets and Coles online in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory between November 4 and November 8 are being recalled.

Coles said the batch were incorrectly labelled with a use-by date of November 30, 2023, instead of November 10, 2023.

READ MORE: Millions facing flood risk as storms lash Australia's east coast

"While the product is currently safe to eat, customers should not consume the product beyond the correct use by date of 10 November 2023," Coles said.

"Customers can return the product to any Coles supermarket for a full refund.

"Coles Online customers can receive a full refund or credit by contacting Coles Online Customer Care."

Coles apologised to customers for any inconvenience.

More than 24 hours on from that moment when night shift workers wondered why they'd lost mobile signal or late-night gamers wondered why their home internet wasn't working, we still didn't know officially what caused the Optus network outage.

However, some of the smartest people in Australia who know how these large networks work have put together enough data that's available publicly on the internet to determine the best and most likely scenario.

That scenario appears broadly true today, with Optus announcing the cause of the issue lay within the routing of their network.

READ MORE: Millions facing flood risk as storms lash Australia's east coast

I draw my learnings in part from the reporting of our colleagues at the Sydney Morning Herald and also from industry experts posting online such as Rob Thomas.

At your home, you have devices – your phone, your laptop, your TV – that connect to your Wi-Fi network. 

They connect to your router, which then sends the traffic out to your modem and internet connection and any responses come back that same path.

If you attach a new device to your Wi-Fi, it gets given an internal address by the router, so it can also receive traffic when needed.

But for Optus, they have millions upon millions of devices on their network, so things are far more complex.

Essentially, their routers can handle more traffic but to make that highly efficient, they use "route reflectors".

These share the directions for traffic to flow around the internet within the Optus network, and make it possible for us all to be online.

All of this then passes through a thing called the border gateway protocol (BGP) and life is good.

However, large amounts of speculation indicate that something was changed on one of those route reflectors. 

Not normally an issue, because Optus would have lots of them.

But, if there was a problem with how that change was implemented, you need to know fast.

READ MORE: Rival telcos boom as customers desert Optus

If another route reflector was upgraded at the same or similar time, it can cause panic between all of the routers, basically shouting at each other new instructions for how to get from A to E and G to T on the internet. 

When that level of aggressive "route broadcasting" starts happening, the BGP can be overwhelmed or flooded.

Ok, no big deal. 

We can see the issue. Why did it take so long to fix?

Well, this goes to your staffing plan. 

Normally a technically proficient engineer will open up their laptop while lying in bed, log into the network and roll back the clock of changes and then go back to sleep as things are sorted.

Not yesterday, because the BGP failure meant their network was down, and when that happens you can't remotely access the servers.

Okay, it's a bit of a pain, but head into the office and plug in a computer. 

What if all your main network technical staff are outsourced to a third party overseas, probably one managing much more of your parent company Singtel's businesses?

Did Optus fly someone in to fix it, or did they grab a Telstra or Vodafone hotspot and use FaceTime to get instructions?

We will never know.  And we don't need to. 

But we do need to hear from Optus to know they know what failed and why, and how they will prevent it from happening again.

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I could have interpreted some of this technical detail wrongly, but the principle of the issue is the same, and I thank the IT community for sharing their views on this.

This explanation is a simplified view of what the likely "routing" issues were yesterday, and we may never get more details information on Optus than just the "routing" issue.