November 22, 2023
JAMES PATERSON: Good afternoon. While the government's Cyber Security Strategy promised a lot but has delivered very little. After 15 months of deliberations and consideration and planning, what we have today, frankly, won't make Australia the most cyber security country by 2030. On investment, it only adds $587 million to the new Cyber Security Strategy. That compares to $1.67 billion of the Cyber Security Strategy of the previous government, which the minister said needed to be torn up, and $9.9 billion invested by the previous government in the Australian Signals Directorate.
The things that the cyber security does do, which are good, should have been done months ago, like for example, creating the safe harbour mechanism for companies under cyber attack to confidently share with the Australian Signals Directorate in a time of crisis information that won't then be used against them. That's something which I've been calling for more than six months now and it could have been easily legislated already. Other things like a post-incident review board are perfectly sensible, but should have happened again months ago, so they would have been in place well before the DP World attack.
And of course, there are major omissions from the Cyber Security Strategy. Despite flamboyantly commissioning a review into the risks of foreign interference through social media platforms with platforms like Tik Tok, the government has said nothing about this absolutely critical issue for our democracy. There are many more things that could have been in here, that should have been in here. For example, I've identified more than 1,000 CCTV cameras from high risk vendors, more than 3.000 drones and widespread uses of applications that should never be used in the federal government and yet, on high risk vendors, again, this strategy is silent. After all that talk, after all that rhetoric. Is Australia going to be any more cyber secure from this strategy? It's extremely doubtful that it will, and that's really disappointing.
And just finally, I want to make some brief comments on the High Court decision and the ongoing mismanagement of this by the Labor government. Firstly, it's good that the government has now finally admitted what we have been calling for them to do for more than a week, which is to institute a preventative or continuing detention order regime for at the very least, the highest risk people among the cohort of 93 who have been released to the community so far and up to 250 who could be released still. The government first said that this couldn't be done. Then they said it couldn't be done until the High Court has handed down its reasons. And now the government has admitted that they're looking at it. But extremely worryingly, the government has also said that their much vaunted plan to introduce electronic monitoring on these detainees in the release of the community hasn't happened, that they don't know how many are in the community and whether or not they have electronic monitoring. That's an extremely concerning admission from the Minister for Home Affairs on television this morning, and she really needs to front up and explain why.
ENDS
