House debates Questions without Notice
Cybersecurity
Clare O'Neil Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs
3:00 pm
The opposition are a bit sensitive about this, because they're probably aware that the opposition leader was ostensibly responsible for this during his time as home affairs minister. And I can share with the parliament that he did not once during his tenure as home affairs minister mention the word 'ransomware' in the Australian parliament—not a single time—when he was the minister, and this was at a time when this problem was costing the Australian economy a billion dollars a year.
Our Prime Minister has changed all that, and this has led to a very large volume of action on behalf of us as a government. We're taking a very different, highly active approach. In this first year, that has included setting up Hack the Hackers, a 100-strong task force of Australian Federal Police and Australian Signals Directorate operators who are hacking back at the criminals who are seeking to harm Australians.
No comments