Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Hansard source

Kids who are good at Xbox and those sorts of videos games are actually well prepared for the new digital environment that we will see in the future. The JSF and our new future submarines may well be the last crewed platforms of their type. We're already seeing Israel experimenting with automated land vehicles as well, resupply vehicles in the Gaza conflict. There'll be more and more of this automation, more and more emphasis on these technological skills, and certainly in the battles of cybersecurity that we will see in the future, which overlays so much into the industrial space. We've been hearing a lot about industrial espionage and foreign interference on the intelligence committee. There is such a need and demand for us to tackle that more effectively. In this industrial space, the back door approaches that a lot of the cyberassailants use really require industries, subcontractors and other industries that are involved in supplying our security capabilities to be reinforced and secured as well. So I think the government has taken a very good approach in establishing these regional cybersecurity hubs where business can engage in that respect. That needs to be built upon and expanded.

In terms of the workforce, what I believe we need to look at—this is just a personal view—is some form of civil defence corps in the future whereby we don't necessarily take full-time people for whom we can't compete with industry on a race to the top with wages but who can do national service duty, reserve duty, with our security organisations for whatever periods of time and then go back to their home business or company. We know that workers who work in the field at the moment are attracted to the motivation of serving their country and that the areas of work that they do in this space are unique. You will not find this experience in private industry. Some workers are obviously attracted to being able to do that work, which they won't find anywhere else. So I think we could set up some mechanism or regime by which we share these skills, these talents, with private industry. The private companies involved in supporting this could be given appropriate consideration, kudos, for doing that—gold star companies who provide us with those kinds of workers. I do think we need to come up with some creative solutions for that in the future. It will need a rethink of how we structure these workforces in Defence, the Reserves and private industry.

I also think in the future, for ASD, we've got challenges in terms of the other organisations that we're going to have to monitor. We've been dealing with the issues of how we tackle this challenge of foreign interference, civil society and politicians and how all that conflates. The complexity of the legislation that's currently before the committee points to the challenge of how that is addressed in legal terms, in legislation. We've seen some serious challenges in the drafting, in making that coherent and effective. In that space, we're going to need good consultation and take on board the advice, particularly of those whose job it is to oversight our security agencies. We've heard some very important evidence from people like Margaret Stone and Bret Walker. At the end of the day, we will not be winning this fight against those who seek to do us harm by surrendering all of the unique features that make up our democracy and the unique features that create the level of freedom and civil society that we enjoy in this country. It's about getting that balance right. We're looking forward in the committee to working through that process with the Attorney-General's Department, our colleagues on the committee and our security agencies to get that balance right.

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