John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Member for Dunkley, for your contribution. What is the point of government? Why are we here in this place? We all have our priorities, but, at the very lowest common denominator, surely we can all agree that the most important reason for being here is to keep Australians safe. This has to be our No. 1 priority, and the implication that we are putting Australians' safety behind anything else is, frankly, not true. We are keeping Australia safe at our borders. We are keeping Australia safe on our streets. We are keeping Australians safe by rolling out vaccines for COVID. The latest of these vaccines has just been approved today, and, of course, Bennelong's own AstraZeneca vaccine is there at the forefront. While it's tangential to this debate, I hope you won't mind me thanking them for their hard work to keep us all safe and healthy. But I digress.

We are proud of the programs to help keep Australians safe. One such program is the Safer Communities Fund. This provides funding to address crime and antisocial behaviour through the implementation of crime prevention and security initiatives such as CCTV. It helps communities reduce violence and improve safety. Importantly, this fund joins with groups across the community, making us all partners in keeping Australians safe. It has worked and supported organisations such as the Royal Flying Doctor Service, men's sheds, the Scouts association, the Salvation Army Trust and St Vincent de Paul. Since 2016, the government has committed over $180 million to local councils, places of worship, not-for-profit organisations and organisations working with at-risk young people, leading to greater community reliance and wellbeing.

We have benefited from some of this money in Bennelong. Following a number of attacks in a park in Eastwood, the local police and the chamber of commerce joined together to arrange for this fund to provide CCTV in the area, and crimes there have diminished significantly. I've subsequently held community events in this park, and the turnaround into a pleasant area is quite noticeable. The Safer Communities Fund helps reduce violence and, in turn, helps keep our community safer. This program has been the centre point of speeches opposite but is just one way the government is committed to keeping Australians safe and providing our security and law enforcement agencies with the resources they need.

As we move into the 21st century, our crime prevention focus needs to grow from just the physical to include the digital. Our businesses have moved there, our services are moving there and COVID-19 has even sent our social lives into the joy that is Zoom. We have all become dependent on the internet, and we cannot afford for these systems to fail. Keeping us safe online requires all of our community working together, from government to telcos to business and everyone across the community.

The government will invest a further $1.67 billion over the next 10 years to help us work together. We'll be focusing much of this money on keeping Australians safe online. We'll be ensuring our agencies have the power and capabilities they need to combat cybercrime and keep Australians, particularly children, safe, including 100 additional dedicated cyberinvestigators. We're finding new ways to investigate and disrupt cybercrime, including on the dark web. We're also helping small businesses stay safe and providing targeted advice and tools for SMEs to increase their cyber-resilience. We'll be launching 24/7 cybersecurity advice hotlines for SMEs and families, and we'll be working overtime to ensure that our responses to this highly agile sector are up to pace with the challenges.

Finally, I'd like to touch on something mentioned by the Minister for Home Affairs at question time. Like all of us, Border Force has been adaptive in responding to the COVID crisis. Not only have they helped our borders but also they have been instrumental in bringing in vaccines through customs by helping to clear the phials as they come in. Ultimately, they will also be helping to provide the logistics to roll them out across the country. In 2021, is there a better way to keep Australia safe than by facilitating the end to this terrible disease?

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