Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question and I thank him for his service to our nation. The safety of our families and our businesses is absolutely critical to Australia's continued economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and that's why our government has so strongly backed our national security agencies, including the Australian Border Force, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, ASIO and AUSTRAC. In the budget earlier this month we provided record funding to those agencies, and that included an extra $1.3 billion for ASIO, to significantly improve their capabilities not only now but well into the future. The great men and women of those organisations work hard every single day to protect us from a range of evolving threats, from terrorism and cyberattack right the way through to child sexual exploitation and drug trafficking. Our government is making sure that our national security agencies have the resources and the legislative power to protect Australia's critical infrastructure, our businesses, our families and our way of life.

The recently publicised ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline in the United States is a significant example of the threat that cybercrimes present and of the potential impact that those crimes have on the day-to-day lives of people when critical infrastructure is sabotaged. It doesn't matter that, in the Colonial Pipeline case, the attackers were motivated by money and not by the politics and political issues that some cyberattacks clearly are. The effect on consumers and businesses was that there were massive disruptions—in that particular case, fuel shortages, price hikes and panic-buying.

While Australia has not experienced an attack of that scale and that impact, we are certainly not immune. This government is determined to make sure that we are putting in place the infrastructure, the changes to legislation and the resources for our national security agencies to be able to deal with the increasing threat that is coming our way through cybercrime and cyberattack. We understand that continued vigilance is so important to our recovery, and, as we come through the COVID-19 pandemic, to make sure that we are going to have a safe and secure Australia for generations to come.

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