Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the issues that you raise and the other sites that you refer to, but they are not relevant to this bill. Given the importance of the infrastructure, if they're relevant to the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act then that gives us a much strengthened ability to monitor and protect against risks to critical infrastructure in that way. The conversations that I've had with Senator Wong also go to that point.

What is important in the security and critical infrastructure legislation is this ministerial last resort directions power, which does give the Minister for Home Affairs the power to issue a direction to an owner or an operator of a critical infrastructure asset to mitigate national security risks. That, and the enhanced protections that we have provided in the Foreign Investment Review Board process, our foreign investment framework, are part of a suite of steps which we have taken since 2015—and this particular incident—to protect exactly the concerns that you have identified.