Displaying items by tag: Bill Shorten

It took just one question from Paul Karp, chief political correspondent at Guardian Australia, to put the brakes on at the National Press Club on Wednesday, during a Q&A for two top Australian security officials.

The Morrison Government has been raked over the coals for passing laws that are claimed to be of little use in the area of cyber security, with Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil telling a media conference on Sunday that the laws in place were "absolutely useless to me when the Optus matter came on foot".

The Federal Government has accused telco Singtel Optus of dragging its feet on providing full details of users whose data was compromised in a data breach which the telco reported on 22 September.

A senior official from the Australian arm of Forcepoint, an American multinational security software developer, has welcomed the news that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will create a cyber security role in his cabinet when he carries out a reshuffle next month.

In what seems to be a rather strange reversal of roles, the Labor Government in Victoria has announced a tax on electric cars and hybrid plug-in vehicles from July 2021 while a Federal Liberal MP, Trent Zimmerman, has penned an op-ed castigating both Victoria and South Australia for their plans to tax EVs.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield claims the NBN policy announced by the Australian Labor Party on Tuesday is an admission that "the NBN technology debate of the last six years was just about politics".

The Australian Labor Party has said it would review the economics of the NBN, including the implications of the multi-technology mix, on the cash-flow of the NBN Co, the company which is rolling out the network, if it were voted back into office in the forthcoming Federal Election.

A renewed focus on research and development was the only bright spot in the Budget reply speech made by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Thursday, the head of Australia's national start-up advocacy group says.

Communications Alliance chief John Stanton has urged the IT industry to highlight the changes needed in the Federal Government's encryption law that was passed last year, telling a forum in Sydney on Thursday that there was an urgent need "to try to repair this dangerous piece of legislation".

The Australian Labor Party says it expects the matter of amendments to the encryption law passed last year will be taken up during the first sitting of Parliament this year, as agreed to by the government.

A document issued by the government-funded Australian Cyber Security Growth Network, aimed at providing "information to industry about key economic concerns" over the encryption law that was passed in December, has been dismissed by the Communications Alliance as a bid by the Home Affairs Department to perpetuate myths about the legislation.

The Australian Cyber Security Growth Network, a government body, has issued a document on what it claims are "key perceptions" about the Australian encryption law — officially known as the Assistance and Access Bill 2018 — among industry stakeholders.

The Federal Government's encryption law does not seem like smart politics, but then nothing about it seems particularly smart, according to developer Joshua Lund who works for the project developing the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Myths have been spread about the Federal Government's newly passed encryption law, according to the director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate, Mike Burgess, who claims that there has been "considerable inaccurate commentary" and has set out to correct what he describes as misconceptions.

Terrorists and paedophiles, the two claimed targets of the government's encryption laws, are likely to bury themselves deeper on the dark net and adopt necessary security precautions to keep operating as before, a senior security professional has warned.

The Federal Government's controversial encryption bill has been passed by Parliament without any amendments due to there being a lack of time for Labor to add any amendments in the Senate.

The Australian Labor Party has said that it will be dissenting with the government members on the panel that is inquiring into the encryption bill. But the government says it will be pressing on and presenting the bill in Parliament next week, the last sitting week for the year.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton says he wants the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to deal with the government's encryption bill "as quickly as possible", and accused Labor Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus of delaying things and "making excuses and massaging bills down to lowest common denominator".

The Australian Labor Party's support for the government's encryption Bill will be an indicator of whether it supports big technology companies in the US or the Australian people, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton claims.

A respected academic and network expert has written to a number of top politicians proposing the creation of a pilot telecommunications security assurance centre to implement and oversee security procedures for evaluating telecommunications infrastructure and systems.