O’Neil targets 2030 in cyber security strategy

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil wants Australia to be the most cyber-secure nation in the world by 2030.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil says she wants Australia to be the most cyber-secure nation in the world by 2030, naming former Telstra boss Andy Penn to develop a new cyber security strategy she hopes will deliver on the ambition.

Just weeks after the nation’s two worst data breaches, Ms O’Neil on Thursday said there was “a lot of patchiness around cyber security in Australia”, and she wanted to “bring the whole nation into the fight”.

“I want Australia to be the world’s most cyber-secure country by 2030. I believe that is possible. But we need a reset, and a pathway to get there,” she said.

Mr Penn will be joined on the government’s expert cyber security panel by former RAAF chief Mel Hupfeld and Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre CEO Rachael Falk.

Ms O’Neil also announced a federal task force would consider new civic initiatives and seek the help of technology companies to make communities more resistant to foreign interference.

As foreign interference overtakes terrorism as the nation’s top security concern, she said the new Strengthening Democracy Task Force would tackle intolerance and threats to social cohesion.

“We know that foreign interference, misinformation and disinformation are on the rise,” she said. “We need to reduce our susceptibility to these efforts, which will include thinking about a new generation of initiatives in civics and social cohesion.”

Ms O’Neil also announced a new National Resilience Task Force to examine Australia’s vulnerability and ability to manage “complex, cascading and concurrent national crises”.

The task force will develop a national framework to “anticipate, prevent, absorb, adapt and evolve from extreme and concurrent natural and human-induced crises or shocks”.

In a highly political speech, Ms O’Neil sought to undermine Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s legacy as home affairs minister, accusing him of stoking “moral panic”.

“The issues that will define the lives of my children and my grandchildren are not bikies and boatpeople,” she said, highlighting two of Mr Dutton’s priorities in the portfolio.

“They are how Australian governments manage climate change, navigate our interests with regard to China, and protect Australians in the face of the biggest shift in the global world order since the Second World War.”