SUBJECTS: Qantas data breach, ceasefire in Gaza, return of women and children from Syria.
SALLY SARA: Qantas says customer data has been released after almost 6 million customer records were stolen by a hacking group earlier this year through a third-party platform. The airline says it's investigating what data has been released with the help of specialist cyber security experts. Tony Burke is the Minister for Cyber Security and Home Affairs. I spoke to him a short time ago. Minister, welcome back to Breakfast.
TONY BURKE: Great to be here.
SARA: Laws your government pass mean that companies can face tens of millions of dollars in fines for not protecting customers' data. Can you guarantee that Qantas will be fined for this latest breach?
BURKE: I can guarantee that our authorities will use all the laws available to them. As I said when the breach was first reported and there was some conversation around the fact that it was an outsourced company where the breach had occurred, that doesn't get you off the hook on your obligations. You can outsource parts of your business, but you don't outsource the law.
So, the obligations that are there in Qantas, and they know this, are to make sure that they provide cyber security, and that doesn't just mean having the right technical issues in place, it also means making sure that your people are fully trained. I've often referred to the concept that we don't just need to have the technical firewall; we need to have the human firewall in place as well.
SARA: What's the government going to do now to assist both Qantas and the affected Australians; there are around 5 million of us.
BURKE: So the Cyber Security Coordinator, Lieutenant‑General Michelle McGuinness, has been working with the company from the time that this has happened and the Signals Directorate work on the technical issues.
Part of what needs to happen now though is also some very clear public messaging to people who will have had their data released, because for many people the data is fairly high level, not much, but there are some people where it's phone numbers, there are some people where it's addresses, and there will be some people where they get a cold call from somebody who sounds like they're from Qantas, who sounds like they're from a company where they've got enough information that you think it's legit, and what they are trying to do is to get more information from you, and the very simple piece of advice ‑ if you're getting a call you're not expecting, hang up, call back through the official line.
You know, these sorts of styles of attack will increase. We're used to cyber being something that's done at the technical level, but with the improvements in artificial intelligence increasingly you'll hear a friendly voice, sometimes a familiar voice on the other end of the phone, and when it's a call you're not expecting, hang up, call back.
SARA: Should Qantas be compensating its customers?
BURKE: The obligation is on Qantas, I've been focusing on the offence part of it, and that's where my focus has been, to be honest. The issue of compensation is not something that I've been focused on at the moment.
SARA: You're listening to Radio National Breakfast. My guest this morning is the Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke. Minister, the ceasefire in Gaza appears to be holding, and world leaders are expected to attend a peace summit in Egypt. What's the government's sense of the latest developments in the Middle East?
BURKE: I think the whole world right now is in a situation of where despair is turning to hope, but we are not there yet. I really feel for the people who have family members, whether they be people they love who've been held hostage, or people they love who've been subjected to months and years of conflict and longer, that they are just seeing a crack of light right now and hoping that it's real. There's been many false starts, but I can't remember a time where there has been a greater level of hope than there is right now.
SARA: Independent Senator, Lidia Thorpe, addressed a pro‑Palestine rally in Melbourne yesterday. Let's have a listen to what she had to say.
[Excerpt]
LIDIA THORPE: We will fight every day and we will turn up every day, and if I have to burn down Parliament House to make a point ‑ [crowd cheers].
[End of Excerpt]
SARA: As Home Affairs Minister, what do you make of those remarks?
BURKE: First of all, I echo what the Prime Minister said about us needing to turn the temperature down. Regardless of the fact that now is a time for hope, I don't think you could have got a bigger contrast ‑ I didn't realise you were about to go to that ‑ than, I think the way I explain how people are feeling is pretty much where most of the nation is that at the moment.
The concept of wanting to inflame, push the temperature up is not what anyone should be doing, least of all a Member of Parliament. I'm not going to respond to that by increasing the heat in the opposite direction. I really think it's a time for just turning the temperature down, because there are two things, and we've got a chance of getting both, there are two things that Australians have been wanting: they've been wanting the killing to end, and they've been wanting to make sure that the conflict's not brought here.
We might be looking right now at the chance for the killing to end, so let's also try to calm things down here.
SARA: Are they acceptable comments from a member of the Parliament?
BURKE: Oh, of course they're not, they speak for themselves, I just don't think there's any benefit, and certainly no benefit to social cohesion in me responding by getting angrier and ramping it up.
SARA: Should or would the Parliament or the government take any action against Senator Thorpe?
BURKE: She's in the Senate, there's particular processes that the Senate sometimes uses on these ‑ we deal with these things differently in the House, so I'll leave that for the Senate.
SARA: On a separate issue, regarding the women and children who've returned home from Syria, Opposition spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, Michaelia Cash, has been demanding answers from the government particularly around assistance which may have been provided. What has been provided to these women and children?
BURKE: Yeah, if I can say ‑ if I can respond on that, but if I can also refer to the comments that she's been making about what's being done to protect Australians. First of all though, you've asked directly about assistance, they haven't been assisted. The public servants have only done what you do according to law, what their obligations are, there have been ‑‑
SARA: In terms of passports and so on?
BURKE: That's right, which they've got a legal obligation to do; that's not assistance, that's not support, that's just public servants doing their job.
There were two times when assistance was given, one under the previous government, one in the early time of this government. What's happening now is the same as what happened right back in 2014 through to 2017 and beyond where some people who had taken themselves to Syria started to bring themselves back.
Now under the previous government that included fighters. There's a statement from the previous government that they gave in answer to a question on notice back in 2017 where they specified people who had fought for ISIS returning under their own means because they were Australian citizens ‑‑
SARA: But in terms of the situation now ‑‑
BURKE: ‑‑ like this is ‑‑
SARA: ‑‑ is there protection being offered or assistance?
BURKE: So I should add, this is all Australian citizens only that we're talking about here. In terms of the protection, the protections that are in place, the protections that were put in place in 2014, and I will say, as I've heard the grabs run a few times this morning on your program from Senator Cash.
Not only does she know the answer to the question that she's claiming hasn't been answered, she asked the Australian Federal Police Commissioner and heard the answer herself ‑‑
SARA: So what is the answer?
BURKE: ‑‑ which is that Operation Howth has been in place since 2014. Since 2014, our security agencies have made sure that they have everything in place to deal with self‑managed returns. Now ‑‑
SARA: What does that mean?
BURKE: A self‑managed return is ‑‑
SARA: No, what does it mean, the "everything in place"?
BURKE: Well, I'll put it in the exact words of the Australian Federal Police Commissioner. "I do want to provide assurance and confidence that the AFP remains appropriately prepared and positioned to respond to any self‑managed returns from the internally displaced person of camps alongside our Commonwealth and State partners."
All our security intelligence and law enforcement agencies work together. Where there is somebody who it might provide ‑ if there is a sense of a need for higher monitoring, a sense of a different risk profile for someone, obviously you can imagine additional scrutiny that happens on these individuals, you can imagine the scrutiny that was required when the previous government had fighters return, and our law enforcement agencies and security agencies, which I have full confidence in, are doing all the work that they've been doing since 2014, making sure that Australians are safe.
SARA: Just briefly and finally, is the government and security agencies aware of any other women and children that are trying to return from Syria in these circumstances?
BURKE: Well, the concept of people wanting to return has been there for some time. There was an organisation that took the Australian Government ‑‑
SARA: Who are planning, getting ready.
BURKE: ‑‑ well, these individuals got themselves out, and so there are one of two things: either people get themselves out or the government is involved. The government is not assisting, the government's not being involved. If people get themselves out, then the government will know about it very quickly, I expect, and we would make sure, as we have this time, that we've got everything in place back in Australia to make sure that there's no ‑‑
SARA: So are you aware of any such pending arrivals?
TONY BURKE: Oh, no, absolutely not, but what I'd say is that there are people there who have been wanting to get out for a very long time, they made a terrible decision, that's what's caused them to be there, they've been wanting to get out. We've made the decision we're not going to put Australians at risk sending them in to do anything like that, and as we've seen with some people recently, some people have managed to get themselves out.
SARA: Tony Burke, thanks for joining me in the studio this morning, I appreciate it.
BURKE: Pleasure to be here. Thanks.
