Subjects: 2016 online census, CPSU; Pauline Hanson; Greyhound Racing; Warren Truss; Nauru Files.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
RAY HADLEY:
The Prime Minister told my colleague Alan Jones this morning, IBM, which was running the census, didn't have buffers in place to block a denial of service attack.
Given that I had spoken to, of course, the people that had been running the census at least twice, I am a bit stunned by the fact that IBM didn't have blockers – not that I know what blockers are – but I am a bit stunned they allowed some sort of cyber-attack to be launched from outside Australia.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, as the Prime Minister pointed out this morning there are a lot of questions to be asked here and obviously Australian's are rightly upset that they weren't able to complete the census.
But the point is that all of this will be looked into, it will be investigated and lessons will be learnt. IBM and others can explain what went wrong, but I think the important point, again that the Prime Minister made this morning, was that there is nothing suggesting that people's information was hacked into.
An analogy that I liked, that I think one of the cyber experts used yesterday was to say, look; it is like parking the truck in front of the driveway, the truck hasn't actually entered the building or got any information, it has caused frustration for people trying to get onto the website.
So all of that can be investigated and hopefully people understand that they have got a few weeks to fill this out. They can do that. The census collection of information is important. It can take place and we move on.
RAY HADLEY:
But we had a Minister on training wheels – and it's not his fault, he has only been there three weeks, the Minister involved – and I was working on Tuesday night and fielded calls from Steve Price and Andrew Bolt working on this network because I have had all these discussions with Duncan Young – who by the way would be in the foetal position somewhere in a warehouse in Canberra as we speak, the census boss who was in charge of putting this all together – but surely on Tuesday night, given that when the Prime Minister tweeted at 7:17pm; this is a wonderful, wonderful thing, Lucy and I have done it, and then by eight o'clock the Minister was phoned by the census people saying look, I don't want to be the bearer of bad tidings, but since about 10 o'clock this morning we have had people trying to attack the site and we have tried to manage it but we can't, so we are going to lock it down. Then he rings the Prime Minister at 8:30pm and tells him the same thing.
Shouldn't there have been some announcement to the media so that the population, you know, the people sitting at home who have a lot better things to do than sit at their computers and log on, log on, log on, said; you know make the announcement; look, we have a security breach here and we are closing it down, so everyone knows that they can get back to leading their normal lives without sitting in front of a computer for hours on end.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray I think that might be a fair point. I think all of that gets looked into. I think in the end though, there wasn't bad intent here. I think the ABS have done their best. I think Michael McCormack is a very good bloke who has done his best and the lessons are learnt. The contractors, IBM, will have questions to answer about why the appropriate measures weren't put in place.
But look, on the National Security Committee we get briefings on a regular basis about cyber-attacks. It's a modern reality that there are international players who want to slow websites down here, who attack government web pages all the time. So a lot of that information is made available to us and we deal with it on a regular basis.
I think a lot Australians wouldn't have heard of this before but it is a regular occurrence for offshore players to try and attack government websites, corporation websites, to cause frustration, to slow the traffic down – that is a modern reality of the internet and the usage of these sites. We have got in place some of the best experts in the world to deal with it and they, no doubt, will be looking into the failings here.
RAY HADLEY:
You have got some problems in your own portfolio, Border Force staff are planning to walk off the job as the row over the enterprise bargaining continues. It has dragged on now for three years, how much longer will it drag on? What work can be done to alleviate this and perhaps meet some common ground with the union and the workers?
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, the Commonwealth Public Service Union obviously has a claim at the moment which is unreasonable and they are using Border Force staff as a bit of a battering ram for the rest of the public service, because they know that if people are heading overseas, if they are at the airports and the Border Force staff are on strike, then it frustrates people a lot, understandably, and so the CPSU is using that as really an objective to frustrate people so that they can try and leverage the Government into some of these pay arrangements, which I think are unreasonable across the rest of the public service.
Now, the point that I have made before is that we have, in Australian Border Force, as we do with the Australian Defence Force and as we do with law enforcement agencies including the federal police and the state police forces, frontline workers where we can't afford to have them going on strike. They are the frontline effort in stopping terrorism, they are in the frontline effort in stopping cargo coming in like weapon parts or illicit drugs that might come across our borders through containers or at our airports, and we need to have those staff on the frontline.
I am looking at all options to see what we can put in place to make sure that we have a consistency of effort on the frontline because if staff are going on strike then we do have a break down in the protection at our borders and in the modern age we just can't afford that.
RAY HADLEY:
Pauline Hanson is reported as saying over the past 24 hours her phone has not stopped ringing. The Prime Minister has spoken to her urging her to contact him any time. You are a Queenslander, as Pauline is, has she had a yarn to you?
PETER DUTTON:
I haven't but I think she is going to be a neighbour of mine in the Commonwealth building in the city, so we might get a chance to catch up there. I am actually organising some briefings at the moment for her, for Derryn Hinch and Nick Xenophon's team.
RAY HADLEY:
I think in relation to Pauline, she would be most fascinated with your portfolio above all else given how she feels about immigration and strangely enough she is not that far removed from how you feel.
PETER DUTTON:
Pauline Hanson has some good points to make. I don't agree with everything she says, but she has got some good points to make around making sure our borders are secure – the Government is absolutely at one with her on that.
We will work with Pauline Hanson and other Independents to make sure that we can get sensible legislation through and one of those areas, as I mentioned before, might be around what we need to do to make sure that we can keep our frontline Australian Border Force staff away from the clutches of the CPSU so that they can do their important work that the other law enforcement agencies do.
As I say we have got some pretty important briefings we are putting together at the moment that I hope Pauline Hanson and others will be involved in.
RAY HADLEY:
Now reports today in The Australian that the Prime Minister has turned down an invitation to speak at a testimonial for the former Deputy PM Warren Truss; Tony Abbott will take up the cudgels and speak there. It seems strange that a Prime Minister wouldn't want to be involved in paying tribute to a bloke who has made a great contribution to politics over a long period of time?
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, I haven't spoken to the Prime Minister about what is in his diary that night or what he has got on the next morning. I guess there is no doubt that he would want to be there and it is just a question of what else he has got and I know what my diary is like, let alone the Prime Minister's, so it is just a question of trying to pack as much in as you can.
RAY HADLEY:
So it's not a snub?
PETER DUTTON:
No, not at all. Warren was a great Deputy Prime Minister; he was well trusted by John Howard, by Tony Abbott and by Malcolm Turnbull, he is certainly worthy of support and recognition, but it is certainly not a snub.
RAY HADLEY:
I think he would be horrified at the doings of his counterpart in NSW Troy Grant. Do you find it surprising as a conservative member of a conservative government that we have a conservative government in NSW in bed with the Greens over the banning of greyhound racing? It seems to run and fly in the face of everything that the conservative side of politics stands for?
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, it is not a decision that I support but it is an issue for the NSW Government, they can explain their actions as we do at a federal level and that is an issue for Mike Baird and the….
RAY HADLEY:
….you don't support the ban?
PETER DUTTON:
I don't support it and I have been clear in my discussions with some people who have contacted me in Queensland in relation to. It is an issue for the NSW Government. It is not a Federal Government issue and I don't take kindly to free advice from my state colleagues. It is not an issue that I am an expert in, I acknowledge that, but instinctively it is something that I don't support and I have said that to people privately and I will be honest about saying that publically.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, just finally, Fairfax reports a detention centre in Nauru has admitted hurling rocks at a group of young children or guards at that detention centre. One of the rocks allegedly struck a five year old boy in the face. Do you have a report on exactly what did happen?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, there is a bit of publicity around at the moment about some these incident reports and I'll…..
RAY HADLEY:
…well there is stuff in The Guardian as well about the 2,000 leaked reports…
PETER DUTTON:
…and most of that has been reported on before but I will just make a couple of points.
If an adult smacks – a mother or father – smacks their child in the detention centre or on Nauru that is reported by the guards as an incident report. Now, that is not an allegation of sexual assault. People can have their own views about the disciplining of children. If there is movement of children or if a child is having problems at the Nauru school and doesn't want to go to school that forms the basis of an incident report.
I have been very clear with the Department, with the Secretary, with the Commissioner and they are equally clear with the staff beneath them that I won't tolerate any sexual abuse whatsoever.
But I have been made aware of some incidents that have been reported, false allegations of sexual assault, because in the end people have paid money to people smugglers and they want to come to our country. They have been told that if they sought to come here by boat they won't be settling. Some people have even gone to the extent of self-harming and people have self-immolated in an effort to get to Australia and certainly some have made false allegations in an attempt to get to Australia.
Now, I won't tolerate, as I have said before, one incident of sexual abuse of women, of children, of men, of anybody, and we will work with the Nauruan authorities – bearing in mind that this detention centre is in Nauru, not in Australia – to have investigated by the Nauruan Police any allegations and they should be properly investigated.
But, I just add a word of caution to some of the hype that is out there at the moment; if people have done the wrong thing – whether it is security guards, whether it is people in our employ directly or elsewhere – then there is a price to pay for that – but bear in mind that some people do have a motivation to make a false complaint and we have had instances where people have self-harmed in an effort to get to Australia and I am not going to tolerate that behaviour either.
So that is the difficulty that we are dealing with – all of Labor's creation – and they are out there providing free advice at the moment.
The reality is that we have got people on Nauru, we have got people on Manus Island and we have people here in the Australian community because Labor lost control of our borders and we are not going to allow it to continue.
RAY HADLEY:
Minister, thank you for your time, we'll talk next week.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Ray.
[ends]
