Today, as it has for nine months, the Australian government’s Smartraveller website tells me “do not travel”. Every country on the map is coloured red. To leave the country, I would need an exemption on compassionate grounds. Apparently it’s a high bar.
For the last few years, I averaged 100 flights a year, carbon-offset, commuting from Melbourne to Canberra and internationally. When I moved jobs recently, I was excited to reduce this to 75 and have more time with my family. I never imagined how much.
Working in the field of international relations, I think about what’s happening in the world and how it affects Australia. So when in January I hear of Covid-19, I begin to think about the impact on geopolitics. I imagine that there will be two types of countries: ones that have no hope of containing the virus and where it becomes endemic, as has happened in India, and ones which manage to contain the virus but then have to control their borders to prevent reinfection, as oc
Christmas sometimes brings presents you don’t expect this year, for me, an excitingly titled ‘Request for expressions of interest’ that appeared on AusTender is one of them. It’s about Australia’s peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Intelligence, beginning an essential, radical and rapid shift into cloud applications and services at the highly classified top secret level of capability. That’s big news.
It’d be interesting but not so important if this approach were just about ONI, but it’s not. The AusTender documentation says the aim is for all 10 agencies that make up Australia’s national intelligence community to be part of a highly secure private cloud.
Half of Australia’s Largest Chinese Media Outlets Linked to Beijing’s United Front: Report
A new report has confirmed long-standing concerns that Australia’s Chinese-language media landscape is dominated by outlets “friendly towards the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
“The influence environment” by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analysed the content, political stances, business ties, and management structures of 24 of the largest Chinese-language media (print and online), located mainly in the country’s capital cities.
It found that executives from 12 media outlets have been members of organisations controlled by the United Front Work Department, Beijing’s foremost overseas infiltration organ. At the same time, four outlets were directly owned or received financial support from the CCP.
Australian security agencies to build top secret private cloud itnews.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from itnews.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
JCPAA calls for Commonwealth entities to be cyber assessed annually by ANAO
Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit has called for more reviews of cyber posture and culture, but also added that the amount of publicly available information should not be increased.
December 10, 2020 00:38 GMT (16:38 PST) | Topic: Security
The Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit (JCPAA) has called for federal government entities to be assessed on cyber resilience each year by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), however, even if the government accepted the recommendation, it acknowledged that this was unlikely to lead to a better informed public.