Thursday, 23 March 2023

Cybersecurity

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (16:40): (153) My matter is for the attention of the Premier, and it concerns TikTok and the use of TikTok on government devices. It is clear from the FOI that we ventilated in this chamber earlier in the week and also in the media that the government overruled the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action on its clear, evidence-based decision to remove TikTok from those devices. It is also true that a number of American states and other jurisdictions around the world have said having TikTok on government devices is not safe. It is clear that the information on those devices is accessible in other jurisdictions overseas, and that is a genuine security risk. The Premier, I see, has this week said that he will make a whole-of-government decision, but only after a national decision is made. I would ask him to review that decision, to look closely at the evidence that has been presented by his own bureaucrats in at least one department, and almost certainly in other departments too, and to make a decision that is about the safety and the security of government information and is founded on the best IT evidence available.

This is not a matter of ideology. It is not a matter of anything but the very best science and the best information on which we should base these decisions. It is in the state’s interest that information that is held by government – that is, either personal information or highly sensitive information – is able to be protected properly. Clearly the department of environment did not believe that was the case. The key experts in that department did not believe that was the case. In regard to the pre-emptory overruling of them by the secretary of that department John Bradley, the FOI makes it clear that the decision that was made was fundamentally a political decision and not an evidence-based decision, not a decision that was based on alternate or superior technical information being presented. It was just a political decision to overrule the earlier evidence- and technical-based decision that had been made. I would ask the Premier to review this matter across government, to do so with the best available technical advice and to do so swiftly. We are a separate jurisdiction – we are not slavishly held to the national level – and we can make our own decisions.