Australia has made good progress decarbonising the electricity market, but one of the most glaring of omissions in Australia’s national climate stance remains our tardiness on taking action in a transport sector still wedded to fossil fuels.
However just as the states have led the way in renewable electricity, New South Wales has taken to lead in transport, adding BusTech’s all-electric ZDi 12.5-meter transit bus to the NSW procurement panel.
BusTech executive chairman Christian Reynolds outlined the features of the ZDi bus (pictured) at an AMCHAM lunch in Adelaide on Friday, saying that transport operators now had a choice of domestic product versus international import models.
The potential market is huge with NSW committing to transition its entire bus fleet to zero emissions within the decade.
Transport: NSW has leapt ahead in building its electric bus fleet and infrastructure
Starting with 120 electric buses in 2021, the state plans to convert all 8,000 buses in its fleet by 2030.
Claims for BusTech Group’s ZDi bus are bold, including that it offers the highest stored energy of any bus on the Australian market, the highest energy density battery pack, and the lowest cost per kilometre of operation.
BusTech chief technical officer Gregg Dinning said: “The all-electric ZDi’s battery pack provides over 420kwh of useable energy, enabling maximum range before requiring a recharge.
“This provides operators flexibility in both operational use and charging strategy, whilst also addressing Australia’s extreme weather conditions.”
No doubt competition for orders will be fierce, but BusTech starts with the only locally manufactured chassis as one advantage over imports.
The company has partnered with Proterra, the leading battery and powertrain solution provider in the US, and has committed to manufacturing batteries onshore once demand builds.
BusTech itself is a company going, starting with chairman Reynolds who is ex-Tesla.
But the company’s flagship investment isn’t the sort of conveyance your granny would use to go to the shops.
The BusTech group is involved in manufacturing the Brabham BT62, the million-dollar supercar hand built in Adelaide.
But while the buses are electric, the Brabham is powered by a 5.4 litre Brabham engine capable of producing 700bhp or 522kW of power and 667 Nm of torque.
It may not be long before such V8 monsters are confined to museums, but in the meantime who wouldn’t want to take the BT62 for a spin?
The Digital Transformation Agency has entered contracts worth more than $20 million with recruiters and HR firms for temporary staff in the current financial year alone, with ongoing concerns around turnover and skills retainment at the government’s tech office.
Analysis of tender documents by InnovationAus found 141 contracts in the last eight months signed by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) for “temporary personnel services”, worth a combined $20.23 million.
These include several contracts with high profile recruiters including Hays, Hudson, Talent International and Oakton.
Contractors: Full time people in digital transformation are elusive
The contracts typically run for up to six months until the end of the 2021 financial year, and include only a brief overview of the role, such as “delivery manager’ or “user researcher” and no information on what projects or programs they work on.
The DTA has previously faced questions over apparently high levels of staff turnover at the agency, and for its reliance on contracts rather than long-term employees, leading to the loss of tech skills in the public sector.
The DTA had a total workforce of 244 people as of the end of the 2019-20 financial year, including part-time and non-ongoing employees. The new contracts posted this financial year representing more than half of the DTA’s total workforce, but it’s unclear which are replacing previous contract workers or renewed contracts.
A contractor salary at the DTA ranges from $47,484 to $366,200 per annum, with recruiters and talent agencies also picking up a percentage of the wage for those it places at the agency.
A spokesperson for the DTA said the high number of contractors is helping the agency achieve its tech-focused goals.
“The DTA recruits skills and expertise as required to deliver on key priorities, namely the delivery of the government’s digital transformation agenda. The DTA looks to fill vacancies internally to the APS first, before exploring other options,” a DTA spokesperson told InnovationAus.
“As with many government agencies, our workforce is a mix of APS, contractors and secondees, allowing us to bring in skills from across the public and private sectors for specific periods or projects and delivery outcomes in a timely manner.
“The DTA is proud of the work we have done involving multidisciplinary teams. This allows us to increase the capability of the public sector and also to deliver outcomes in a truly collaborative way.”
Under Commonwealth Procurement Rules, the DTA must publicly publish all contracts with contractors worth more than $10,000.
Of the $20 million in contractors spent this financial year, a large chunk has gone towards Hays, with the UK-based recruitment agency landing 22 contracts worth a total of $2.8 million.
Melbourne recruitment agency Hudson Global Resources has won five DTA contracts worth $643,000 in total this financial year, while Talent International has landed $663,000 across six contracts.
Dutch multinational HR firm Randstad has also won five contracts worth more than $625,000.
Among the series of contracts inked by the DTA recently is one with Recruitment Hive for $122,000 over just two weeks, equating to more than $60,000 per week for the “policy support officer”. The agency publicly says it takes $14.50 per hour for rates over $180 per hour.
Other “temporary personnel” engaged by the DTA in recent months are an “agile coach” for nearly $250,000 over seven months, and “IT procurement specialists” for more than $150,000 over six months.
The DTA’s annual report for 2019-20 acknowledged that its use of external recruitment agencies had increased recently in order to “strengthen [its] capability and resource management to enable us to achieve [its] remit”.
In mid-2020 it was revealed that the DTA had experienced near-100 percent staff turnover in the previous 18 months. In total, 251 staff had ceased their employment at the agency from July 2018 to February 2020, with total employment at the DTA at 256 staff as of early 2020.
The DTA said this was the result of its “agile” way of working, with a reliance on short-term contractors and secondees from other departments.
From December 2016 to June 2018 the agency also saw near-100 percent staff turnover, with 340 people ceasing employment out of a total workforce of 342 people. At the time, the DTA said that 242 people of those who ceased employment were contractors, and 98 were ongoing or non-ongoing employees.
If the DTA has maintained a similar ratio of contractors versus inhouse employees, it would currently have about 171 contractors and 73 employees.
The recent October federal budget also revealed that the DTA would lose more than 30 staff this financial year, with its average staffing level falling from 217 in 2019-20 to 182 in 2020-21, despite the agency receiving an overall funding boost.
This may have led to an increased reliance on contractors on short-term deals.
Facebook has signed up to a voluntary Big Tech code aimed at combating online misinformation just days after blocking all legitimate news content across its platform.
Along with Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Redbubble and TikTok, Facebook has become a signatory to the new Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, after the Big Tech firms were ordered to develop their own set of principles by the federal government in late 2019.
This was a recommendation from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s long-running inquiry into digital platforms.
It comes just days after Facebook flicked the switch and blocked all local and international news for its Australian users in response to the federal government’s media bargaining code passing the lower house with bipartisan support.
Misinformation: Facebook has signed up to a misinformation code days after banning news from its service
It’s unclear how Facebook will meet the number of objectives and coding principles in the code while it maintains its news ban in Australia.
The voluntary code has also already been slammed by the Centre for Responsible Technology, which labelled it “inadequate” self-regulation that risks becoming a “digital fig leaf”.
The code, managed by industry group DIGI, aims to reduce the risk of online misinformation and disinformation causing harm to Australians.
The companies signed up to the code will commit to introducing and maintaining safeguards to protect from this misinformation, including a range of “scalable measures” to reduce its spread and visibility.
“This new code of practice has seen a diverse set of digital companies collaborate with each other, government, academia and civil society to propose solutions to the incredibly complex challenges of misinformation and disinformation online,” DIGI managing director Sunita Bose said.
“People misleading others, or people being misinformed, are not new problems – but the digital era means that false information can spread faster and wider than before. In this code, we’ve worked to get the balance right with what we think people expect when communicating over the internet.
“Companies are committing to robust safeguards against harmful misinformation and disinformation that also protect privacy, freedom of expression and political communication.”
The code defines misinformation and disinformation as “digital content that is verifiably false or misleading or deceptive” and that is likely to cause harm, either to individual health, public goods or the political process.
It defines disinformation as being propagated via “inauthentic behaviour” such as through spam, bots or “bulk and aggressive behaviours”, while misinformation as being propagated by individual users.
The code does not apply to private messages or emails, and provides exclusions for satire, authorised government content and political advertising.
Signatories will also be able to choose which objectives and measures to agree to and have another three months to decide this. There will also be a facility established to address non-compliance within six months, but it will not have any enforcement powers.
Signatories will have to report annually on the measures it has undertaken as part of the code, with DIGI to release the first set of reports in May.
The code comprises seven objectives and 10 outcomes, with a list of some examples of behaviour, but no set requirements.
The only objective that the signatories must sign up to is the first, to “provide safeguards against harms that may arise from disinformation and misinformation”.
The measures involved with this may include the human reviewing of content, labelling of false content, the removal of content and suspension of accounts linked with this behaviour, and may involve the use of technology such as algorithmic review.
Another measure, one that Facebook may struggle to abide by currently, is “prioritising credible and trusted new sources that are subject to a published editorial code”. The code does however include a clause “noting that some signatories may remove or reduce the ranking of news content which violates their policies”.
Another opt-in objective is to disrupt advertising and the monetisation incentives for disinformation, through means such as brand safety and verification tools, the use of third-party verification companies, and the blocking of ads with disinformation.
The code includes an objective to improve public awareness around political advertising on the digital platforms, with greater transparency around the source of ads, and an option for companies to not target advertisements based on users’ inferred political affiliations, but no requirement not to do so.
DIGI will establish a subcommittee with representatives from the signatories and independent members which will meet every six months to review the application of the code, with a review of the code itself to take place in 12 months.
The Australian Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology quickly slammed the code, saying it leaves too much to the discretion of the Big Tech firms in the form of self-regulation.
“[The code is an] inadequate response to the spread of misinformation that, yet again, asks the Australian public to put their faith in the Big Tech platforms to manage their own affairs,” Centre for Responsible Technology director Peter Lewis said.
“Disinformation is a very serious issue and it needs to be taken seriously. Rather than an unenforceable industry code, misinformation should be treated as a serious online harm and included in the Online Safety Act.”
Mr Lewis said he had “no confidence” in the oversight committee as it does not have enforcement powers and will only meet every six months.
“In recent days Facebook has shown it is capable of removing huge swathes of content from its site to forward its own political agenda – yet continues to claim it cannot discharge a general responsibility to manage damaging and dangerous content on its platform,” he said.
“Without a legally enforceable obligation to actively manage misinformation and disinformation, we fear this code will simply become a digital fig leaf.”
In a paper on the submissions received throughout the process, DIGI acknowledged criticisms of the self-regulatory nature of the code, but said this was a government policy.
“The self-regulatory approach to the code is supported by the need to devise a solution that can encompass the diversity of platforms and the speed with which these issues are evolving, as well as the emerging range of technologies to combat them,” the paper said.
“We also believe these submissions have not properly considered the significant concerns that can be incurred by ‘hard regulatory’ approaches to misinformation.”
The organisation said it did make changes from the draft code as a result of the feedback, including covering misinformation and disinformation, providing for protections for marginalised and vulnerable groups, requiring the agreement to the first objective, and establishing the non-compliance body.
The Internet of Things Alliance Australia (IoTAA) will unveil Australia’s first ever IoT Security Awareness Guides during a special webinar event on Wednesday morning covering the trinity of security, safety and privacy.
Enex TestLab managing director and IoTAA Cyber Security Workstream chair Matt Tett said the Alliance would release two guides, the first aimed at users – whether retail consumers or business organisations – and the second aimed a IoT device-makers and software developers.
“These are very simple guides. They’re not guidelines or frameworks or standards,” Mr Tett told InnovationAus. “It is eight to 10 pages with eight to ten tips on some of the traps and pitfalls that people need to think about in terms of IoT security, safety and privacy.”
Plain-talking IoT cyber guides: The IoT Alliance is set to release the first ever awareness guide
“We’re not trying to put people off from digitising their world, but we certainly do want them to start learning what to look out for before they actually buy a product, and how to better protect themselves before they put into their environment,” he said.
“[The guide] aims to deliver actionable outcomes without spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. It’s vendor neutral; we’re not saying go out and buy this thing or that thing.”
“The tips are all low-cost, easy to apply and takes them to the next rung on the security ladder,” Mr Tett said.
IOTAA chief executive Frank Zeichner says the guides are being released as the proliferation of devices across the network continues to accelerate.
“SecurityToday researchers report that there are 127 new IoT devices connected to the web every second and experts estimate there were approximately 31 billion IoT device installations in 2020,” Mr Zeichner said.
“The figures were staggering to begin with, and we have seen firsthand how the pandemic has expedited the adoption of IoT devices, by consumers and industry alike.”
Matt Tett said the second of the guides was aimed at IoT producers, whether they are a small developer or multinational.
“Again, it’s eight to 10 pages with tips on what they can do to really commence the process of embedding, safety and privacy by design into their IoT,” he said.
“This is rather than falling into the same pitfalls that ICT is in, where they are always trying to bolt security on retrospectively and continually fall over themselves in exposing consumers to security hazards.”
IoTAA’s Frank Zeichner and Matt Tett will both make presentation to the webinar. Other speakers include Accenture’s managing director for communications, media and technology Eric Bruzek; Department of Home Affairs assistant secretary for technology policy Jill Ogden; Office of the eSafety Commissioner director Julia Fossi; ACANN chief executive Teresa Corbin; and AustCyber’s WA Innovation Hub director Dr Ian Martinus.
You can register here for the free Internet of Things Security Awareness Guide launch.
Artificial intelligence technology could provide a solution to the growing challenge of securing access for remote office workers, without creating unreasonable hurdles to them working effectively and productively.
With the surge in remote working resulting from the global pandemic, organisations are struggling to maintain security of remote access without placing too many impediments in front of staff and ensuring that measures are not circumvented by workers who just want to get on with their jobs.
CyberArk’s Australia/New Zealand solutions engineering manager Andrew Slavkovic said the company was looking at how to enable a remote workforce to work efficiently and securely by restricting access privileges to only those needed.
Bridging the Cyber divide: CyberArk’s Andrew Slavkovic and Enex TestLab’s Matt Tett talk to James Riley from InnovationAus
“That’s a difficult endeavour,” Mr Slavkovic said. “We want to review the ways that we can use something like AI to determine what level of privilege a user will need and then automatically predicting it, so the employee is not in any way hampered in regard to their performance.”
Further, he suggested AI could be used to help prevent security breaches. “We want to use AI more in our product set to determine, based on our past experience, a sequence of actions that could result in a malicious or suspicious sequence of activities, and automatically take action to prevent that from escalating.”
He said a technique for increasing remote access security was to provide users with the minimum level of access privileges required for them to fulfil their role and adjust this in real time.
“We’re talking about providing ‘just-in-time’ privilege as a mechanism and escalating that privilege access as and when required, then stripping it back to the minimum level when it’s no longer needed.
“This can be a quite powerful tool, because if that individual account is compromised, what an attacker can do is very limited. They’ll have to discover another account or another identity that is more important to be able to move laterally within the network to obtain whatever target they want.”
Mr Slavkovic said remote access security had also been boosted through the control framework set out in the Federal Government’s Information Security Manual (ISM). “The ISM control framework has a whole section around remote access. So, in theory, an organisation should have confidence that if they follow the framework, they will have a level of assurance that they’re going to be secure.”
Mr Slavkovic spoke with InnovationAus’ James Riley, with Matt Tett, chairman and managing director of Enex TestLab, as part of the series, Bridging the Cyber Divide.
Mr Tett said the government was changing its approach to ensuring security in government organisations – through audits and certification – to ensure organisations had sufficient policies and procedures in place to be secure. However, many breaches occurred because these policies and procedures were not adhered to.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the incidents that we see occur are because people have circumvented the protocols or the procedures which have been put in in place.
“If security gets in the way, people will generally find a way of circumventing it; and it’s no different whether you’re working in an organisation, whether you’re in a home environment, or whether you’re in a government department.”
Mr Tett said the government had shifted the focus from certifying individual products to certifying organisations. The Australian Signals Directorate has recently revamped its Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) under which it endorses cyber security professionals to help secure industry and government information systems.
“Having independent IRAP assessors able to go out to agencies and work with the security teams on implementing procedures and policies and standards is very good,” Mr Tett said. “They’re performing due diligence, or an audit, on an organisation to ensure they have sufficient policies, procedures and practices in place.”
However, Mr Tett said the policies, regulations and standards needed to be measurable if they were to be effective. “You can have standards, you can have regulation, but you really need to make sure they’re measurable and actually working effectively. That’s a critical thing.
“You want to measure before and after – measure the benefit of implementing policies and procedures, draw a baseline somewhere, and once you have that baseline, you can measure the maturity of those departments’ and agencies’ security models, rather than just measuring them by the number of incidents that they’ve actually had. It’s better to measure the prevention rather than the cure.”
The Bridging the Cyber Divide podcast series is produced as a partnership between InnovationAus and CyberArk.
The Federal Court has handed down its largest ever promoter penalty of nearly $23 million against a former research and development tax incentive adviser for systemic abuse of the scheme.
The court ordered Mr Paul Enzo Bogiatto was ordered to pay $6.51 million, in addition to $6.01 million and $3.65 million for his related entities, Ryusei, Lambda Chase Chartered Accountants and Lambda Chase Service respectively.
The court found that Mr Bogiatto between 2012 and 2015 operated as an RDTI adviser in his capacity as a registered tax agent and a chartered accountant.
Enforcement: The is getting active in pursuing bad behaviour among advisers to the R&D tax incentive program
Investigations began in late 2015 and uncovered his promotion of arrangements for clients to lodge overstated and unsubstantiated RDTI claims.
In total, research and development (R&D) tax offset refunds of $45.5 million were paid to Mr Bogiatto’s clients.
Evidence gathered in relation to Lambda Chase’s activities indicated systematic abuse of the R&DTI, with claims that were not reflective of taxpayers’ actual R&D expenditure for the relevant years.
Mr Bogiatto avoided regulators when investigated and never looked to redress any amount of loss or damage incurred by scheme participants.
“This outcome reflects the scale of Mr Bogiatto’s scheme, which had a devastating impact on the individuals and businesses that followed his advice and trusted him,” Australian Taxation Office assistant commissioner Ash Khera said.
“The size of the penalty is the highest ever seen in Australia and reflects the scale and abusive nature of these schemes.
“We want to protect individuals and businesses from being unwittingly caught up in schemes like this one. Those who encourage others to do the wrong thing and claim the incentive to which they are not entitled will be caught and held to account for their actions.”
The decision builds on several previous successful results under promoter penalty laws designed to ensure that promoters are held accountable when they encourage their clients to enter into risky tax schemes.
“We have the tax technical and investigative skills to deal with those who promote non-compliance with the tax and superannuation system,” said Mr Khera.
This decision provides further judicial clarification on the application of the promoter penalty laws and the eligibility of the R&DTI.
“The ATO and the Commissioner view this recent decision as a strong deterrent for the advisers exhibiting repeated poor behaviour,” said Mr Khera.
“If you think you have been approached by a scheme promoter or are inadvertently involved in a tax avoidance scheme you should contact us right away. If you approach us early, you may be eligible for a reduction in any penalties imposed,” he said.
The first program under the $1.3 billion Modern Manufacturing Initiative – this one focused on the space sector – is open for business, with government calling for the first applicants for funding under the scheme.
Unveiled by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison last October as a key industrial pillar in the government’s COVID economic recovery strategy, the Modern Manufacturing Initiative aims to re-shape the Australian manufacturing sector.
The MMI has focused on six areas of comparative advantage and strategic importance identified through the development in 2020 of post pandemic economic recovery strategy; Resources technology and critical minerals processing; food and beverage; medical products; recycling and clean energy; Defence; and space.
Karen Andrews: Readies the first grants under the Modern Manufacturing Initiative
In the initial round, businesses with projects in the space sector are the first able to apply for grants to help commercialise ideas or processes, or to integrate into global supply chains.
Industry Minister Karen Andrews today released a space sector roadmap developed with industry to guide the guide the types of projects the government will back in space manufacturing under the program.
“This road map sets out our vision for manufacturing investment in the sector,” Minister Andrews said. “From products launched into space like nano and small satellites, through to space components like sensors and communication arrays – Australia has a number of unique opportunities across space manufacturing.”
“These opportunities are strengthened by our world-class research, our geographic location and existing advanced manufacturing expertise.”
Space is just one of the six priority areas under the MMI program, which map roughly to the same six priorities areas of the existing Industry Growth Centre program, which is funded until June 2022.
It is understood each of the growth centres has been asked to configure and submit new plans that will align with the government’s manufacturing-led economic recovery strategy.
“Industry has been the key driver of these manufacturing road maps, while the CSIRO, Industry Innovation and Science Australia and other relevant portfolios have also provided valuable insight that will result in more jobs from the Strategy,” Minister Andrews said.
“These road maps will continue to be built on over time to inform the long-term strategy and ensure we’re capturing new opportunities to grow these priority sectors and create jobs,” she said.
The space sector roadmap includes a focus on products the go into space – such as robotics and automation systems, nano satellites, and launch vehicles – as well as space components that range from sensors to communications arrays, to solar panels.
The MMI grant would also be available for associated space products and infrastructure that includes launch facilities, key ground-based subsystems, as well as new technologies and materials.
“This is a road map that has been developed by industry for industry,” Mrs Andrews said. “A lot of work has been done to make sure that what we have identified within the space sector are the key priority areas that we need to work on to build our capability.”
“The roadmap that we’re launching today clearly sets out the direction that the space industry and space manufacturing is heading in Australia. This is not a static document, this is a dynamic document,” she said.
“Over the next 10 years we will continue to work with industry to make sure that what we are developing meets industry needs.”
With the amendments added in Parliament this week, the media bargaining code was a giant nothing burger. Facebook has taken that nothing burger and turned it into a global-scale dog’s breakfast.
Facebook is an awful company with a high tolerance for its own awfulness. By blocking users from accessing Australian news services, and by blocking information from critical social service delivery organisations – including government health agencies and emergency services – the company has made the already unsafe aspects of its service even less safe.
But Facebook is not a government service, and it is quite entitled to modify or change or remove entirely its product as it sees fit.
And if the company feels the best way to serve its users is to remove news and information from health agencies one week before a vaccine roll-out in the middle of a pandemic, then it is within its rights to do so.
Backlash: The media bargaining code is a nothing burger Facebook could not swallow
It is also true that the social media giant has been allowed to grow as a largely unregulated way, while pushing back against any attempt by governments to make its service safer. The live-streamed Christchurch massacre shockingly comes to mind.
Facebook has now made its product less safe in Australia and accelerated the need for regulation. The last 24 hours has massively changed the calculus.
Facebook has revealed itself again, in all its awfulness. Its behaviour in Australia will galvanise the coordination of governments around the world to reign in not only Facebook, but to come to grips with what regulation looks like in the coming information age.
In Australia, if nothing else, Facebook’s actions has started a more mainstream discussion about Big Tech, about platforms, about influence and algorithms, about AI and regulation. The Facebook issues are a forerunner to the giant regulatory and policy challenges that Australia and like-minded western democracies must come to grips with.
The irony is that the media bargaining code, with the amendments that were passed this week, was a bit of a nothing burger. No company was designated under the scheme, no service was designated, no algorithms were to be handed over.
The whole process was carried out in a very Australian way. A bunch of institutional power centres – legacy media, Big Tech and government – grinding away and carving up a market.
Our Prime Minister’s transactional instincts took to parliament a ‘solution’ that was supposed to make everyone happy. Legacy media got a few bucks, Google wasn’t forced to “break the internet” and the government cleared the barnacles on this issue (and placated its power news media backer) ahead of an election later this year.
This very Australian arrangement was effectively Google, News Corp and government coming up with a formula.
Oh, the irony that Facebook is the company that drew a hard red line. It has dug its heels in on a matter of principle. It has blown the process up. No-one’s happy now.
The media bargaining code with the amendments passed this week, makes a joke of the legislations’ intent. This had been portrayed by government as – *checks notes* – our last great hope to “save journalism”.
Which is of course nonsense. The media bargaining code achieves precisely nothing in relation to journalism.
On the upside, this is a mainstream public debate that we had to have. This debate is not about journalism or news, but how we manage our governing structures so that we can deal with this technologically-driven changes to our society.
We get to decide what kind of country we want, and how we want it structured. Its not for the powerful interests of a few corporates.
It is a little bit interesting that Australia now finds itself in this position, with the world watching.
As mentioned inprevious analyses the way that the government has approached its battle with the digital giants has been flawed from the beginning.
True its tough stand had made Google pay media companies well above what these companies would have been able to negotiate individually with Google, but the fundamentals of why these battles are taking place are still unchanged.
Google was prepared to pay these ‘premiums’ to make sure that its business model would still survive. It is the company’s advertising business model that it was keen to protect and for that reason it was prepared to pay off the news companies.
Face to face: In this stand-off Google is right to call government’s bluff
So nothing fundamental has been solved by the Australian Government through its media code. It is now simply waiting for the next battle and the regulator (ACCC) has also already foreshadowed that it will concentrate on that advertising business model.
This will be a much tougher battle that Australia will not be able to win on its own. Google will use its full legal power with gigantic financial resources to defend their business.
It also shows that actions from individual governments are counterproductive. The French who took a different approach got only a fraction of the money for its media companies than that Google has paid to Australian media, so how will that make the French feel.
Only united action against global digital moguls will lead to structural changes and I have mentioned some of such structural changes as proposed by the EU: Can we control the Digital Platforms.
Now on to Facebook. I totally agree with Facebook that the Government’s action in relation to the way that Facebook distributes news is out of all proportions and as a matter of fact totally wrong.
All news organisations around the world totally voluntary distribute their news to whoever wants to use it. Facebook is not involved in this at all. Unlike Google, it doesn’t abstract content; it doesn’t create news snippets and it does not distribute links.
All of this is up to the news companies who are providing their services via Facebook. It is totally up to them if they provide full articles, snippets, links, send users to pay walls, etc.
It is true that all the information that is now blocked by Facebook can be obtained elsewhere.
However, Facebook is such a well-known, integrated platform, used by the majority of Australians that it will be the organisations who provide services on the platform and who are now blocked, who are the ones that suffer from this action.
I would think that common sense here will prevail, and that the government will limit the media code to those digital companies that are actively making money from the content of others.
Unlike Google the media code doesn’t really affect their business model, so there was no need for them to negotiate as there was, as a matter of fact nothing to negotiate.
If the government wants to stick to its media code it will also have to make Twitter, LinkedIn and others pay for the same service that Facebook provides. You could even argue that telephone and postal service which are used to distribute news should fall under that code, of course totally ridiculous.
It is also in the government’s own interest that it can continue to use the Facebook platform to distribute its own news. Once again there are other ways to do that, but the reach of Facebook is unsurpassed and as such very valuable for the distribution of such information.
Do I let Facebook off the hook? Totally not, but if we want to get control over the digital media and avoid the damage that they are doing to our society, economy and democracy we need to be far more strategic and we globally will need to work together on those issues.
Australia’s largest company by market capitalisation, biotechnology manufacturer CSL has powered ahead in the first half of the financial year reporting a net profit after tax up 44 per cent on the previous corresponding period.
The company, which is in the final stages of manufacturing the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, reported a NPAT of $1.8 billion as its vaccine sales jumped and its traditional immunoglobulin immune system treatments grew strongly.
The company’s Seqirus vaccine division saw sales rise 38 per cent and profits more than double including cash from the discontinued University of Queensland Covid-19 vaccine project, while traditional revenues from CSL Behring were up nine per cent.
Vaccine-maker CSL has had a huge year of expansion . Picture: Supplied
However CSL Behring, which isolates pharmaceuticals and factors from human blood, is increasingly being driven by new generation subcutaneous product Hizentra.
Chief executive officer Paul Perreault said the strong result came in unprecedented times with the most severe pandemic of our lifetime.
Mr Perreault said: “Our core franchise the immunoglobulin portfolio has continued to perform well (with) Hizentra sales up 19 per cent.
“Our intravenous product Privigen grew only modestly, tempered by pandemic-driven supply issues.”
Hizentra is a treatment for the debilitating neurological disorder chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy while Privigen also treats chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura.
Both are products of CSL’s massive R&D spend which now exceeds $1 billion annually.
The company’s sales of albumin derived from blood grew by 93 per cent, reflecting a switch to a company run distribution model in China.
In the half CSL announced it would build a world-class biotech manufacturing facility in Melbourne which will use cell-based technologies to produce influenza vaccines.
CSL anticipates a full year net profit after tax of between $2.17 billion and $2.27 billion.
Mr Perreault said: “It will be the only cell-based influenza vaccines facility in the southern hemisphere.”
The Victorian government has paid tech giant Microsoft nearly $6 million to use its COVID-19 vaccination management platform, with the vaccine rollout set to start next week.
The Microsoft Vaccination Registration and Administration Solutions program will cover registration, scheduling of appointments, automatic replenishment of supplies, tracking and tracing of prescriptions and deliveries, using data and artificial intelligence solutions.
The Microsoft technology has encountered problems in the US, where it had experienced outages and software issues in New Jersey.
Melbourne
The Victorian government signed a contract with Microsoft in early January worth $5.8 million to use the platform following a whirlwind five-day tender process held in late 2020.
It is the first state government to officially ink a deal with Microsoft for the vaccination platform, although it is expected that others will follow.
The Victorian government went to the market in November last year for a vaccination management platform with only a five-day window. The state was on the hunt for cloud-based software to manage the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, with functionality across multiple devices, the ability to book appointments and temperature checking of the actual vaccine.
It underwent a “rapid evaluation process” of applicants late last year, with Microsoft then required to demonstrate its platform in December before signing the deal before the end of the year.
The contract, posted publicly this week, runs from 11 January to 30 June this year, and involves the Victorian government purchasing Microsoft’s existing platform, which has now been “fine-tuned” for use in the state.
The Microsoft platform will be used by individuals in the state and healthcare professionals. The US tech giant unveiled the platform in December last year, with help from partners Accenture, Avanade, EY and Mazik Global.
In a blog post about the platform earlier this year, the company said that the tool is designed to “enable and extend an organisation’s vaccination management capabilities and create end-to-end experiences for citizens, front-line vaccine administrators and healthcare providers”.
The platform is already in use in a number of states in the US. Recently it was reported that it had experienced a number of outages and software issues in New Jersey.
These issues include the blocking of users, lost registrations, double-booked appointments and system crashes for up to hours at a time, according to a Bloomberg report.
According to the report, New Jersey officials have “no confidence” the Microsoft platform will deliver on the features agreed upon in the contract.
Several other states in the US are using a version of the Microsoft platform, including Oklahoma and Iowa.
The Microsoft platform will also allow users to show proof that they have received the vaccine.
The federal government recently announced plans to use the existing Australian Immunisation Register and myGov platform for digital vaccination certificates after someone has received the vaccine.
Facebook has followed through on its threat to go nuclear and has blocked all news content from the newsfeed of its Australian users as its two-fingered response to the federal government’s controversial media bargaining code.
The media bargaining code had passed through the lower house of Parliament with bipartisian just hours before Facebook block Australian news content.
In a blog post on Thursday morning, Facebook Australia managing director William Easton said it would “restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content”.
Mark Zuckerberg: Constructive talks did not include giving government advanced warning
This rolled out gradually for Australian users, with the Facebook pages of numerous news sites appearing empty, and users unable to post links to various stories.
“The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” Mr Easton said.
“It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter,” he said.
The media bargaining code will force Facebook and Google to enter into final offer arbitration with media companies to determine revenue sharing deals for the use of news content and also provide advance notice of relevant algorithmic changes as a result of human intervention.
Facebook first threatened to block news content in response to the code back in September last year and has since largely stayed out of the fray, with Google leading the charge against the proposal.
While also threatening to block its service in Australia, Google has taken a different approach to the bargaining code, racing against time to ink deals with media companies for its Showcase service in order to avoid being designated under it.
Google has now finalised deals with Seven West Media, Nine and News Corp this week, with each believed to be worth more than $30 million annually.
But Facebook said that it has a “fundamentally different relationship with news” compared to Google.
“Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue,” Mr Easton said.
“This legislation sets a precedent where the government decides who enters into these news content agreements, and ultimately, how much the party that already receives value from the free service gets paid,” he said.
“We will now prioritise investments to other countries, as part of our plans to invest in new licensing news programs and experiences.”
In a joint press conference, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and communications minister Paul Fletcher hit back at Facebook, and said the government was still committed to legislating the bargaining code.
Mr Frydenberg labelled Facebook’s move as “wrong”, “heavy-handed” and that it will “damage its reputation here in Australia”.
“Their decision to block Australians’ access to government sites – including support services through the pandemic, mental health, emergency services, the Bureau of Meteorology – were completely unrelated to the media code,” Mr Frydenberg told the media.
The Treasurer said he had a “constructive” conversation with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday morning, but was not given any notice of the company’s plan to block news content.
“Facebook up to this point had been engaged in pretty constructive conversations with the media businesses – they had made quite a lot of progress and deals were relatively close,” Mr Frydenberg said.
After passing the legislation through the lower house on Wednesday night, the government will still plow ahead with the code and soon pass it through the Senate.
“We will legislate this code. Facebook is in no doubt that we’re committed to the code – their actions today were unnecessary and wrong,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“We’ve been sticking to our principles and we’ve been sticking to our guns. We’ll see if we can reach some clarifications and get them back to the table and keep them providing their service in Australia. But our number one commitment is to legislate this code.”
The bargaining code legislation was supported in the House of Representatives with a series of “technical” government amendments.
This was despite a number of Labor MPs raising concerns with unanswered questions around the code, the power of the Treasurer to designate companies, and whether it will actually improve media diversity.
With Google signing a series of deals with Australia’s largest media companies, the government has raised the potential that the tech firm may not be designated under the code.
Shadow communications minister Michelle Rowland said there needs to be some clarity around the government’s intentions around the designation process.
“It is not clear how the government will achieve the intention of levelling the bargaining position between the news media and digital platforms if the negotiate-arbitrate provisions of this bill do not apply,” Ms Rowland said.
“For this reason, Labor recommends that the government use precise language in public statements regarding what designations it intends to make under the code. This is in order to save any misunderstanding or unnecessary uncertainty for the media, the digital platforms, small businesses and citizens and consumers who may be impacted.”
In response to these concerns, Mr Fletcher said the designation decisions will be up to the Treasurer, based on advice from the competition watchdog.
“Ultimately it will be a decision for the Treasurer, based upon advice provided to him by the ACCC, and that advice will be given against the backdrop of the overall market conditions, including and of course informed by what has been the extent to which deals have been done and who the parties are to those deals,” he said.
Mr Frydenberg has continually refused to “pre-empt” any designation decisions, but has said that the signing of commercial deals does “change the equation”.
Farm sensor manufacturer Goanna Ag and IoT nanosatellite operator Myriota have combined to launch two innovative products to help farmers manage water resources, Go Rain and GoTank.
GoRain allows farmers to monitor rainfall at remote locations, providing information on rainfall variability that enables data driven decision-making.
GoTank updates livestock farmers via the industrial IoT on water levels in remote water tanks.
IoT space company Myriota has teamed up with Goanna Ag for a farm sensor service
Goanna Ag chief executive Alicia Garden said that GoRain and GoTank will play an important role in the future success of Australia’s $62 billion agriculture sector.
Ms Garden said: “Rainfall is the fundamental driver of agricultural production, and while we can’t make it rain more, GoRain and GoTank will bring confidence to decision making for our hard-working food and fibre producers.
“We believe that this technology will transform the Australian market and provide the information needed to support the industry in even the most challenging times.”
The partnership between Goanna Ag and Myriota uses Myriota’s network of nanosatellites, which provides a low-cost, low-power solution for IoT connected devices.
Data from rain gauges and tank monitors can now be collected from anywhere in the world and seamlessly displayed in Goanna Ag’s apps, Goanna Telemetry App (Google Play) and GoApp (App Store) – the first of their kind in the world.
Myriota chief executive Dr Alex Grant said that the launch of GoRain and GoTank comes at a critical time for the Australian agricultural sector.
“By providing the agricultural industry with data about precious on-farm water assets at the click of a button, Myriota and Goanna Ag are supporting the industry to make highly strategic decisions that will ensure the survival of crops and livestock,” Dr Grant said.
“GoRain and GoTank are able to obtain on-site data from anywhere and deliver that information to the farmer via the Myriota network – removing the guesswork and providing accurate data about on-farm water levels.”
Australia is at a widely analysed strategic crossroads. To accelerate the growth of a secure, resilient and technologically sophisticated economy, we must develop and extend our capability in critical and emerging technologies.
That means supporting the commercialisation of Australian intellectual property in all areas of emerging technology – from artificial intelligence and automation, to fintech to medtech and biotech to cyber security.
Cyber security is especially important, because it is a fundamental enabler of trust as well as innovation across emerging technologies and indeed across our entire economy.
AustCyber CEO Michelle Price and Stone & Chalk chief executive Alex Scandurra
Well reported is the number and type of threat actors – both criminal and state-based – increasing markedly over the last 12 months, and not just for the big end of town. Organisations of all sizes, sectors as well as schools, community groups and homes are in the cross hairs.
This increased necessity comes at a time of mandatory business transformation and digitisation. The COVID era laid bare the inefficiencies and friction points in business models across the economy, from education and entertainment to banking and retail.
A more mature understanding of the transaction costs across destabilized supply chains has also emerged.
Industry leaders are now searching for partners and trailblazers who can transform their business operations rapidly with emerging technologies, in ways that bring inbuilt security and resilience.
If Australia remains simply an end customer of offshore vendors for emerging and critical technologies, we will be selling ourselves short strategically but also in the retained benefits of jobs and profit when we have competitive domestic offerings.
Expenditure in business transformation and emerging technologies will be expropriated by global vendors selling off-the-shelf solutions to Australian customers who will gain no competitive advantage and will often be forced to arrange their business operations around the requirements of an existing product that the vendor is offering.
On the other hand, if we use the infrastructure already built and invested in to nurture the commercialisation of home-grown emerging technologies in sophisticated ways, we can better leverage the strength of our advanced research capability to create intellectual property in industries that plays to Australia’s strengths as well as deliver increased self-reliance.
The new/ endured normal of the pandemic demonstrates the need for us to be sharper in how we achieve this through trusted partnerships and innovation.
Right now, across the world, the opportunity for Australia is enormous.
This is why we, as the leaders of two prominent not-for-profits working in critical and emerging technologies, have merged our organisations to show a better way to leverage the best of previous investment in capability to create capacity to accelerate the growth in industries delivering a more innovative, secure economy.
To capitalise on the transformative moment that we are in, Australia’s emerging technology companies must be secure by design from day one, before a single line of code is written. Corporates and government organisations seeking digital transformation partners lean heavily towards those that can provide serious security credentials.
A strategic integration of the peak body for the cyber security industries with the leading commercialisation network for all emerging tech will ensure that our emerging technologies are secure and can increase the security of their customers and partners.
Our cyber security industry has more than quadrupled in direct value since 2017, from $800 million to $3.6 billion today. Most companies in this sector are young – 40 per cent are less than five years old.
This is an extraordinary growth story that has occurred under the auspices of AustCyber which has operated as an Industry Growth Centre since 2017. AustCyber will continue to operate as an Industry Growth Centre until mid-2022.
Emerging technology more broadly has a pivotal role to play in Australia’s new economy. Research has shown that every job in technology created five more across the economy. Companies less than five years old employ nearly one in two Australians and are net job creators whereas legacy companies are net job shedders.
Australia’s entire business ecosystem will need to leverage emerging technology companies that are innovative, focused and secure to thrive in a post-pandemic world.
As an organisation that exists at the nexus of emerging technology and business Stone & Chalk is powering the growth of our emerging tech ecosystem and business transformation.
Full-scale commercialisation support is needed to maintain and extend this growth and tell the next chapter of the story.
The integration of AustCyber and Stone & Chalk will provide this to our current ecosystems and extend our reach across other emerging technology industries, established and nascent.
This includes virtual trade missions with potential export markets, bespoke introductions to potential investors with the right portfolio and expertise to provide far more than financial support, access to customers ranging from scaleups and government departments to national and multinational corporates, and a powerful advocacy body advancing the interests of founders at a state and federal level.
In a world where critical and emerging tech are becoming central to economic growth, resilience and security of national economies, a body like the one we are creating with this merger is no longer optional.
Our success in the mission of developing and extending Australian industrial capability in critical and emerging technology will underpin the nation’s prosperity and security for decades to come.
The federal government’s proposed new powers for authorities to covertly take control of an individual’s online account are “antithetical” to democratic law and lack any due process, according to Twitter.
The Identify and Disrupt Bill, which hands sweeping new powers to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Criminal Intelligence Committee (ACIC) to “disrupt” and hack into the computers and networks of suspected criminals, is currently the subject of a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) inquiry.
The legislation introduces three new warrants which would allow authorities to “disrupt” the data of suspected criminals, access devices and networks even if they don’t know their identities and take over their accounts covertly.
Takeover powers: Twitter says the proposed laws are ‘antithetical’ to democratic laws
The warrants apply to any criminal offence carrying a jail sentence of at least three years, covering a broad swathe of offences.
In its submission to the PJCIS inquiry, social media giant Twitter focused on the account takeover warrants, saying they would create significant extraterritorial issues and if introduced, would be “divorced from standard due process requirements” and “antithetical to core legal principles enshrined in democratic law and procedural fairness”.
“Twitter is concerned that the proposed bill will allow law enforcement direct access to data regardless of the location of the server, without requiring knowledge of such access being provided to the service provider, and in the case of account takeover warrants, absent the agreement of an appropriate consenting official of the relevant foreign country where the warrant would be enforced,” the Twitter submission said.
“The account takeover warrant will apply extraterritorially with Australian law enforcement being authorised to take control of an online account regardless of where the account data is located and without consent from foreign governments or officials.”
The tech company said it was unclear what its own rights and obligations will be under the scheme, which could see Australian authorities secretly take control of one of their users’ accounts, and how it will impact the privacy of their users.
“There is no consideration or reference in the bill of the implications of law enforcement agencies accessing a service without the knowledge of the service provider. We are very concerned about the implications for Twitter’s own obligations as a company, as well as the rights and privacy implications for the users of Twitter and other online services,” Twitter said.
The government has also not considered the impact of these new powers on innocent third parties that may interact with an account that is being secretly operated by the AFP, Twitter said.
“It does not appear that the bill has contemplated any processes to consider and protect the rights of any third-party users who may interact with the account that has been subject to an account takeover warrant,” it said.
“This again raises a number of inherent privacy concerns and potential violations of substantive rights, as well as potential conflict of laws if these third party users are outside of Australia.”
“Therefore, we recommend that the government institute the necessary protections and procedures to address these issues in order to preserve democratic processes, extend privacy protections, and enshrine procedural fairness within the context of the bill.”
In a separate submission, the Communications Alliance also raised concern with the “potential for far-reaching consequences” with the new powers and called for amendments requiring that the relevant service provider be consulted before a warrant is issued, and to require independent judicial oversight and authorisation of warrants.
The Department of Home Affairs also made a submission to the PJCIS inquiry, confirming that it plans for the account takeover warrants to be used in conjunction with other warrants.
“An account takeover power could be used in conjunction with a controlled operation which would authorise the AFP or the ACIC to assume the account holder’s identity, engage in ongoing interactions with associates to elicit information and assist in the identification of offenders and collection of evidence of the offending,” the Home Affairs submission said.
“Enabling the AFP and ACIC to take control of an online account in these circumstances is an extremely valuable tool and would facilitate better evidence-gathering against criminals, mapping of their criminal networks and potential identification of victims.”
Federal Labor has called on the government to launch a national ransomware strategy to make Australia a less attractive target for cyberattacks.
Shadow assistant minister for cybersecurity Tim Watts released a discussion paper detailing potential policies, including increased law enforcement, targeted international sanctions, offensive cyber actions and regulating the payment of ransoms.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre has said that ransomware is the “highest threat” facing Australian businesses and government in the cyber domain, with a total cost of about $1 billion per year. These forms of cyberattacks increased significantly in the last year and have become more sophisticated and more targeted.
Tim Watts: The Cybersecurity strategy has little to support the development of the local industry
The federal government must play a leading role in making Australia a less attractive target for these ransomware groups, Mr Watts said.
“The rapidly growing costs of successful attacks on targeted entities – in downtime, remediation, ransoms and supply chains interruptions – combined with the growing costs to all organisations of defending themselves against these attacks is an unsustainable burden on the nation,” Mr Watts said.
“Ransomware is a jobs and investment destroyer at a time when the nation can least afford it. We need a new approach. It’s past time the Morrison government developed a comprehensive national ransomware strategy.”
The increasing sophistication and targeting of ransomware presents an opportunity for the government to shift focus away from Australian entities, Mr Watts said.
“The evolution of ransomware gangs into sophisticated, well-resourced organised crime groups presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge of the emergence of so-called ‘big game hunting’ ransomware gangs that carefully research and select their targets to maximise their returns from attacks has increased the potential costs of these attacks,” he said.
“But it has also created the potential for new strategies aimed at deterring these attacks. The threat of ransomware isn’t going anywhere soon, and the government cannot just leave it to Australian organisations to confront this challenge alone. It is time the Morrison government actively tackled this threat and developed a national ransomware strategy.”
The Labor discussion paper proposes policies that could lower the return on investment for ransomware groups going after Australia, and increase their costs for them.
On the costs side, more effort could be made on law enforcement action against ransomware groups, starting with measuring with current performance and pushing for greater international cooperation to arrest and charge individuals.
The federal government should also “aggressively” participate in joint international law enforcement operations and cooperate in the region to prevent the emergence of new groups.
“An activist approach to fighting ransomware would see the Australian government building coalitions of nations to pressure recalcitrant governments to stop ignoring and harbouring transnational ransomware groups, and to develop mutual law enforcement assistance agreements with these states,” the discussion paper said.
When law enforcement is not possible, the government should look at engaging with like-minded countries to impose travel and asset sanctions on the ransomware gangs and enabling countries, the Opposition said.
To reduce returns for these groups, the government should look at imposing controls on ransomware payments, crack down on rogue bitcoin exchanges and improve the cybersecurity of public and private organisations, the paper said.
The Opposition said the government should actively engage with the US Treasury which has already proposed some regulatory actions around ransomware payments made through bitcoin exchanges.
“If Australian organisations can develop a reputation for being less likely to pay ransoms than targets in other jurisdictions, the return on investment for targeting Australian organisations will fall and so too will targeted ransomware attacks against Australian organisations,” they said.
More work needs to be done to lift the overall cyber resilience of public and private companies to combat these attacks, the paper said.
And such a strategy needs to be communicated publicly, with Labor calling on Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton to make a ministerial statement in Parliament about it and for the government to appoint a dedicated member of the executive responsible for cybersecurity.
“This is an important signal to adversaries indicating that the Australian government takes cybersecurity seriously,” the Labor discussion paper said.
“Unfortunately, despite the growing threat of ransomware to the nation, Peter Dutton has never used the word ‘ransomware’ in the Parliament.”
Mr Watts released another discussion paper last year, calling for a rethink of cybersecurity policy in Australia with a focus on national resilience and community-based efforts.
The federal government unveiled the $1.7 billion 2020 Cyber Security Strategy in August, with initiatives including new laws to protect critical infrastructure, additional powers for authorities to combat crime on the dark web, and some efforts to improve the cyber resilience of small business.
Australia has the potential to become a leading location in the region for space launch services, but the federal government’s plan to charge companies to apply for permits puts this in jeopardy, a number of space companies have warned.
A coalition of the nation’s emerging space launch companies – the so-called ‘Launch Leaders’ – said that Australia has huge potential and could see up to 2500 satellites launched in the next five years in a submission to a standing committee inquiry into the local space sector.
“Our nation has the opportunity to be a primary location in Asia for launch services and to be a preferred provider for launch activities within the global space market,” Equatorial Launch Australia, Gilmour Space Technologies and Southern Launch said in the submission.
Back in the day: An old-school Woomera launch when life was good and space was easy
“In undertaking successful space launches, the launch leaders will inspire the Australian population, including the next generation of space experts, and will create new jobs in the high-tech Australian space industry sector. This is ever more important for the nation following the testing times brought about by the global COVID-19 pandemic.”
But the government’s plan to introduce a Commonwealth Cost Recovery Scheme for space launches and return, which will see companies charged for making “complex” applications.
The scheme was delayed for 12 months due to COVID-19 and is now set to come into effect from July this year.
This plan could jeopardise Australia’s goal of growing the local space sector and damage its ability to improve sovereign capability in space tech. The group of leading Australian launch companies called on government to scrap the plan.
“The Commonwealth cost recovery scheme is imposing uncompetitive costs on launch vehicle operators and Australian launch facility providers where, in the case of operators of small launch vehicles, the fees are as much as three times the value of the rocket development and mission costs,” the groups said.
“Our customers express grave concerns about the implementation of this scheme. This potential cost on industry severely limits Australia’s ability to gain investment from the global launch market. This scheme is grossly disproportionate to other like-minded commercial space-faring nations.”
In its separate submission, Southern Launch said that the government could charge nearly $190,000 per launch permit application, which is three times the value of the rocket development and mission costs, and 30 times higher than other jurisdictions.
Southern Launch’s customers have expressed “grave concern” with these fees.
“Potential customers and investors are informing us that, notwithstanding the technical advantages from launching from Australia, it may be less preferable to launch in Australia over the long term due to the existence of this cost recovery scheme,” the Southern Launch submission said.
“To add a large fee for a launch permit or facility, something not applied anywhere else in the world, makes it even harder for Australia to grow its embryonic space industry to be globally competitive.
“As the scheme does not demonstrate how its implementation enhances safety of a launch activity, it unnecessarily impedes Australia’s launch services industry to be competitive in the global launch market. No fees should be applied to the assessment of launch permit or facility applications.”
A number of state and territory governments also raised significant concerns with these costs.
In its submission to the inquiry, the Queensland government said that the high costs are “dissuasive to investment and growth in Australia’s space industry”.
“Industry has raised concerns about the user-pays and cost recovery models being placed on the emerging space industry,” the Queensland government submission said.
“These cost-recovery models may have negative impacts on jobs and economic growth in a startup industry which already faces high competition and legacy investment overseas,” it said.
The Northern Territory government said it “unequivocally opposed” the cost recovery model, which it said it “incompatible” with the government’s commitment to drive growth in the sector.
In its submission, the Australian Space Agency said there had been 16 applications for launches and returns since 2018, with none approved yet.
“The agency is working with applicants to support them to complete their applications, however the onus remains on the applicant to provide the information required under the act,” the agency said.
“The agency has recently undertaken to hold a roundtable with companies considering launch activities to identify areas where guidance would benefit the stakeholder group,” it said.
The federal government is set to cave in to the demands of Google and Facebook, with preparations under way to water down its media bargaining code ahead of a parliamentary showdown this week.
Legislation introducing a code, which would force Google and Facebook to enter into final offer arbitration to determine revenue sharing deals with media companies over the sharing of news content, is to be debated in parliament this week, after being given the green light by a government-led Senate committee on Friday.
But negotiations are still taking place behind the scenes on the final shape of the legislation, and the government appears willing to make significant concessions to the Big Tech firms.
Time to reflect on the showdown with Big Tech
The government confirmed that it will amend the legislation, which is scheduled for debate in Parliament on Wednesday.
It comes as Seven West Media on Monday became the first major Australian media company to sign a deal with Google to have its news content featured on Google Showcase as part of a deal believed to be worth more than $30 million per year.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg are pushing for Google and Facebook to sign more deals like this with other major media players outside of the bargaining code, and are understood to be willing to make major concessions if this takes place.
The government is reportedly willing to alter the code to not designate Google’s search engine or Facebook’s news feed as subject to the revenue sharing deal. This amounts to a huge capitulation to the Big Tech demands.
These are the firms’ most significant services, and the primary means through which users are presented with news content.
The government is also set to delay making these designations in order to give Google and Facebook more time to finalise the deals with the media companies.
The tech firms have been in discussions with media companies this year in an effort to secure these deals outside of the code, with negotiations including clauses that the deals can be scrapped if the bargaining code is passed into law.
Seven West Media on Monday informed the market that it had agreed to a “long-term partnership” with Google to have its new content featured on Showcase, which was launched earlier this month in Australia.
The company’s chair Kerry Stokes thanked Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg for being “instrumental” in securing the agreement.
“Their outstanding leadership on the implementation of the proposed news media bargaining code has resulted in us being able to conclude negotiations that result in fair payment and ensure our digital future,” Mr Stokes said.
Speaking on ABC radio on Monday morning, Mr Frydenberg said more deals are “very close”.
“Both the media proprietors and the digital giants I think recognise that we have something that is workable here in Australia, something that we can take forward, something that can ensure a stable media landscape, and something that will see journalism continued and journalists rewarded for creating original content,” he said.
Later in the day, Mr Frydenberg confirmed that amendments would be made to the legislation, which is to be debated in the party room on Tuesday before its presentation to Parliament on Wednesday.
The inking of these deals will likely give the government the justification to significantly water down the bargaining code to satisfy the tech giants, ensuring that they do not withdraw their services in Australia.
Despite recommending the legislation be passed, the Senate committee’s report late last week did allow room for amendments.
“The committee accepts that there remains the possibility that not all risks have been taken into account, and that further refinements may be needed to the arbitration mechanisms and other parts of the code so that they work in an optimum manner,” the report said.
The federal government’s digital identity program should be “abandoned and redesigned from scratch” according to researchers who last year discovered a significant flaw in the system’s design.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) opened the first round of consultation on legislation surrounding the government’s federated digital identity scheme late last year, and last week released a “synthesis report” that claimed to represent the views of the submissions.
The DTA said they were “overwhelmingly positive” with “near uniform agreement on the immense value of the digital identity system”, despite one calling for the program to be scrapped and redesigned entirely, and others raising concerns about accessibility, the use of biometrics, and a lack of public trust.
Digital ID: Disingenuous spruiking of a new identity model will not make it safe
The legislation aims to beef up privacy protection, establish a permanent oversight agency and allow state governments and the private sector to participate in the identity scheme.
The digital identity program aims to provide a whole-of-government service where users can utilise a range of digital identity providers in order to access government services and those offered by participating private companies.
It includes the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, which lays out the policies for the program, and the identity exchange gateway, along with digital identity services including the ATO’s myGovID.
The scheme has been running for five years and has received more than $450 million in government funding.
Despite the spruiking by the DTA, Thinking Cybersecurity chief executive and Australian National University adjunct professor Vanessa Teague, who late last year identified a “flaw” in the digital identity system which has still not been addressed, said the framing of this consultation was “misleading”.
“The first ‘primary reason for exploring legislation’ is ‘ensuring digital identity continues to meet the needs and expectations of the community’ when in fact we have already clearly shown that existing implementations do not meet the required security and privacy standards,” Professor Teague told InnovationAus.
“The synthesis report also completely fails to distinguish between support for the aspiration of a secure digital ID, and support for the DTA’s current design, which I have not heard from a single technically-literate person.”
The DTA has released 32 of the 44 submissions it received as part of the consultation, many of which are broadly supportive of the scheme, and offer in-principle support for the proposed legislation.
But the submissions did raise a number of significant concerns that are less positive, including that the underlying protocol for the program is irrevocably flawed, that the planned introduction of biometrics should be scrapped and that not enough detail has been provided on plans to charge for access to the program.
Last year, Professor Teague and Ben Frengley, who completed a thesis on the TDIF, alerted the government to a flaw in the protocol of the ATO’s digital identity service, myGovID, that would allow an attacker to easily trick a user into handing over access to their account and control of the linked government services, along with issues with the wider TDIF.
These concerns were brushed off by the government at the time, which said it was not a vulnerability but rather a public awareness issue.
In their submission to the DTA, Professor Teague and Mr Frengley said there are a “number of serious security and privacy failings in its design and its existing implementation”.
These include the vulnerability in myGovID, and the use of a secure exchange gateway which is a “single point of failure for privacy and authentication”.
This is an “extremely brittle architecture that would allow for large-scale identity fraud if that one component comes under the control of a malicious party”, the researchers said.
“The TDIF as currently designed and implemented does not meet its own guiding principles – it is not immediately obvious that a brokered model without technical means to preserve privacy even can meet them,” they said.
“We recommend a careful re-evaluation of the priorities of the TDIF, and a consideration of other options which may meet its goal. The system should be abandoned and redesigned from scratch by people with some understanding of secure protocol design and some concern for protecting their fellow citizens from identity theft.”
The proposed legislation does not adequately protect the secure information of Australians using a digital identity, Professor Teague said.
“We’ve demonstrated serious problems in both the DTA’s framework and the ATO’s implementation. I really don’t think it matters how many other people were ‘overwhelmingly positive’ unless they suggested bug-fixes and are going to get them implemented, their optimism is not going to protect them from the identity fraud that will follow from an insecure system,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter whether legislation makes identity fraud illegal – the people who commit it are criminals anyway.
“The legislation completely fails to guarantee genuine security and privacy standards, and the DTA and ATO have responded to the errors we have identified by telling us that they are not going to fix any of them.”
The Northern Territory government also raised concerns about how the digital identity program will impact those without ready access to the necessary identification documents.
“Substantial work is still required to address the details and issues for the community to ensure the digital identity system that is eventually implemented will meet the needs and protect the identities of all Australians,” the NT government’s submission said.
“There are many alternative pathways and potential unintended consequences of implementing such a significant change that needs to be fully considered and addressed prior to legislation being enacted.”
There is also a need for clarifications and further details around the scheme to ensure there is public trust in it, the territory government said.
“There is substantial history in Australia of well-intentioned national initiatives that require citizen data failing or falling well short of expected or required community take-up, despite extensive public communications programs and well understood, sound purposes for most,” it said.
A number of submissions also raised concerns with the government’s plans to charge state governments and private companies to be a part of the federated digital identity system.
While still consulting on the matter, the DTA has entered into contracts worth $3.5 million with private firms to develop a charging framework for the system.
The Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC) said the government should be cautious in attempting to charge for use of the system.
“The key policy drivers for the digital identity system should be to provide efficient and economical access to government and private sector services and transactions, and a reduction in fraud and identity theft,” the OVIC submission said.
“These policy outcomes may be impacted if commercialising the digital identity system and seeking to involve multiple identity providers is prioritised,” it said.
Cybersecurity firm VeroGuard Systems said the charging model proposed presents “insurmountable challenges”.
“A transaction-based model is impossible to budget for as the volumes of requests are unpredictable,” the VeroGuard submission said.
“If the charging model is predefined to the relying party, it is unlikely that the right platforms or a competitive market will develop or be maintained and the entire burden as it is currently, will continue to fall on the federal government. A user pays model would rationalise use and drive a better cost / value acceptance of the program.”
The company also warned against the incorporation of biometrics in the digital identity play, something the government has already approached the market about multiple times.
“The use of biometrics at any point of authentication introduces substantial privacy and security risks. Avoiding biometrics altogether would be a substantially better approach,” VeroGuard said.
“The exploitation of any biometric system can be catastrophic for users. Once compromised, a user’s biometric cannot be simply replaced in the manner of a password or PIN…in open networks relying on variable hardware and software on user devices, the risks are substantial and cannot be effectively managed.
“There are better, more secure approaches that do not require biometric data to be used.”
There will now be a second round of consultations after the DTA releases a position paper, before the draft legislation is developed.
The federal government’s proposed new hacking powers for the Australian Federal Police are a “catch-all formula for abuse” and resemble something from the Hollywood film Minority Report, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties says.
The federal government late last year quietly introduced legislation to Parliament handing broad new powers to the AFP and Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission (ACIC) to hack into the computers and networks of suspected criminals.
The legislation introduces three new warrants that will allow authorities to “disrupt” the data of suspected criminals, access their devices and networks even if they don’t know their identities and take over their accounts covertly.
The warrants will be issued for any suspected offence carrying jail time of at least three years, covering a wide spread of crimes.
Sweeping powers: The erosion of civil liberties in the name of ‘crime prevention’
The legislation was quickly referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), with submissions to the inquiry closing last week. Some submissions were released publicly by the committee on Monday.
In its submission, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) said it was time to draw a line in the sand over increasing laws that erode privacy under the guise of preventing “serious crime”.
The council said the latest legislation is the “next in an accelerating wave, strengthening the powers of the state without any humility about the cumulative erosion of democratic freedoms they entail”.
“This bill builds on this ominous trend and takes it to a new level, providing unprecedented new powers for law enforcement to interfere and ‘disrupt’ communications of citizens without effective restraint,” the NSWCCL submission said.
“The abuse of power this bill enables will happen. Enough is enough.”
The NSWCCL said that the data disruption warrants and account takeover warrants are “crime prevention” tools that resemble something from the science-fiction movie Minority Report.
The powers will apply to a wide range of potential crimes – any carrying at least three years of jail time – not just those referenced by the government in announcing the laws, the submission said.
“This is an extraordinary catch-all encompassing fauna importation, fraud and importantly, such vaguely worded offences as ‘communication and other dealings with inherently harmful information by current and former Commonwealth officers’,” the NSWCCL said.
“These secrecy provisions have already been used to intimidate whistleblowers in several high-profile cases over the last few years. They are framed in a way that prevents vital information regarding government wrongdoing from ever coming to the attention of the public.”
The NSWCLL said that the data disruption warrants, and account takeover warrants, are “crime prevention” tools that resemble something from the science-fiction movie Minority Report.
“We cannot accept a new species of warrant that is based on the notion that the role of law enforcement is to stop possible future offences from being committed where the breadth of their application is so wide,” the NSWCCL said.
“The elastic notion of ‘suspicion’ as the trigger for these laws will permit a generalised, permanent state of surveillance because there is never likely to be a time when there will not be a suspicion of these activities occurring online somewhere.”
In a separate submission, a coalition of digital and civil rights groups including Liberty Victoria, Electronic Frontiers Australia, the Australian Privacy Foundation and the QLD Council of Civil Liberties, said the powers in the legislation amount to “state-authorised hacking”.
“Australians do not have sufficient safeguards of their fundamental rights to protect them from abuse of power by authorities,” the groups said.
The groups said that the new warrants should only apply to national security concerns.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman also made a submission to the PJCIS, calling for privacy to be included as a key consideration when determining whether a warrant should be issued.
“Requiring issuers to consider privacy or less intrusive means of obtaining information or disrupting activity ensures that they have turned their mind specifically to the balance between the right to privacy and the safety of the Australian community when deciding whether to authorise the use of particular power,” the Ombudsman said.
The release of the handful of submissions comes after a group of senators also raised significant concerns about the identify and disrupt bill, including that a “wide scope of innocent parties” could be caught up in the broad and coercive scheme.
The Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills questioned a lack of focus on privacy, the lack of judicial oversight, the potential for innocent people to be impacted and the ability for the powers to be used without a warrant in an emergency.
Tech incubator Stone and Chalk has acquired the Commonwealth-led cybersecurity Industry Growth Centre known as AustCyber in a boost for both organisations.
Under arrangements unveiled on Monday, AustCyber becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stone and Chalk, although the CEOs of both organisations say that while the legal structure says ‘acquisition’, the not-for-profit operational reality of the integration makes it a merger.
AustCyber’s Michelle Price and Stone and Chalk’s Alex Scandurra say the combined resources and individual strengths of each organisation will deliver a scale and sophistication for industry growth programs not previously seen in Australia.
Scaling-up not-for-profits: The private sector-inspired Stone and Chalk acquires public sector -inspired AustCyber
Both organisations would operate under their existing brands and run effectively separate accounting for to meet obligations under government funding agreements. But the staff and day-to-day operations across multiple sites and cities will effectively be integrated.
Under the new structure, AustCyber becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stone and Chalk. The organisations will maintain separate boards, although each will become “cross-fertilised with one board member from each organisation joining the other.
AustCyber will continue to operate as an Industry Growth Centre under the new ownership arrangements until the end of June 2022 and would continue to receive federal funding under that program. Ms Price said the organisation is committed to meeting all of its obligations under its current funding arrangement.
The AustCyber-Stone and Chalk tie-up has significant implications for the future of the Industry Growth Centres program. Other growth centres include the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre; Food Innovation Australia Limited (FIAL); METS Ignited for the mining engineering, technology and services sector; MTPConnect for the medical technology and pharmaceutical sector; and National Energy Resources Australia (NERA), for the oil, gas and energy sectors.
The Industry Growth Centres initiative was unveiled by former industry minister Ian Macfarlane in 2014 as part of the Abbott government. The Australian Cyber Security Growth Network (later AustCyber) was added later as a key recommendation of the original 2016 Australian Government Cybersecurity Strategy.
It was always intended that the growth centres become commercially viable, self-sustaining organisations. Funding for the current growth centres comes to a finish at the end of June 2022.
It is understood that none of the growth centres have to this point found commercial models that put them on a sustainable revenue trajectory that would allow them to continue to operate independently of government funding beyond than deadline.
AustCyber is a first mover in getting out in front of that looming funding deadline at the end of the next financial year and will look to secure its future within Stone and Chalk.
Whether the other growth centres move to restructure operations ahead or choose to run down the clock on the funding timetable or to shutter their organisations remains to be seen.
“It makes a lot of sense operationally,” AustCyber chief executive Michelle Price told InnovationAus. “Day to day its about growing the scale as well as the sophistication of the programs that the two organisations previously did separately.”
“There were already a lot of synergies that we were already focusing on,” Ms Price said, with AustCyber and Stone and Chalk having signed a partnership agreement during 2020.
“AustCyber was focused specifically on cybersecurity, but we were constantly being pulled across into other industries as well – not just because cybersecurity as needed elsewhere, but because of our expertise.”
“The same was happening with Stone and Chalk,” she said. “The issues and the challenges that we were experience from a delivery point of view – and not having enough scale to respond to the demand – and seeing where the ecosystems were up with the level of sophistication that’s needed in growth programs, it just became really obvious to us that we should pursue a merger.”
The merged organisations mean that the combined AustCyber and Stone and Chalk operation will operate in 11 locations across the country, as well as AustCyber’s international presence in Washington D.C. in the United States.
These locations include Stone and Chalk’s innovation hubs in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and the AustCyber network nodes in Western Australia, South Australia, Canberra, Tasmania and New South Wales, as well as an expected new node in Victoria.
“In those locations where Stone and Chalk has not had a presence, there is a renewed focus on how we can combine the AustCyber nodes with the Stone and Chalk approach to an innovation hub.
Stone and Chalk chief executive Alex Scandurra said the organisation, which began life with a spefic focus on building companies in the FinTech sector, would continue to take the frameworks and approaches it uses successfully in FinTech to build companies across other areas of emerging tech.
“What we saw as the opportunity in AustCyber was quite a lot of depth around the national security piece, as well as giving us additional strength when talking about cyber as a horizontal [sector] across all emerging technologies in a similar way that we saw FinTech in terms of mobilizing money across a whole series of sectors,” Mr Scandurra said.
AsutCyber’s Ms Price said Minister Karen Andrews’ office had been told of the plan to merge with Stone and Chalk in December, and that the organisation had worked in lockstep with both the minister’s office and the department to reshape its structure.
A spokesperson for Minister Andrews told InnovationAus: “In October 2020, Minister Andrews asked all Industry Growth Centres to submit a transition plan to the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, outlining their plan for self-sustainment beyond June 2022,”.
“The Industry Growth Centres Initiative is an ongoing program. The transition of individual Growth Centres to self-sufficiency once mature was always envisaged under program objectives and highlighted as part of the announcement of their establishment,” the spokesperson said.
To date, AustCyber has allocated $14.85 million in project funding through its $15 million Industry Growth Centres Project Fund.
Microsoft has doubled down on its support for Australia’s media bargaining code, labelling Facebook and Google’s threats to withdraw services from the country as a “new vulnerability for the world’s democracies”.
In a blog post on Friday morning, Microsoft president Brad Smith slammed the Big Tech firms’ opposition to the media bargaining code, which is set to be debated in Parliament as early as next week and urged the US government to pursue a similar policy.
Microsoft’s posturing on the issue is a significant split from both Silicon Valley and the US government, which has called on the Australian government to ditch the proposal entirely.
Microsoft president Brad Smith: Google and Facebook’s behaviour a threat to democracy
It comes after Microsoft last week threw its support behind the bargaining code legislation, saying it would be investing in Bing to help fill the void if Google does leave Australia and would happily be subject to the code.
The media bargaining code, which has been in the works for several years, will require Facebook and Google to enter into final offer, “baseball-style” arbitration to determine revenue sharing deals with media companies for the sharing of news content, and also provide advanced notice of algorithmic changes as the result of human intervention.
Both companies have railed against this proposal, with Facebook quickly saying it might block all Australian news content as a result of it, and Google last month threatening to withdraw its search engine entirely if it is unamended.
Mr Smith focused on Google in the blog post, labelling its reaction to the bargaining code as “dramatic”.
“Unlike Google, if we can grow, we are prepared to sign up for the new law’s obligations, including sharing revenue as proposed with news organisations. The key would be to create a more competitive market, something the government can facilitate,” Mr Smith said in the blog post.
“But, as we made clear, we are comfortable running a high-quality search service at lower economic margins than Google and with more economic returns for the press.”
It was recently revealed that Google had sent private proposals to a number of Australian publishers offering to pay more money for news partnerships, but including clauses allowing for it to terminate the deals if the bargaining code is passed without revision.
This was an “extraordinary manoeuvre”, Mr Smith said, and the actions of the Big Tech firms threaten democracy.
“Google and Facebook have shown they are prepared to tamp down their services or pull out of a country entirely if legislatures force them to share more of their revenue with the press on terms they don’t like,” he said.
“This creates a new vulnerability for the world’s democracies, and it underscores the need for new competition rules in regard to opening up digital markets, something more governments are now considering.”
The Australian government’s bargaining code is an “innovative prescription” for current issues impacting the media, and the US government should introduce similar rules, Mr Smith said, with the Biden administration now facing “pressing questions”, especially following the Capitol Hill riots earlier this year.
“Facebook and Google persuaded the Trump administration to object to Australia’s proposal. However, as the United States takes stock of the events on January 6, it’s time to widen the aperture,” Mr Smith said.
“This is a defining issue of our time that goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms. The United States should not object to a creative Australian proposal that strengthens democracy by requiring tech companies to support a free press. It should copy it instead.”
The bargaining code legislation is currently the subject of a senate committee inquiry, with the final report expected to be tabled on Friday. It will then be debated in Parliament as early as next week.
Startup and SME-focused procurement reform and a plan to plug R&D linkages directly into precincts like TechCentral in Sydney are at the core of NSW government’s industrial policy zeal.
There is an ambition to the NSW government plans for accelerating research and development outcomes in the state that only comes from the very top of political leadership.
We saw it at the federal level through Malcolm Turnbull’s National Innovation and Science Agenda – a policy program that is still delivering for the tech sector – and we are now seeing it in NSW through Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s personal political commitment to an R&D overhaul, and the whole-of-government response such commitment brings.
New ambition: Gladys Berejiklian and a renewed focus on R&D translation
NSW got a head start on developing industry policy to drive growth on the other side of the pandemic-recession when the Premier kicked-off a process in October 2019 – a full six months before COVID – that aimed to accelerate R&D in the state.
The result is the launch of an action plan that is focused heavily on translation issues, in creating better economic and social benefits from R&D investments. This is precisely where Australia has a dire track record.
A recent CSIRO assessment comparing Australia with other OECD countries ranked Australia at 27th out of 29 on large-business collaboration with the university sector or other non-commercial research institutions.
And worse, Australia ranked 29th out of 29 countries for SMEs collaborating with universities or other non-commercial research institutions.
The NSW parliamentary secretary to the Premier Gabrielle Upton, who drove the process with NSW chief scientist and engineer Hugh Durrant-Whyte, said the process benefited from the shared sense of mission that was evident through the difficult year of 2020.
“Our work was emboldened by the fact that we knew there was a more collaborative approach between stakeholders on innovation,” Ms Upton said. “We saw that through COVID.”
“You had business working through government to retool from one product to another and a willingness to [work together] to do that.”
The R&D spend in NSW is about $380 million spread across many clusters and “has not been called out as an economic lever in the way it should be,” Ms Upton said.
The spending was not always focused on the industry and research priorities across government, and has not been measured for impact particularly well, she said.
It is based on those issues that NSW will establish a central government agency that will focus on these translation challenges.
The Small Business Innovation Research initiative that NSW is looking at is based on the decades-old and highly successful program in the US of the same name. NSW has already allocated $24 million over two years to start from the new financial year.
The SBIR program lets a department or agency define a specific problem or need, and then to go to innovative startups, SMEs or researchers to come forward with ideas for a solution.
The SBIR funding enables the development of prototypes, which if it fills the need, attracts a next round of funding to scale up the idea and test the market. The structure of the program aims to provide modest sums of early funding to develop a solution for government that might also have a wider purpose as a commercial product.
SBIR aims to leverage the procurement power of the state to drive new products and services, based on a small amount of money at the front-end of the process. SBIR has been particularly successful in emerging information technology.
“If it’s a good innovative idea, they [the startup or SME] can come back to us – and this is the way SBIRs have worked around the world – where they get money to scale-up and test the market demand for their solution,” Ms Upton said.
“And the third opportunity that has not been connected up before is to say that [government] will be the first customer of that product or service,” she said.
“It connects things up in a systematic way, so that yes, it might solves a problem for government, but it might also be a world-beating solution that other people outside of Australia might want to access.”
The five core recommendations of the Accelerating Research and Development in NSW Action Plan are:
Launch a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program – provide competitive grants for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to find and commercialise innovative solutions to well-defined problems for NSW Government agencies.
Boost open data – release new government datasets so businesses can make better decisions, entrepreneurs can build new businesses and the government can solve complex challenges.
Turbocharge precincts – develop precincts to attract national and global technology industries and investment, and drive collaboration between universities, research organisations, start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs, to commercialise R&D.
Target strategic support for NSW universities – collaborate on research that drives future NSW strategic growth industries and research-led industry attraction, and better leverage Commonwealth Government research funding.
Establish an R&D matchmaking platform – better connect research ‘sellers’ and ‘buyers’ and link researchers to research infrastructure and expertise.
The imminent rollout of a digital COVID-19 vaccination certification risks becoming another government tech wreck, Labor and a number of digital rights advocates have warned, with concerns over the lack of consultation and privacy considerations.
The federal government revealed over the weekend that Australians would be able to access a proof of vaccination certification following a COVID-19 vaccine through the Express Plus Medicare app or the myGov app.
This will be completed through the existing Australian Immunisation Register (AIM), which includes history statements and proof of vaccinations.
Under microscope: Is the vaccine certificate the next public sector tech wreck?
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said Australians would be able to show this certificate on a smartphone as proof they had received the COVID-19 vaccine.
Under legislation passed last week, it will be mandatory for people to record information on the register after receiving a vaccination. But getting the vaccination itself remains voluntary.
Services Australia has been working on preparing myGov and the Medicare apps for the important new functions for more than three months, and the department has also made “critical enhancements to the Australian Immunisation Register”, Services Australia general manager Hank Jongen said.
“In preparation for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Services Australia has made critical enhancements to the Australian Immunisation Register including increasing system capacity so more customers can access their information on the register at the same time, new AIR functionality to capture more detailed information about vaccines given and updating immunisation history statements to show all COVID-19 vaccine doses,” Mr Jongen said.
“Australians can be assured the government takes the integrity of the Medicare system and the Australian Immunisation Register extremely seriously and has contemporary cybersecurity in place to protect people’s personal information.”
Digital rights advocates have expressed concern over the privacy of the highly sensitive health information that will be stored on a database, pointing to the government’s recent history of tech projects.
Electronic Frontiers Australia board member Justin Warren said more information is needed about the planned vaccination certificates, and the privacy safeguards being put in place.
“It feels rather rushed and there isn’t a lot of detail about what the actual end goals are here. What problem is being solved exactly? And why is this the right way to do it? It feels a lot like a repeat of COVIDSafe,” Mr Warren told InnovationAus.
“EFA is disappointed that the government tends to default to announcements about magic technology and dismisses legitimate concerns with vague platitudes about how secure and excellent it’ll be. Australians deserve better,” he said.
“We need to understand how this will work in practice, what the risks and benefits really are, and how this will affect those already being left behind: those without ready access to the technology needed to participate in modern life.
“The people who brought us robodebt and lengthy Centrelink queues need to spend a bit more time designing for abuse cases and not just use cases.”
Deakin University senior lecturer Dr Monique Mann said the government should conduct a privacy impact assessment on the vaccination certificates and consult widely with experts on the matter.
“There is a need to have some appropriate, robust discussion and to have some safeguards in place. Creating situations in which people are required to disclose information to access certain things means you’re going to need some safeguards, such as ensuring it’s proportionate,” Dr Mann told InnovationAus.
“We’ve seen all of these initiatives like COVIDSafe and the census, and this is not something that needs to be rushed, especially when sensitive health information is being stored and shared,” she said.
“We have to be incredibly careful when dealing with sensitive health information. In states of emergency, I would generally caution against new technologies or new apps being a silver bullet to the pandemic response.”
Speaking on ABC Radio National shadow social services minister Linda Burney said she supported the concept of a COVID-19 vaccine digital passport, but also raised concerns around privacy and the government’s tech capacity.
“I know there are issues around privacy that need to be considered…[and] when there is a proposal or legislation in front of Parliament, we’ll be looking at it very carefully. The government’s record on terms of digital applications is not a good reputation, in the sense of robodebt, in the sense of information about Medicare cards being available on the black web,” Ms Burney said.
“There are issues around the capacity of the government to be able to do this properly. And there are issues around privacy and issues around whether state governments and first ministers think it’s a good idea. But it’s important that there be the capacity for this to take place.
“I’m not confident in anything Stuart Robert says. The digital passport has to be secure, and the issue of personal information is probably the first priority that you want to be looking at.”
Gig economy workers would get portable leave entitlements and a minimum wage as part of a significant policy pitch by Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, which Labor will be taking to the election.
In a speech delivered in Brisbane on Wednesday night, Mr Albanese aimed to position the likely 2021 election as not a referendum on the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but rather a “contest between two very different visions for the future of Australia”.
Part of Labor’s vision is a significant focus on reforming the gig economy to provide more rights and entitlements to workers for big tech companies such as Uber.
Gig rejig: Anthony Albanese lays out new plan for gig economy workers and portable benefits
The treatment of workers for these companies was put in the spotlight late last year following the deaths of five food delivery riders in the space of two months in Australia.
While the Opposition and the Transport Workers Union have been pushing for reforms and regulations at the federal level, the Coalition has largely brushed this aside and said it is a matter for state governments.
Mr Albanese’s pitch revolves around handing the Fair Work Commission the power to enforce rights and obligations for the gig economy, that would include setting minimum pay and expanding the definition of an employee.
“Labor will ensure that the independent umpire has the capacity to inquire into all forms of work and determine what rights and obligations should apply,” Mr Albanese said in the speech.
“We will do this by extending the powers of the Fair Work Commission to include employee-like forms of work, allowing the commission to make orders for minimum standards in new forms of work.”
Labor would also legislate to ensure gig economy workers get “portable” sick leave, annual leave and long service leave that can be moved across different work, which is currently denied to them by the “narrow, outdated definition of an ‘employee’”.
Mr Albanese said that gig economy workers are being “denied basic rights such as award benefits, superannuation, the right to collectively bargain and access to unfair dismissal protections”.
He said Labor would also legislate to create a “fair test” to decide when a worker can be classified as a casual, and work with state and territory governments, unions and industry on the “portable” leave policy.
The policies largely follow recommendations from the Transport Workers Union, which has been campaigning for better rights for gig economy workers for several years.
While the federal government has shown no interest in further regulations for the gig economy, a number of the states have launched inquiries into the space.
The NSW government late last year launched a taskforce to investigate whether the recent deaths of delivery riders could’ve been avoided and whether better protections are required, while the Centre for Work Health and Safety is looking into potential regulatory reforms.
The Victorian government conducted a two-year inquiry into the on-demand workforce, which recommended that the federal government take the lead on significant reforms for the gig economy, including clarifying the worker status issue, creating a new agency to facilitate streamlined support and fast-tracked resolutions and a code of conduct.
Many women are deterred from participation in some of Australia’s most thriving and essential businesses, particularly in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing. This is due to organisations struggling to attract women to consider and apply for jobs.
However, a recent focus on attraction, retention and recruitment for women in these industries has led to women making their mark, and the numbers of women in manufacturing are on the rise.
In Australia there is an under-utilised pool of female talent that can contribute to the success of manufacturing businesses nation wide.
Manufacturing: In Australia there is an under-utilised pool of female talent
Currently in Australia the manufacturing industry employs over 900,000 people with 1 in 4 being women. In just Queensland alone, manufacturing contributes around $20 billion each year to the economy.
Women can add to the skill set so many Australian businesses are struggling to recruit for.
Nation and State wide initiatives are recognising and awarding women excelling in male dominated industries for their contribution.
The Women in Industry Awards celebrate women in manufacturing, engineering, transport and mining. This year’s awards saw a 27 per cent rise in nominations compared with last year, as well as a record number of individuals, businesses and organisations represented.
Winner of the Excellence in Manufacturing award this year is Rochelle Avinu stated, “often the manufacturing industry is portrayed as factory work, but there are endless opportunities in the industry in cross-functional disciplines, such as laboratories, quality, procurement and management and leadership.”
The judges for the awards were impressed with the calibre of nominations and the influence women are having on the respective industries.
“Many sacrificed personal time to get things done to ensure a safer workplace, better policies, encouraging more women and younger girls into manufacturing, and lifted the perception of what it meant to work in Australian manufacturing.”
The Australian Human Rights Commission released a toolkit of strategies in 2013, “Women in male-dominated industries” that continues to be a great resource for businesses hoping to bridge the gap and create a more diverse workplace.
“We want to continue to build on this and encourage females to pursue careers in manufacturing, because attracting and retaining more women is important to a stronger manufacturing sector.”
Daen Simmat is an industrial designer and CEO of Black Lab Design. He is passionate about designing for manufacture and celebrating his team manufacturing industry in Australia where he says many unsung heroes operate.
The main demands made by the government stay in place, but some of the details will be changed. This allows the Government to claim victory, while the damage to Google will be limited.
Publishers will in one way or another be paid for news, either through a payment based on the value of the news and the value of the Google search facility. An arbiter in the middle will come up with fair arrangements.
The other option will be for publishers to use Google’s News Showcase based on a partnership between Google and publishers and get paid that way. Several Australian publishers have already signed up to this service.
Google search will survive in Australia, but bigger problems await Photo: achinthamb / Shutterstock
It was interesting to see the tactics that were used in this power play. Microsoft became involved at its highest levels, indicating to be more than willing and able to offer an alternative with its Bing search engine. If it had come to that, this obviously would be one of the few alternatives for Australia.
But let’s be honest it is not for nothing that Bing only has a 4 per cent market share, while Google has a 90 per cent market share. Whatever way you look at it, Google is by far the more superior product. It would not have been a good outcome if Google would no longer be available to Australian users.
Furthermore, it would be extremely destructive for tens of thousands of Australian businesses who to a large extent depend on Google for advertising.
While all of this is positive, at the same time it is not taking away the broader issues of monopolies such as Facebook and Google. It has already become clear that it will not be enough to just regulate the existing giants. We need to look at the underlying elements, being their platforms.
The competition regulator in Australia, the ACCC, has already flagged the dominance of Google in the advertising market and now we are getting more to the core of the problem. While most will look at Google as a search engine company, it is equally an advertising company. This is where it makes its money.
As we have seen in recent years the advertising principle – that is, maximising clicks – are often in conflict with social values. The algorithms favour fake news, conspiracy theories and criminal intent as these increase exposure for their advertising.
These algorithms also create echo chambers often used to only emphasise the fake news and conspiracies, in the meantime gathering more market exposure for Google and its advertisers.
Using search, maps, YouTube and so on, they gather massive amounts of personal data from its users in order to make their advertising product more effective.
The current business models of the digital companies are not only undermining competition but also eroding privacy and many of the core issues of our democratic institutions.
The digital giants are predominantly American businesses. They are totally driven by profit and thus have been able to abuse their market position in relation to privacy and competition matters. By doing so, they now have market capitalisations that are totally out of any economic proportion. This might be a fleeting achievement but in the long-term, it is unsustainable.
The power that they have gained allows them now also to dictate the supply line, allowing them to extract “rent” from their suppliers, as they have little choice than to adhere to the terms and conditions of these platforms.
Amazon, Uber and Airbnb are all under investigation somewhere in the world for such practices.
Obviously, these platforms are immensely useful for our societies and economies, so we don’t want to get rid of them. The importance of these platforms has become very clear during the pandemic, as they have become essential national and international infrastructure.
As the Europeans argue, the platforms eventually will have to become neutral on which a range of business models can be built independently and in competition with one another. These neutral platforms can be used by the digital giants, other businesses, as well as by governments, communities and so on.
Unravelling these complex issues and building new principles around platforms could easily take a decade or more, so we better get on with that job. We might need to look at a structural separation between the platforms and the services provided on top of them.
The social media companies are very much aware of the political pressure that is building up around the world. This is a real threat to their business models. They are working on internal systems to address these issues. However, it is unlikely that they are prepared to go deep enough to keep the regulators away.
Both in the US and in Europe, serious plans are underway to curb the power of these companies. The new U.S. Government is proposing changes to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996.
It classifies internet companies as telecoms companies, therefore making them exempt from content laws. The proposal is now to make changes to section 230 and render digital platforms responsible for harmful and criminal content.
Beyond that, to address the platform issues in America, this will require an overhaul of their anti-trust scheme as the current regulatory system is unfit for the current digital environment.
The OECD is another organisation focusing on these companies in relation valuation of digital innovations and taxation.
While Google in Australia might be off the hook for now, there are many more international actions planned to address these issues.
As the Australian case shows, these digital giants are now big enough to challenge and even threaten sovereign governments. The longer we wait with reigning in these powers, the more governments can be intimidated by these companies and the more difficult it will become for governments to come up with decisive action.
On the other side, all these actions by governments and regulators should be a warning sign for those digital moguls. They are accountable to their shareholders. Those shareholders could lose significant amounts of money if these companies are put under stringent regulations.
Perhaps a better outcome for them would be to accept the social and economic responsibilities of their businesses and support them to change their business model to better reflect their role in our society and our economy.
Paul Budde is a columnist for Independent Australia and managing director of Paul Budde Consulting, an independent telecommunications research and consultancy organisation. You can follow him on Twitter @PaulBudde. This article was originally published on Independent Australia.
Government moves to beef up the security of Australia’s critical national infrastructure (CNI), set out in the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2020 and introduced into Federal Parliament on 10 December, will impact many companies, institutions and organisations that might not see themselves as being part of critical infrastructure.
These organisations should prepare for the bill’s impact now, by taking note of how recent moves by the finance industry regulator to strengthen cyber security requirements is playing out.
In his second reading speech on the bill, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said it would cover “organisations in communications, transport, data and the cloud, food and grocery, defence, higher education, and research and health” – seen as critical to “maintaining basic living standards for the Australian population; sustaining Australia’s wealth and prosperity; Australia’s national security and defence; and the security of large or sensitive data holdings”.
Nick Lennon: The proposed critical national infrastructure laws will have a broad impact on cyber security
Entities to which the legislation will apply are required to “adopt and comply with a risk management program that ensures that critical infrastructure assets are protected and safeguarded from all hazards”.
The introduction of the proposed new legislation is timely. We are already seeing critical infrastructure overseas being attacked with dire consequences, and the threat actors are becoming more sophisticated.
Phishing emails have long been a favoured threat vector but can generally be thwarted by an alert reader. Now, attackers are gathering information sufficient to create heavily socially engineered attacks that create high levels of trust, making them more difficult to detect.
How the new critical national infrastructure legislation will work in practice, and whether the goals set for it by the government are achieved remains to be seen.
The recent imposition of cyber security requirements on financial services industry players provides valuable insights and sets an example for other industries as they gear up to comply with the new cyber security regime.
The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) introduced its Prudential Standard CPS 234 Information Security in July 2019. Its aim was to make sure APRA-regulated entities maintained a security capability sufficient to make them resilient to cyber-attacks.
Cyber security issues had long been of concern to APRA, but prior to CPS 234 it lacked the power to act on those concerns. CPS 234 gave it that power, and at Mimecast we are seeing the impact. Superannuation funds, credit unions, tier two banks and financial service providers are coming to us to help them meet their obligations.
However, APRA has already recognised the limitations of CPS 234, and has beefed up its cyber security oversight of the finance sector considerably.
In August 2020, its Corporate Plan 2020-2024 detailed a new security strategy. In a speech to the Financial Services Assurance Forum, APRA executive board member Geoff Summerhayes, said the new strategy aimed to “extend APRA’s reach beyond our regulated entities to influence the broader eco-system of suppliers and providers they rely upon”.
There are certain industries that drive innovation, and the finance industry is one. It will play a major role in determining how increased cyber security regulation impacts all industries.
History shows that regulation tends to hit financial services first, and then spreads into other industries, because investment impacts all industries.
Director level responses to CPS 234 and to APRA’s new cyber security strategy will set the tone for how boards in other industries respond to the new legislation and execute their new cyber responsibilities.
Organisations that will be covered by the new CNI legislation can learn from the finance sector’s response to CPS 234 and APRA’s new cyber security strategy and act on that legislation appropriately.
The greatest challenge for legislators and regulators implementing the new critical national infrastructure legislation – and for industry – will likely be in maintaining adequate cyber security in many small organisations that have the potential to cause severe disruption to national infrastructure if they are compromised.
I recently asked the CISO of a body with a strong interest in our critical infrastructure what kept him awake at night. His answer: a small FinTech transferring billions of dollars through the payments system.
The role of that FinTech could at least be identified. Identifying every organisation that could be compromised and exploited to attack critical infrastructure is likely to be much more difficult.
APRA realises this challenge. At the heart of APRA’s new cyber security strategy, Summerhayes said, is “recognition that the Australian financial system is an ecosystem of an estimated 17,000 interconnected financial entities, markets, and financial market infrastructures that provide products and services to consumers”.
APRA directly regulates only 680 of these entities, but a cyber breach of any of these could “have a cascading impact on the whole system”.
Nick Lennon is the Mimecast Country Manager for Australia.
After three years in the works, the government’s long-awaited data sharing scheme for public sector information has been knocked back at the first test, with a group of senators questioning a lack of detail and privacy safeguards in the legislation.
The Data Availability and Transparency Act, which allows for far greater sharing of public sector data between departments and agencies and private sector organisations such as universities, was released for consultation last year before being introduced to Parliament in December.
It allows for a new way to share this data – which had previously been blocked by secrecy provisions or other non-disclosure prohibitions – and stems from a 2017 Productivity Commission report, with the Coalition mulling the reform since 2018.
Data sharing: Senate committee already lukewarm on proposed legislation
There is no way to opt-out of the new scheme, and consent will be required unless it is “unreasonable or impracticable” to obtain it.
In its first report of the year, the Senate’s Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills sounded the alarm on parts of the legislation, including the potential for data to be shared without individual consent.
“The committee is concerned that there is a significant amount of flexibility in the meaning of ‘unreasonable’ and ‘impracticable’ in this context, and that this may undermine the effectiveness of clause 16 as a safeguard against undue trespass on the privacy of individuals whose data may be shared under the scheme,” it said.
The committee also questioned a lack of focus on privacy in the bill.
“In contexts where commercial and economic interests may be considered to factor into the ‘public interest’, the committee is concerned that privacy interests are not clearly central to the operation of the scheme.”
“The committee is concerned that there is a risk that individuals’ interest in their personal information being kept private may not be given sufficient weight in an evaluation of public interest. Further, it does not appear that the Commonwealth entity making initial decisions with respect to sharing of data must consult experts or seek other external input.”
The legislation also doesn’t include many of the key elements of how the scheme will function, with these to be included in legislative instruments.
“The committee’s view is that significant matters, such as privacy safeguards for data sharing, should be included in primary legislation unless a sound justification for the use of delegated legislation is provided,” the committee said.
“In this instance, while the explanatory memorandum explains the approach of using legislative instruments rather than regulations to establish data codes, there is no explanation of why these matters cannot be included in primary legislation.”
The scope of the data-sharing is extremely wide and risks impacting the privacy of Australians, the senators warned.
“The committee notes that a broad construction of the permitted purposes for data sharing risks interpretations which may unduly trespass on privacy,” they said.
“The committee’s scrutiny concerns in this regard are heightened by the breadth of the application of the bill, in particular that data may be shared with private sector entities with no requirements that the safeguards that apply to, for example, university research, apply to these entities.”
Under the scheme, individuals will not be able to challenge a data-sharing decision, something the senators also questioned in the report.
“It is not clear to the committee why individuals whose privacy interests may be affected should not have access to merits review. The committee notes that, as many decisions under the scheme will affect individual interests as a class, most individuals will be excluded from the initial decision-making process,” the senators said.
The senators put the case for amendments to the bill, including a public interest test prioritising privacy, guidance about what circumstances consent won’t be required, clarifying the scope of permitted data, and minimum standards for ethics approvals for private entities seeking to access the data.
Australia’s home-grown global software giant Atlassian has beefed up its public policy focus with a fresh set of eyes hired out of Microsoft to oversee engagement with governments, both here and overseas.
Atlassian appointed Canberra-based David Masters to the newly created role of director of global public policy in November as part of a significant shift in the way it engages on policy issues. Mr Masters was previously Microsoft Australia’s director of corporate, a position he held for more than seven years.
Two months after Mr Masters was hired into the company, Atlassian published a creative commons document ‘Eight Principles’ that it says should guide the development of sound tech policy.
In this episode the Commercial Disco podcast, I talked to David Masters about the challenges of policy formation in the tech sector Australia, and the industry’s track record on engagement with government, and with its ability to influence government policy.
Government engagement: Atlassian director of global public policy David Masters
Atlassian hopes the eight principles document it has published will be picked up by other companies and used to help their own internal thinking about specific policy issues.
It is part of broader desire among the growing list of globally successful Australian technology companies for an uplift in the maturity of public policy discussions in the local tech sector, and a deeper and more effective engagement with bureaucrats and legislators.
“If you are going to engage with government, it’s really helpful if government knows where you stand. It is also useful to have a set of principles that help to guide your internal thought processes,” Mr Masters says.
“So as you see regulatory proposals come across the desk from government – this is from a global sense, not just Australia but from the US and Europe – it’s good to have a set of grounding guidelines that help you to understand ‘what do we think of that’ and to do it in a rigorous way,” he said.
This is a genuinely fascinating discussion for anyone who has watched the tech industry in this country, and the way the sector has evolved. Australian-headquartered companies in the tech industry have a patchy record of engagement with governments, it would be fair to say.
But creating an Australian voice for the sector is not as straight-forward in tech than it is in other, more homogenous industries.
Mr Masters points to the banking industry in which the four big banks do very similar things in a highly regulated industry – and largely care about the same issues. Similarly, with the Minerals Council, it is looking at mining sector issues that are pretty consistent across participants in the industry.
“The problem that we have in the tech sector is that you have large and small companies, you have horizontal and vertical solutions, you’ve got different business models – proprietary, freemium, open source, ad-funded – so coming to a consistent policy approach and set of policy interests is really hard and I don’t want to diminish that,” he said.
The challenge that’s seen in Canberra, where Mr Masters lives, in terms of the local tech industry’s engagement with the federal government is that they are typically focused on selling to government.
“So their engagement day to day with government is as a commercial transactional relationship. A lot of the policy engagement that you see from the indigenous (local) industry is very much focused on government as a customer, which complicates the broader policy conversation,” he said.
“Because as soon as you start to have that commercial interaction, you find that the policy-makers in the legislative part of departments tend to want to switch off. They want to push that [conversation] to the CIO group.
“That’s the fundamental challenge. We need to elevate the conversation from the indigenous industry out of procurement,” Mr Masters said.
“I am not diminishing procurement as a relevant issue, but that sometimes does the broader policy conversation a disservice,” he says, because all the focus ends up just on procurement and not on other important broader issues.
Atlassian’s eight principles for sound tech policy
Principle 1: Define the playing field. Is this measure aimed directly at clear objectives?
Principle 2: Engage with the issue. Do we have a clear understanding of the technology?
Principle 3: Treat the ailment, don’t kill the patient. Does this measure use proportionate means and minimise unintended consequences?
Principle 4: Consult early, consult openly. Has this measure been the product of meaningful consultation?
Principle 5: Let the light in. Does this measure provide transparency and create fair procedures?
Principle 6: Address behaviour, don’t punish success. Is this measure aimed at systemic actions and outcomes, rather than individual companies?
Principle 7: Tech (and trust) is global. Is this measure mindful of global standards and seeking to enhance global interoperability?
Principle 8: Build the foundation for shared success. Does this measure provide a consistent and reliable framework for business and investment?
