June 21, 2021
LEGISLATION which would force the federal government to stop using foreign owned data centres to store sensitive military files has been introduced to Parliament by Kennedy MP, Bob Katter, and Clark MP , Andrew Wilkie.
In February, the ABC revealed the Defence Department had quietly extended a contract to house electronic data in a Chinese company's Sydney facilities.
Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) MP, Bob Katter, says the situation is endangering national security, and in parliament he has introduced a private member’s bill with fellow cross bencher, Andrew Wilkie, to end the practice.
“All aspects of the protection of this country should be 100 percent under the ownership of Australians not corporations where we don’t know the ownership of the corporations and surely never a foreign corporation,” Mr Katter said while introducing the bill in the House of Representatives.
“There is an entrenched bureaucracy that like a cancer must be completely cut out. That cancer is ‘Global Switch’ but that cancer also is the bureaucracy of the armed forces.
“Bureaucracy that seems to be more preoccupied with political correctness on issues such as whether we use the word ‘kill’, or if we have 50 percent women on the frontline, or even whether a ‘Tweet’ on the internet or a criticism on the media calls for the punishment of our own Australian armed forces personal, who seem to remain guilty until they can prove themselves innocent.
“The numbers in this parliament must be used to aggressively backup the Peter Dutton’s and Andrew Hastie’s of this Government, sure them up and steer them for the battle that needs to be done in eradicating the terribly poor decisions of the past.”
If passed, the Repatriation of Defence Data Bill 2021 would cause sensitive data stored in a foreign owned data centre to be transferred, before 25 April 2022 (Anzac Day), to a sovereign Australian storage facility.
Clark MP, Andrew Wilkie, seconded the Bill and said he agreed that no Australian Defence Data should be in the custody of a foreign owned corporation.
“Defence data should always be in our possession, “he said.
“The current situation is an afront to our sovereignty, an afront to our national security, and it’s an afront to Australian companies and Australian jobs.”