Christine Tan, Host: The Australian Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. He's in town for the Singapore International Cyber Week, and he joins us in our Singapore studios. Minister, good to have you with us.
Matt Thistlethwaite, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade: Good morning, Christine.
Tan: So we've got Medibank, Optus, DP World, Latitude. Australia is not immune to cyber-attacks. What has Australia done to strengthen its cyber security defenses to fend off further attacks?
Assistant Minister: Yeah, in the wake of some recent attacks, our government has bolstered our national security legislation. We've introduced a critical infrastructure list of our most critical assets, and the operators of those assets now have higher standards regarding cybersecurity that they need to abide by, as well as annual reporting obligations. You mentioned the OpenAI infiltration into our public healthcare network. That happened in June. Obviously, our government is very disappointed by that. Our Prime Minister has announced that we're in the process of putting in place regulations that will strengthen our capacity to deal with issues such as that. We're also establishing national standards for artificial intelligence around the operation of data centers, as well as an office of artificial intelligence under the Prime Minister's Department in Australia. So we're doing all we can to bolster our security and defenses to ensure that these incursions don't occur in the future.
Tan: With regards to those cyber-attacks into your health system, OpenAI's explanation, are you satisfied with the disclosure and the handling? Do you think they could have done more?
Assistant Minister: Yeah, we're not satisfied at all. We think they could have done more. The big issue with that incursion, was that it took them a month to report it to the Australian authorities, and when they did --
Tan: A lot of damage could have been done.
Assistant Minister: That's exactly right. And when they did, they sent an email to a public email address. Now that is not sufficient in our view, and we've had a discussion with OpenAI and indeed other artificial intelligence companies. I raised this issue yesterday with OpenAI representatives, when I met with them, and I stressed to them and to others that were at the round table the importance of transparency, but the speed of transparency is vital as well. So they should have notified Australia in the days after that incursion, so that we could have put in place measures to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
Tan: What was their response?
Assistant Minister: They accept that they could have done better and that they didn't meet the standard that was the expectation of the Australian people. I think a lot of the shock and disappointment from the Australian people was in the delay in notifying us, because, as you say, more things could have occurred in that delay period.
Tan: What about government regulation? Could that it be more punitive? If it takes a month to report and to disclose, could the government speed that up by putting in more stricter punishment rules as to you know cyber-attacks and AI you know you know penetration?
Assistant Minister: This has been a big topic of discussion at the Singapore Cyber Week. This this last couple of days that I've been participating in, we all want our citizens, our businesses, and governments to benefit from artificial intelligence and the huge benefits that it'll bring. And the pace of that development is mind blowing. But at the same time, we want to make sure that our citizens' financial and personal data is safe, and that national security is protected. So it's about getting the balance right, and that's why we're having this debate in Australia at the moment. That's why our Prime Minister's made a key headland speech a few months ago, outlining the approach that we will take around data sets, ensuring things like that they have their own access to the energy grid that they're using renewable energy that they use water sustainably. We're in the process of putting in place measures that will protect intellectual property for Australian content producers. They're the issues that we're looking at the moment to ensure that Australians benefit from artificial intelligence, but we keep their data safe as well.
Tan: As you strengthen your cyber security defences, is Australia propagating for a major attack on critical infrastructure such as energy, hospitals, health, ports, payments? Are you prepared?
Assistant Minister: We've done a lot of work over the last three or four years to bolster our cyber defences. There's been additional funding in our Budget to our national security agencies to ensure that they put in place the countermeasures to combat those attacks. We have regular drills now and practices and desktop scenarios where we're gaming what could occur and different attack scenarios. So we believe that we've got the best set of regulations and conditions in place to combat those attacks should they occur in the future.
Tan: Okay, moving away from cybersecurity, I know that Australia also wants more trade and investment from China. What are the sectors that you think the relationship can deepen and? And are national security concerns, because you also have a good relationship with the U.S. how are you going to balance these two opposing forces?
Assistant Minister: By being very open and upfront with both the United States and China. I think China understands that our security and our defence relationship has always been with the United States since World War II, and it will continue to be in the future. And we're very open with the Chinese government about that. But at the same time, China is Australia's largest trading partner; it has been for a very long time. And when we were elected to government, my party, we had restrictions on Australian exports into the Chinese market because of a difference of opinion with the previous government, we worked consistently to try and restabilise that relationship. So we've been successful at removing those impediments. They were on commodities such as coal, seafood, viticulture, barley, wheat, those sort of commodities that had a dramatic effect on Australian producers, we've removed those. The relationship is stable, and if I was to summarise it, it is with China. We'll cooperate where we can, we'll disagree where we must, and we'll always stand up for Australia's interests.
Tan: Have you gotten any indications from China that they're open to increasing trade and investment with Australia?
Assistant Minister: Well, the figures speak for themselves, and we are because we've had growth in the relationship since we removed those impediments, we've been a traditional supplier of commodities that have fueled the Chinese economic miracle, particularly its industrialisation. So commodities such as coal, iron ore, LNG have been the staples that have fueled China's industrialisation, and that's why they're one of the world's leaders now in the EV market in robotics. So we want to deepen that relationship and ensure that both of our nations benefit from that.
Tan: Okay. At the same time, on the education side, I'm hearing, and I don't know whether these reports are up to date, that Chinese students are they still allowed to be able to study at universities? What's the quota like? Have you reduced that quota? Have you expanded it? What are the new restrictions?
Assistant Minister: Of course they are, as indeed are students from Singapore. There's about 7,000 Singaporean students studying in Australia at the moment, and we welcome that. We took some measures recently to stabilise the numbers of net overseas migrants to Australia. When the borders closed during COVID, no one could come. When they reopened, we had a large spike in migration to Australia. So what we've done is put in place measures to stabilise it and get it back to the pre-COVID levels, for which we budget every year in our economic costings. So, these measures that we've put in place have been about ensuring that we stabilise it. But you've still got strong numbers of Chinese students and students from Southeast Asian nations. And recently, we had increases in our visa application charges, but we exempted students from ASEAN because that's the important relationship for Australia that we want to foster and strengthen in the future.
Tan: You're focusing not only on ASEAN, North Asia?
Assistant Minister: We're focusing on ASEAN. We've got a policy called Invested, which is our strategy to deepen our engagement with Southeast Asia out to 2040, and it includes things like 25 different business missions that have been undertaken to 10 different countries. Two-way trade is now 200 billion dollars between Australia and ASEAN.
Tan: And speaking of trade, a regional free trade agreement has, of course, been upgraded. Where do you think businesses will feel the difference? Will it be easier digital trade? We're talking about more investment, simple, more simpler rules. What are we talking about? What are the benefits?
Assistant Minister: So, from an Australian perspective, we're talking about encouraging more foreign direct investment into the ASEAN market. Unfortunately, at the moment, 62 cents in every dollar invested from Australia overseas goes into the United States or into Europe, only 12 cents in every dollar will go to Asia, and that includes China, Japan, Korea, and India. So we think that the growth opportunities in ASEAN are huge, and we're trying to direct our institutional investors and encourage them to invest in this market because of the growth opportunities, because of the stability, and because these are tech-savvy citizenry that are that are moving along with business opportunities, so we want to try and encourage that through that invested strategy.
Tan: And of course, I'm not going to let you go without talking about your brand new Sydney airport, really exciting. Tell us what can we expect as a tourist getting into Sydney, and what a and I hear there's going to be a Singapore Airlines inaugural flight into this beautiful airport. Tell us more.
Assistant Minister: Yeah, that's right. If you want to look at the strength of the relationship between Singapore and Australia, it's evident in the fact that we're opening our brand new Western Sydney Airport. It's our second airport in in Sydney, our largest market. The first flight into that airport will be a Singapore Airlines flight, and on board will be Prime Minister Wong.
Tan: Will you be on it?
Assistant Minister: I wish I was. I wish I was. I'll be there along with many others to greet Prime Minister Wong and welcome him to Australia, and that will form the basis of our leaders' meeting that will occur in November as well. So we're excited about that opportunity.
Tan: Very exciting news! Thank you so much, Minister, for coming on the show today. Great talking to you as always.