The federal government’s REDSPICE cyber safety program – a $9.9 billion centrepiece to final week’s funds – has come at the price of a $1.3 billion Sky Guardian drone venture which has already set taxpayers again $10 million, senate estimates revealed on Friday.
Regardless of the $9.9 billion headline determine championed by the Treasurer in his funds speech, a have a look at the funds papers confirmed funding for REDSPICE – a 10-year initiative that may supposedly create 1,900 authorities cyber safety jobs – was largely re-allocated from elsewhere inside Defence, and that lower than $600 million was new cash.
Precisely how Defence would reallocate this funding was a thriller till Senator Penny Wong requested the query to Affiliate Defence Secretary Matt Yannopolous final week.
A part of the cash was from offsets throughout the Australian Indicators Directorate (ASD) from tasks whose “scope has been subsumed within the REDSPICE”, Yannopolous mentioned.
However there was additionally a “venture cancellation” which the Defence Secretary – who shortly glanced across the room to see if he might announce it publicly – confirmed was the $1.3 billion Sky Guardian venture first introduced in November 2019.
An unmanned drone, the Common Atomics MQ-9B Sky Guardian was set to be procured for its airborne surveillance and precision strike capabilities.
Round $10 million of taxpayer cash had already been spent on the venture.
Division of Defence CFO Steven Groves mentioned an extra $236 million for REDSPICE got here from an “ICT remediation venture, round modernisation and mobility”.
A lot of the rest of the REDSPICE funding has been provisioned in opposition to “authorized and unapproved” cash from the SEA 1000 Assault class submarine program which was famously cancelled final 12 months in favour of nuclear-powered submarines.
The ultimate value of the canned submarine program is predicted to exceed $5.5 billion.
The REDSPICE cyber safety spend was largely welcomed by trade when it was introduced final week with native safety firms and advocates welcoming the eye to cyber.
However Labor has warned an ongoing cyber safety abilities scarcity might make it close to unimaginable to fill the claimed 1,900 roles created by REDSPICE over the approaching years.
Shadow Defence Minister Brendan O’Connor described the pool of cyber safety expertise as “closely contested” and mentioned there was already a “huge backlog in safety clearances” exacerbating the issue.
“Given the quickly escalating cyber threats going through the nation, Australians can’t afford for REDSPICE to change into the newest main defence functionality venture that by no means makes it from announcement to supply,” he mentioned.
