TRANSCRIPT - PRESS CONFERENCE - LAUNCH OF HORIZON 2 OF AUSTRALIA'S CYBER SECURITY STRATEGY - 11 JUNE 2026
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
SYDNEY
THURSDAY, 11 JUNE 2026
TOPICS: CYBER SECURITY, HIGH COURT DECISION, ONE NATION, MICROSOFT MOU
TONY BURKE: Today we launch Horizon 2 of Australia's cyber security strategy. Effectively, we have made a huge uplift for major businesses in Australia, but there are still vulnerabilities. The key vulnerabilities are small business, and also people's own staff. You don't have to be a malicious staff member. Effectively, we've had situations now where good staff get a call from someone impersonating their boss or impersonating the help desk and telling them to upload something that then compromises the whole system. So effectively, what we're doing in Horizon 2 is building a human firewall and making sure that we uplift, not just the technical capacity of organisations against cyber security, to be able to do that the whole way through the economy. Small business, media, business, and also the people who work. I'll ask Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness, the Cyber Security Coordinator to add to my remarks.
MICHELLE MCGUINNESS, CYBER SECURITY COORDINATOR: Good morning. This is about scaling our resilience and our security across the nation. Part of that will involve an expansion of our exercise program to ensure that our supply chains that underpin government and Critical Infrastructure are prepared. We know that when we exercise, we build our resilience, we build trust and understanding. We also identify vulnerabilities that then we can remediate before those incidents happen. We also know that it is much harder to respond quickly and recover fully if we haven't thought about our response plans. That's what exercises helps us do.
REPORTER: Minister, how much will taxpayers have to fork out to compensate the NZYQ cohort as they're often referred to as a result of yesterday's High Court loss?
BURKE: We’re still working through the decision that came down and came down yesterday, the courts have not yet made any orders with respect to compensation, but an argument that the Commonwealth put was rejected. Effectively, the Commonwealth, and this goes back, most of the claims would be from periods before this government came to office. But I'm not critical of previous governments on this. They were working on the basis of what they've been told was the law. The High Court set a new precedent and effectively, we argued, well, if we've been acting in good faith following what we were told was the law, then we shouldn't be liable in any way and that particular argument’s been rejected. Let me say this is a matter of principle though. If your visa is cancelled, you should leave Australia. And each of the individuals we're talking about are individuals who had their visas cancelled and did not leave Australia. Now, what we have established now, which I wish had been established a decade ago, is a system where if someone won't go to any other country, we have an arrangement with Nauru, where people can go there. But our visa system has to have meaning and visa cancellation needs to have meaning. When people are on a visa, they’re a guest in Australia and and almost everybody is a good guest in our country. You have a very small number of people who abuse the trust in Australia, have their visas cancelled, and they should leave.
REPORTER: Will you work with the Coalition on new legislation, perhaps, to try and counter this situation again.
BURKE: The situation will not occur again, because we now have the agreement with Nauru. So this is not something that could be repeated, and only occurred in the first place because people were acting following what they had been told was the correct precedent. That precedent was ultimately changed as the courts are allowed to do but that’s effectively what we’re dealing with.
REPORTER: Minister Pauline Hanson, last night, named your electorate of Watson as one of the seats that One Nation is focussed on targeting. How concerned are you by that?
BURKE: She hates my part of Sydney, and she said so. And this is where I'm really conscious, people shouldn't pretend to be patriotic if they hate modern Australia. I love Australia and I love Australia for who we are, not for some fake idea of the nation that we've never been. And so, you know, One Nation always run in my part of Sydney, they'll run again. It's a democracy, everybody's welcome to run. But I have to say, as a message to people who want to demean their fellow Australians, we're a better country than that. And please, people should not pretend to be patriotic if their actual view is that they hate modern Australia.
REPORTER: But this groundswell of support for One Nation, you know, across ethnic communities as well. I mean, have the major parties for too long, underestimated, the resonance of Pauline Hanson?
BURKE: Well, it's important for everybody to know what One Nation has stood for. One nation has stood for lower wages. Every single thing that this government has done to be able to get wages moving, every law we change, Pauline Hanson voted against every single one of them. People are feeling the challenges of what the global economy's forced on Australia. Of course, people are feeling that. But we've got three conservative parties, Liberal, One Nation, National. Those three conservative parties have wanted people to be paid less every single time. And people need to look now when we try to make it possible for young Australians to be able to buy their first home, all three of them again, rail against it. They wanted it to be harder for people to get into a home. They’ve wanted people to be paid less. This government is fighting for people to be able to get a better deal and I'm proud that we’re in that fight.
REPORTER: There's been a lot of talk about preference deals between the Liberals and One Nation, also some, you know, suggestions of the two parties dividing up seats for the next election as well. Would that make it a lot harder for Labor to return a majority next time?
BURKE: I don't think anybody has a pathway in Australia if they hate modern Australia. And when you listen to the arguments that are being run by the three conservative parties at the moment, effectively, they're wanting to attack modern Australia. And I'm proud of the nation we are. I love the nation that we are, and we want to make sure within that, that people are getting a better deal. You don't get a better deal through lower wages. All three of those parties stand for lower wages.
REPORTER: Yesterday, you signed the memorandum of understanding with Microsoft. Should we expect to see more agreements like that?
BURKE: Look, wherever we've got major, major technology companies wanting to come to the table and work on very much what the principles are of Horizon 2 of the cyber strategy. I welcome that. Microsoft is showing real leadership in being the first business where I've signed an agreement of this nature. I'm very grateful, and you look at what I've announced today on Horizon 2, and you look at the components of that agreement, and the synergy could be stronger.