TRANSCRIPT – Sky News Live – 10 August 2016

Topics: Census 2016

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

Alright, well, you know what, we have hanging in the wings a government minister, why are we asking each other these questions?

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

Not just- one of the more agile government ministers. You know, he’s worked in that communications space with the Prime Minister when he was communications minister, putting together that efficient broadband system which has provided so many people last night to be able to access the Census and be able to do their bit for the country and for the data collection of our statisticians. Who are we talking about?

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

We are talking about Paul Fletcher, Minister for Major Projects, joining us from Canberra. Minister Fletcher, thanks for coming on To The Point this afternoon.

PAUL FLETCHER:

Kristina, I’m disappointed that you haven’t caught up with the fact that my title has changed to Minister for Urban Infrastructure. But I won’t take it too seriously.

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

That’s a great – that’s a good thing.

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

Probably not a bad thing that your title’s changed, though, isn’t it Minister, because you wouldn’t want to still be in charge of Major Projects because there’s a major problem in this particular project which is the ABS, its cyber security, its ability to deliver what was promised. The Prime Minister – his timing is nothing if not immaculate – 15 minutes before the whole system collapsed, he encouraged people to jump on. He said it’s easy to do so.

PAUL FLETCHER:

Well, look let’s be clear, the last Census had about a third of Australians providing their responses online. This Census, the plan is to have about two thirds of Australians providing their responses online. And why is that? It’s for the same reason that banks, insurance companies, airlines, are increasingly engaging with their customers, with their stakeholders online because it’s quicker, easier, more efficient and more cost effective. So, there are very good reasons why having a greater reliance on online responses to the Census makes good sense, as it does in so many other areas of activity, and of course the Census is enormously important.

The data which is generated by the Census is used by the Commonwealth Government, state governments, local governments, non-government organisations, by private businesses to make all kinds of decisions. Certainly in the infrastructure space, we look very closely …

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

Isn’t that why it is such a debacle what happened last night and the fallout and the attitude now that people have about this for the very reason that you cite, which is that it is so important yet now people are looking at it. Even on my way in I decided to venture into FM radio and it was just wall to wall ridicule from the jocks on the way through it.

PAUL FLETCHER:

Well look, let’s be clear, about 2.33 million Australians successfully lodged their Census forms online last night before the system was taken down and let’s also be clear, the reason the system was taken down was an active decision by the Australian statistician and on the advice of his expert advisors to be absolutely sure, out of an abundance of caution, that there was not any security risk to the data. The very clear advice, as the Prime Minister said this morning, as Minister McCormack has said, from the ABS, from their technology advisors and providers at IBM, from the Australian Signals Directorate is that there has been no compromise to the data.

Essentially what happened, as Alastair MacGibbon, the Cyber Security Advisor explained in his media conference this morning, is that there was a denial of service attempt. Now, that is an ordinary part of what happens in operating websites, it happens all the time, it happened a number of times yesterday, it was successfully responded to and the website kept loading. A couple of other things happened including a physical failure in a router as well as a- some warning information that came through that caused the statistician, based upon the advice of IBM and others, out of an abundance of caution, to say we will take down this form, we’ll remove the online access to the form so we can be absolutely certain that there has been no compromise of the data and that is the advice that the statistician is giving, that IBM is giving, that others are giving that there has been no compromise to the data.

But what you had here essentially was a senior Australian Government official saying it is very important that we preserve and protect the security of data and to be absolutely …

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

[Interrupts] So, is your point that that data was at risk if they didn’t take the site down?

PAUL FLETCHER:

No, the data was not at risk but on the basis of the information available to him, he took a cautious decision that the ABS would not provide continued access online to the form until …

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

So, he crashed the site when there was no risk to data security, you say there was no risk …

PAUL FLETCHER:

[Interrupts] No, it wasn’t a question of crashing the site, it was a conscious management decision taken recognising …

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

Yeah but when there was no risk Minister, you’re saying – I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it on this one, either there was a risk and therefore they took it down or there was no risk and then it was a pretty shoddy decision to take it down.

PAUL FLETCHER:

Well, Peter, it’s always easy to be wise in hindsight. On the information available to him, the statistician took a decision prioritising information security, he has expressed his regret, as do I, as does the Government, for the fact that that inconvenienced a number of people around Australia. But let’s bear in mind you have until 23 September to be able to complete your Census form and certainly we will be working- the Government will be working, the ABS will be working to encourage people to go online or to use the paper form, whichever is their preference and to get that done in plenty of time.

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

Alright, but Paul Fletcher, let’s go back to- you said there was a confluence of events, the Prime Minister’s used that phrase, one of them is a router that didn’t work so there’s clearly some type of equipment failure happening.

PAUL FLETCHER:

And again, Kristina, can I just make the point, can I just make the point, when you run complex networks there are equipment failures from time to time. It’s happened to Telstra several times this year, it happens to companies in the IT and telecoms industry from time to time, it’s just part of doing business. Obviously you absolutely seek to minimise it, and you also seek to minimise the inconvenience to end users but it does happen from time to time.

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

So, my question though is why would the head of the ABS be out yesterday saying that, you know, the system was well prepared, it could withstand whatever stress it was going to be put under, there was no- you know, he essentially said there is no risk of failure here and then a few hours later we have the very circumstance where the thing is shut down with no explanation about why either and so how we arrive at a point where the system which has to do one job once every five years, isn’t stress tested to a point where we can have confidence in it?

PAUL FLETCHER:

Well, I think it’s worth making the point that a whole series of contingencies were tested and prepared for as has been explained in media conferences this morning, for example. The system was set up to be able to receive forms at a rate of 260 per second, it was operating well within those tolerances as has also been explained this morning, there were a number of denial of service attempts at various points during the day yesterday and again I make the point that is in the nature of ordinary business when you run a large website. Big banks deal with this all the time, insurance companies, other government websites and the system kept operating during the day yesterday. There was a decision taken to introduce geo-blocking which is where you block out traffic which from, the packet data that comes with the traffic lets you identify that it’s come from overseas so a decision was taken to introduce geo-blocking. So a number of contingencies had been planned for, that worked well. Obviously, there was a decision taken last night to take the system down, a conscious management decision taken by the Australian statistician that did inconvenience a lot of Australians. He regrets that, the Government regrets that but we are confident that the Census will be- will go forward, there is until 23 September for people to get their online forms in and of course as the Prime Minister said this morning, a key point here is that all the data that’s been collected is statistically valid, none of this compromises the statistical validity of what’s been collected and of the Census.

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

Alright, hold that thought Paul Fletcher, we need to squeeze a quick break in. Hopefully here at Sky News, we don’t crash the way that the ABS does and we’ll be back here at the end of these advertisements. I’m keen to get the Minister’s thoughts when we come back Kristina, whether he’s in favour of electronic voting because I tell you what …

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

Yes.

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

I wouldn’t trust them to do that without it collapsing…

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

No.

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

Alright, we’ll be back in a moment.

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KRISTINA KENEALLY:

Welcome back to To The Point, we’re with the Minister for Urban Infrastructure Paul Fletcher, joining us out of Canberra. We’ve been talking about the Census. But Minister, this Census fail has lots of people speculating, this has pushed the cause of electronic voting far off into the future.

PAUL FLETCHER:

In relation to electronic voting, there are an obvious series of issues that people raise with our present system. For example, you’re not required to provide any ID when you go into the polling booth and speak to the officer of the AEC there. They rule your name off on the page in front of them but you’re not required to provide a driver’s licence. There’s nothing to stop you, in fact, going around and doing that in every one of the 35 plus booths in that electorate. You’d be caught after the fact but there’s nothing in the process to stop that and of course.

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

So, is this an argument for electronic voting, minister? Is that an argument why we might look at doing it?

PAUL FLETCHER:

I’m just going through some of the reasons why people bring up electronic voting as a way forward.

PETER VAN ONSELEN:

No, I’m genuinely curious. Would you still be someone who’s in favour of electronic voting despite what has transpired?

PAUL FLETCHER:

I like the idea of electronic voting. I like the idea of electronic voting. It’s important to have safeguards. A key safeguard is that people can verify that their vote was as they cast it, so one system that’s been suggested is you go to the polling booth, you vote online, it prints out a receipt, you file- the receipt goes into the ballot box, and a random number of ballot boxes are then audited. All these things can be looked at by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and I hope they will look at them because I do think that there are some potential significant benefits from electronic voting, but obviously, you need to have a backup plan if there is an equipment failure, as you do with any IT system, and you need to make sure that there can be effective scrutineering so that people can be satisfied that the votes have been correctly counted.

KRISTINA KENEALLY:

Oh, well, Paul Fletcher, we’re going to have to leave it there for today but thanks so much for coming on To The Point.

PAUL FLETCHER:

Thank you.

- Ends -