Labor: ‘Attempt to Silence is Not in Public Interest’

Media release – Josh Willie MLC, Shadow Minister for Education & Early Years; Jen Butler MP, Shadow Minister for ICT, Science and Technology, 10 April 2023

Withholding information and attempts to silence not in public interest

The Liberal Government must be open and transparent about the extent of its data breach, rather than trying to silence those seeking more information.

The Government’s own advice is that they should not leave any gaps in the information they are providing to the public.

But just yesterday it was revealed that a State Emergency Management Committee had been established and had assessed the incident to be at Level 2. Why has the Government neglected to mention this until now?

The Government has also refused to say if the Department for Education, Children and Young People is the only government entity using GoAnywhere MFT.

Neither Minister Ogilvie nor Minister Jaensch has been able to explain whether using a third-party provider to transfer sensitive data is in breach of the Tasmanian Government Cyber Security Policy, and they have refused to outline what assessment was undertaken to ensure this third-party provider was safe.

This serious incident has been handled atrociously from the beginning. Minister Ogilvie hid the truth from Tasmanians for nearly a week, before spending a further four days trying to give the impression no data had been stolen. The Government has appeared to be more focused on protecting itself than the people of Tasmania.

And now, since it was revealed that 16,000 documents containing personal information have in fact been posted to the dark web, Minister Ogilvie and Minister Jaensch have failed to take responsibility or assure parents that the Government has this issue under control.

If they were doing their job they would advise the steps they have taken to ensure this serious breach will not happen again. Instead, they are trying to silence anyone who asks even the most basic questions.

Jeremy Rockliff and his Ministers are failing Tasmanians with their mismanagement of this massive data breach.