Our Government is strengthening Australia\u2019s response to the threat of foreign interference with a new taskforce to disrupt and deter anyone attempting to undermine our national interests.
\nThe number one priority of our Government is to keep Australians safe which is why we\u2019re investing $87.8 million for a new Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce. It highlights our focus on stepping up our efforts as the threats to Australia evolve.
\nThe Taskforce will work in to the National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator that we established last year in the Department of Home Affairs and expand the resources the Coordinator has at their fingertips. It will be led by a senior ASIO officer and bring together a new team of Australian Federal Police investigators and representatives from AUSTRAC, the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation. The Office of National Intelligence will also support the Taskforce.
\nThis is a boost to our ability to discover, track and disrupt foreign interference in Australia.
\nThe increase in intelligence collection, assessment and law enforcement capabilities will help turn more intelligence assessments into operational disruptions to better protect Australians from foreign interference.
\nThe new dedicated capability of the Taskforce will also increase the collaboration and streamline the decision-making between agencies, and strengthen Australia\u2019s analysis of the sophisticated disinformation activities happening across the world, particularly against democratic processes and elections.
\nImportantly, this investment will deliver a new capability without detracting from agencies\u2019 continued and necessary efforts on other security challenges.
\nToday\u2019s announcement builds on the $38.8 million we\u2019ve invested since 2018\u201119 to counter foreign interference, which includes establishing a Foreign Interference Threat Assessment Centre in ASIO and funding to support criminal prosecutions under new foreign interference offences.
\nWe have already taken significant steps to strengthen Australia\u2019s capacity to defend against foreign interference, including through the package of legislation introduced in 2018.
\nWe will continue to take strong action to deter acts of foreign interference as the threat evolves, defend against them when they occur, and uphold our laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our Government is strengthening Australia\u2019s response to the threat of foreign interference with a new taskforce to disrupt and deter anyone attempting to undermine our national interests. The number one priority of our Government is to keep Australians safe which is why we\u2019re investing $87.8 million for a new Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce. It highlights … Continue reading “Stepping up Australia\u2019s response against foreign interference”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}