Television interview with Minister Butler, Sunrise – 1 August 2025

NATALIE BARR, HOST: Australia’s top spy chief has issued a stark warning overnight revealing that foreign intelligence have developed an unhealthy interest in the AUKUS deal, targeting the core of our defence department. Mike Burgess admitted ASIO had foiled 24 espionage operations in the past three years alone, including attempts to access sensitive national security documents. Name-checking China, Russia and Iran, he urged all public servants to take this threat seriously.
 
For their take, let’s bring in Health Minister Mark Butler, and Liberals Senator Jane Hume. Good morning to you. Mark, it sounds like if you are a spy from China, Russia and Iran, you see Australia as a pretty easy place to hack?
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: I’m not sure that’s the advice from the Director General. His latest advice confirms we live in a really a precarious, volatile time, and we are going to be the target, as are many, many other countries around the world, for foreign interference and espionage. That number of disrupted espionage events, 24 over the last three years, is more than the previous eight years combined. It shows that that threat is rising, and it’s a reminder from our Director General for everyone, not just public servants, but many working in private industry in these sensitive areas as well, to be very alert to that threat. Not to do things like report the fact on LinkedIn that you have a national security clearance, which I think the Director General said made his head spin and makes my head spin a bit too.
 
BARR: Yeah. So, people in private enterprise, you can imagine, they haven’t had all the security warnings possibly. He’s saying that we've got thousands of defence workers going on social media, boasting about their security clearance, hundreds claiming that they work in national security. We've got 400 saying they work on the AUKUS deal. He's saying “I know you have to”, his words, “I know you have to market yourselves but telling social media that you hold a security clearance is naive.” Is it like an episode of Kath and Kim? Our defence workers are saying, look at me, look at me.
 
BUTLER: He also makes the point that this is a broader threat than just AUKUS and just defence. It's not just a security threat. It costs us about $12 billion every year.
 
BARR: But he's warning these people. Shouldn't they have been warned?
 
BUTLER: Absolutely. This is our peak intelligence chief making these warnings, and he does this on a regular basis, has under both governments, and it's really important that everyone takes his advice very, very seriously.
 
BARR: When you've got people in those departments, maybe me as a layperson would have expected that they would have known this, Jane?
 
SENATOR, JANE HUME: Well, I think that this process that Mike Burgess now goes through on an annual basis is part of that educative response. They should know this. It should be part of their training. It should be part of their security clearance. The most important thing here, of course, though, is that we now know that this is only going to grow. AUKUS is such an important strategic agreement. It's got so much potency, so much power, so much potential that foreign actors are now trying to access that information any way they can, and we should be on heightened alert. But it also speaks to the power of that agreement itself and why we should not just embrace it, but strengthen it with both the UK and the US because clearly it's got so much power, so much potential.
 
BARR: And it's costing this country $12.5 billion. So it's a double whammy here. Let's move to something else. Business leaders are calling for some major workplace changes, wanting employers to be able to ask staff to forego penalty rates and other allowances in exchange for working from home. Mark, recently your department's own secretary expressed concern at the impacts of the low rates of office attendance in the department. Do you think the tide's turning on working from home?
 
BUTLER: No, we're big supporters of working from home. They are particularly in the interests of a number of different industries, but also workers and their families. But obviously it's got to be within reason that fits that particular industry. And employers and employees and trade unions are going to work through this. It's still a relatively new trend, at least at the scale that we see it now. But what it can't be is a backdoor for cutting penalty rates. That's the report we're seeing this morning and yesterday, and it reinforces the importance of the laws we put into the Parliament this week to protect penalty rates from these sorts of backdoor attempts to cut wages.
 
BARR: Jane, you championed the crackdown on work from home for public servants at the last election. Do you think there should be some kind of trade-off on penalty rates for people who work from home?
 
HUME: Well, certainly modern workplaces have, they've changed. Work from home, flexible workplace practices, they're here to stay. But what Business New South Wales is saying is that our award system is still back in the dark ages and doesn't reflect that. And it raises some really interesting questions. Should there be meal allowances, for instance, for people that are working from home and eating a meal at home that they were going to cook for themselves anyway? Are employers in breach if they allow an employee that's working from home to take off a couple of hours to pick up the kids from school? You know, these are really important questions. A constructive conversation is what should happen. The Fair Work Commission is the independent umpire. That's the right place for those decisions. This idea that somehow this is, you know, big, bad employers trying to take advantage is just plain wrong and frankly a little outdated.
 
BARR: So you're open to possible allowances being cut if you work from home?
 
HUME: Well, that's up to the Fair Work Commission That's what they're there to do. That's what they're there to decide. That’s why we have an independent umpire. We don't want to turn this into a political issue. We want to make sure that modern workplace practices are here to stay, but we have to make sure our industrial relations system is also modern as well. And that, unfortunately, simply isn't happening under this government. In fact, they're taking us backwards in our industrial relations arrangements rather than forwards.
 
BARR: Okay. We thank you both for your insight on both of those topics. We'll see you next week here.