Rosalie Woodruff MP | Greens Science and Technology spokesperson
Science and Technology Minister Madeleine Ogilvie MP has some serious explaining to do about a second data breach potentially affecting at least three Tasmanian Government agencies.
Just yesterday Madeleine Ogilvie was downplaying concerns about the potential for government information to have been stolen as part of the HWL Ebsworth data hack a month ago, and saying she had no responsibility in handling this matter. Today it’s confirmed that data stolen by these hackers has been uploaded to the dark web.
After her secrecy and haplessness around the first data breach of government information, affecting thousands of Tasmanians, you'd think Minister Ogilvie would have learned her lesson. Instead she has downplayed the threat posed by the Ebsworth hack, and failed to provide basic information to the public.
The Greens questioned Minister Ogilvie extensively about the HWL Ebsworth data breach in Budget Estimates yesterday. We wanted to understand why the Minister had been so secretive about this matter, having only briefly mentioned it in a press conference on another issue over a month ago.
It was only under our questioning that the Minister finally revealed the potentially affected government agencies. First she said it was only Department of Justice data at risk, but when we later asked for clarification she revealed the Department of State Growth and the Department of Police, Fire, and Emergency Management were HWL Ebsworth clients too.
When we asked the Minister about the four terabytes of data that Russian hackers had claimed to have stolen, she said she wasn't aware. Given there's been multiple national media reports on this exact issue over the past month, including 5 days ago, the Minister must either be completely clueless and incompetent, or not telling the truth.
Whichever it is, we are very concerned about Madeleine Ogilvie’s leadership over this potentially new massive data breach. There is no way she should be entrusted with these crucial ministerial responsibilities any longer.