Security Industry to Share in $500 billion dollar infrastructure program
by Ernie Davitt, National Affairs Editor, ASM
With governments and the private sector predicted to spend over half a trillion dollars to upgrade Australia’s national public and social infrastructure – including ports, transport, power and communications – over the next decade, the protection of critical national infrastructure has never been so important.
For its part, the Federal Government announced initial spending of $76 billion under its infrastructure program, which has taken on more significance in light of its role as a pump primer to help stimulate the economy.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said the States would receive an additional $11billion on top of the original announcement to help fund health and education. And it looks as if any expenditure pruning to help reign in the forecast Federal budget deficit could be confined to non-infrastructure areas of Government spending.
The good news is that the expansion and improvement in national infrastructure offers enormous opportunities for Australia’s security industry with billions of dollars in contracts for the provision of security equipment as well as ongoing security services.
Volatile global economic conditions, of themselves, are also likely to have a major positive impact on security business. As one security business executive, who did not wish to be named, commented, we can expect more concerted activity from criminals, including in the area of identity theft.
“Hard economic times usually mean the bad guys are prepared to go to much more trouble to steal identities, valuable information and so on,” he said. “So it makes sense for business and government to spend more on security countermeasures.”
Mr Rudd told business leaders, including the owners and operators of Australia’s critical national infrastructure, last year that his Government was committed to an ambitious nation-building agenda.
Bureaucrats in the Infrastructure Australia organisation have been working round the clock, combing through a raft of suggestions for the development of a priority list of infrastructure projects to take to Federal, State and Territory leaders at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in March 2008.
A spokesman for the Federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, told ASM:
“Businesses offering security and mitigation options should be able to take advantage of the need for new infrastructure developments to consider the current security circumstances.
“Australian businesses understand that they should take practical steps to protect their interests from risks, including terrorism.
“For these reasons, they value professional, high quality and impartial security risk management advice that is tailored to their assets and business model.”
Mr Rudd said his approach wasn’t just about lifting infrastructure investment by a few percentage points.
“It means delivering a transformational vision for the infrastructure of the 21st Century,” he said.
“In our first year in Government, we have committed to a $76 billion infrastructure investment program, allocating funds for road, rail, ports and high speed broadband.”
In an address to the Nation-Building for Australia’s Future conference in Brisbane, Mr Rudd gave a rundown of some of the big ticket items.
“We will invest $26 billion in roads and rail infrastructure through 2008-09 to the end of AusLink II,” he said.
“We will invest $20 billion through the Building Australia Fund in transport and communication priorities.
“And from this, we’ll invest almost $5 billion in a National Broadband Network.
“We will also invest $15 billion in education infrastructure, through the Education Investment Fund, trades training centres in schools, computers in our classrooms, and by investing in our universities.
“We will invest $11 billion health and hospitals infrastructure, through the Health and Hospitals Fund and other programs.
“Through these investments, we are building the foundations of the nation’s future prosperity.”
However, he said the Federal Government would not be able to meet the nation’s infrastructure needs alone. State governments, their corporations, and the private sector also had critical roles to play.
In 2008-09 alone, the Queensland Government would spend $17 billion; NSW $14 billion; Western Australia $8 billion and Victoria $4 billion.
“According to ABN Amro, investment in public infrastructure over the next decade will be $380 billion – including $255 on economic infrastructure and $125 billion on social infrastructure,” Mr Rudd said.
This figure is expected to climb to half a billion dollars – possibly even higher – as fresh projects are added to the list and more detailed project costings are developed.
Mr Rudd said that in addition to the Commonwealth’s financial commitment to infrastructure investment, the Government had established for the first time in Australian history a comprehensive policy framework for national infrastructure development.
“The Federal Government established Infrastructure Australia, the independent statutory council headed by Sir Rod Eddington, to spearhead infrastructure reforms, making recommendations to government on both policy and specific projects,” he said.
Attorney-General McClelland says the special national security challenge facing governments these days is protecting critical national infrastructure (CIP) from the ‘dark side’ of rapid technological change.
Referring to the ‘all hazards’ approach to CIP, he says: “In all sorts of ways, technology will be used to advance the prosperity of nations. But there is a dark side – and with that, formidable new challenges for national security.
“The growth of technology has enabled the development of cities, high rise buildings, with concentrations of population in small areas, and the rapid and extensive movement of people, goods and food.
“It has also given us telecommunications, the internet and an abundance of easy to access public information.
“Increasingly, every aspect of our private and professional lives is being conducted online, from banking to romance. There is an explosion of new products and services that can be accessed wirelessly from any device.
“This increasing dependence on electronic communications creates new opportunities for criminals and terrorists. Electronic attacks are becoming more sophisticated, more carefully targeted, and appear to be constantly evolving to stay ahead of counter measures.”
All of this highlighted the need for responses to be adaptable and agile. Adhering to old methods of response was not going to be enough.
McClelland warns against complacency
The all hazards approach was important because Australia’s security could as easily be threatened by events in the natural world as they could by deliberate man-made aggression.
“Perhaps at the top of the list are the implications of climate change – issues of enormous complexity including fragile states, pandemics, uncontrolled mass migration, energy and food security issues, and extreme climate events,” Mr McClelland said.
Warning against complacency, the Attorney-General said that as time passed by, the urgency of national security issues tended to fade.
“We can become complacent and fail to adapt – if a crisis were to hit we could find ourselves on the back foot,” he said.
Referring to the importance of resilience and self-help by communities, he said the Government was focusing on:
- boosting skills through training and information sharing;
- providing technical and communication resources; and
- ensuring inter-operability of organisations and systems.
“The next layer is preparedness: the process of identifying and closing gaps and vulnerabilities,” Mr McClelland said. “Our approach to critical infrastructure protection is an example of how our capabilities in this area have evolved.
“Critical infrastructure protection was once about ‘guns, gates and guards’ protecting power stations and bridges.
“We now take a more sophisticated view – communications, banking, the food chain and places of mass gathering are now all part of the critical infrastructure landscape.
“I’m pleased to say that industry, along with the Government, has embraced the all-hazards approach to critical infrastructure protection.”
He emphasised that lack of food, heating or medical services caused the same hardship whether it was the result of flood, power outage, or criminal act.
“The Government has several initiatives which reach out into the business and private sectors to help build their resilience and ability to recover from disruptions,” Mr McClelland said.
“The Trusted Information Sharing Network, or the TISN, enables a two-way dialogue between government and industry on matters of national security and provides a forum for sharing information across sectors.
“The Government has also provided funding of $23.4 million over four years in the recent Budget to make the Critical Infrastructure Protection Modelling and Analysis program an operational part of our national security architecture.
“Its computer modelling capability can generate a virtual picture of the effects of a disaster.
“Another initiative the Government has taken is to instigate a whole-of-government review of e-security arrangements.
“One task of the review is to deliver a national framework, which will aim to secure Australia’s electronic networks so that governments, business and the community alike can use these services with total confidence.”
Speaking about the evolving nature of national security and how Australia needed to respond, he said:
“I think if we can distil a single message from this, it is that the things that threaten us never stay the same.
“We must learn from the past – and be on the front foot in anticipating the future.
“When it happened, 9/11 forced governments across the world to seriously examine their approach to national security. We need to ensure that we do not become complacent in the face of emerging challenges.”
Referring to the bombing of Wall Street in 1920, he said the day after the attack Wall Street reopened for business.
“The Rudd Government will continue our efforts to ensure Australia is well protected and that it continues to function effectively,” he said.
“The extent to which we are successful depends in part on the quality of the partnerships we form, our intelligence gathering services, our engagement with the community, and in turn, the community’s confidence in what we’re doing and appreciation of why.”