ADJOURNMENT
Mr THOMPSON (Herbert) (19:49): One of the most significant parts of being a member of parliament is the access to information and what you get told about what's happening around the country. I can tell you now that I've never been more fearful in my life about drones, because we are seeing drones not just in the war in Ukraine but also over our military bases here in Australia.
Drones can see who you are from a great distance. They can record. They can document.
They can follow. They can track. The thing that terrifies me the most is they can swarm.
One drone as the node can have hundreds of other drones linked to it. When it turns left, they all turn left; when it turns right, they all turn right. Swarming drones in Ukraine, where they've been used as kamikazes, have been devastating on the battlefield.
We haven't seen kamikaze drones in Australia—and hopefully we won't—but we have seen a swarm of drones over RAAF Base Williamtown. We've seen drones over many of our RAAF bases, actually. The significance of this is that we don't know who the actor is, who has them or who is controlling them.
What are they recording? Where do they feed back to? You have to register every drone you buy in Australia, and you have to know that you can't fly over military bases.
It actually doesn't allow you to. It doesn't allow you to fly over airports. But these drones have, so they're probably one of the DJI drones, or the Chinese based drones that are banned from flying over certain areas or that are banned from people using them because they go back to the CCP.
We've seen and heard from drones overhead. When it was raised with the government and Defence, the answer that people got was, 'It hasn't happened.' It turns out that it has happened, and it's happened more times than has been reported. It took a brave aviator to reach out and say, 'We've reported this and nothing's happened.' They reported that drones had been over a Defence Force base.
Nothing's occurred. The tactical operational direction they were given was to just close the blinds. That actually doesn't stop anything.
We have state-of-the-art fast jets—second most of these worldwide after the US. We have secret and sensitive information. We have people with protected identities who aren't allowed to have their photos taken, be it in the media or around, but there are drones overhead.
We've asked the government, 'Who was it?' Well, no-one knows. We still haven't heard back. We've asked, 'Was any of our brave men and women who serve this nation filmed, recorded or tracked home?' We know how espionage works.
We know what foreign actors do. They gather information on you and your family. I would have thought this would be a priority of the government—to inform the Australian people that this has occurred, and we've found the people that have done it, and it won't happen again because these are the measures we've put in place.
Well, sadly, that's not the case, because no measures have been put in place. We've heard over the last couple of days that an area where drone defence is being operated has links to the CCP. You can't have China owned, backed or supported cameras on defence bases, but somehow a company that has links to China was allowed to provide interim drone defence.
You're kidding, right? Our national security is more than just protecting the equipment on base. It's about protecting people.
It's about making sure that those that serve this nation aren't being tracked, aren't being photographed and aren't being shared to bad actors. The government must ensure that at all bases, including parliaments, have drone defence protections available. Right now, we don't, and we're exposed.
We need a government focused its people—focused on protecting people and focused on protecting Australia.