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‘Around the clock’: Australia’s next move in Optus breach

Catie McLeod and Ellen RansleyNCA NewsWire

The nation’s financial watchdogs have been called in to assist in the race to stop Optus customers’ bank accounts from being compromised.

Banks have been asked to ramp up their monitoring of accounts of customers whose information was stolen in the massive Optus data breach last week.

Jim Chalmers said Treasury had met with the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the nation’s financial regulator, APRA, the tax office and banks.

“First of all, we do expect Optus to do whatever they can to protect their customers and to provide the necessary support. I think we’ve made that clear in recent days,” the Treasurer told reporters on Wednesday.

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“We’ve made sure that we’ve been working closely with the financial system and with the regulators to ensure that any steps could be appropriately taken by the government or by the regulators in the financial system are being taken.”

The Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butle
Camera IconHealth Minister Mark Butler said the government was considering what it could do to assist Australians whose Medicare details were caught up in the Optus breach. NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman Credit: News Corp Australia

Dr Chalmers said cabinet ministers had been “working almost around the clock” to protect affected customers in the 24 hours since Optus disclosed that Medicare data had been compromised in the breach.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the government was furious Optus had taken five days to notify it about the Medicare issue after the telco first disclosed the data breach last Thursday.

“We were not notified that among passport details, drivers’ licence details and others that Medicare details had also been the subject of this breach,” he told ABC Radio.

“So we’re very concerned obviously about the loss of this data, and we’re working very hard to deal with the consequences of that.”

Mr Butler said the government didn’t know how many people had had their Medicare details leaked.

“We’re looking at (getting people new Medicare numbers). We’ll have more to say about that as soon as we can, but we’re looking at that very closely,” he said.

Up to 9.8 million Australians had their personal information – including full names, addresses, passports and drivers’ licenses – accessed in the broad-ranging breach of the Optus database.

OPTUS
Camera IconThe government is furious it took five days from the Optus breach to find out Medicare had been impacted. NCA NewsWire / Nicki Connolly Credit: News Corp Australia

Some state governments have announced they will replace drivers’ licences for affected customers for free.

The federal opposition has also called on the Albanese government to replace passports free of charge.

On Tuesday, the person or group claiming to be the hacker released the data of 10,000 impacted customers and threatened to keep releasing tranches of data unless Optus met their ransom demand.

But, just hours later, they claimed to have deleted all data because there were “too many eyes”.

Peter Dutton said the telco giant should foot the bill for issuing new passports to customers whose passport information was stolen.

“The most important thing is that it gets changed. So the government should waive that fee if that’s appropriate,” the Opposition Leader told reporters.

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“People should pay the fee and then seek to recover it either from a government level or from the individual level from Optus … and frankly Optus should meet the cost of that.”

Mr Dutton accused Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil of being “missing in action”, saying she had not acted quickly enough to address the incident.

The Optus breach comes nearly two years after the telco first argued against changing privacy laws to give Australians more rights over their data.

Optus more than once opposed proposed changes to the Privacy Act that would have given customers the right to request their data be destroyed.

Australia’s privacy laws are expected to be amended after the Albanese government is presented with the final report from the Attorney-General’s Department on its review of the legislation later this year.

Asked if he would support giving Australians the “right to be erased”, Mr Dutton said he would be “very happy to look at any sensible solutions” put forward by the review.