$1.5m to fix phones

Defence under fire amid fears of spying

TAXPAYERS were billed more than $1.5 million in 2016 to replace mobile phones and tablets lost or damaged by careless public servants.

Defence personnel were the worst offenders with 1031 phones and tablets damaged out of the 2090 that needed fixing.

It cost an extra $255,826 to replace 340 lost or stolen devices, adding to the total bill of $34 million to supply public servants with phones and tablets over the year.

The disclosure also raises further questions about communications security.

Reports this month revealed about 6500 mobile phones issued to ADF staff came from Chinese companies the Australian and US governments hold concerns about.

Forty Huawei phones and 6495 ZTE Telstra Tough 3 phones were issued to Defence staff as of March this year.

The Australian Government banned Huawei hardware from being used on the National Broadband Network in 2012, while a US House Intelligence Committee report the same year said neither Huawei or ZTE could be trusted “to be free of foreign state influence”.

Labor Senator Catryna Bilyk, whose questions in Senate estimates revealed the cost and extent of device losses, said the Turnbull government needed to do more to crack own on public service waste.

“Malcolm Turnbull turns a blind eye to $1.5 million dollars of taxpayers’ money being thrown down the drain on lost and damaged iPhones and iPads,” she said.

Senator Bilyk said the Government’s “wasteful and reckless” approach to managing taxpayers’ money added to booming federal debt.

A Defence spokesman said less than 6 per cent of work phones used by staff were lost, stolen or damaged.

“Defence takes security very seriously and has policies, and processes in place to mitigate security concerns with lost, stolen or damaged phones,” he said.

He said Defence encrypted data on all handsets with classified information and required staff to report as soon as they realised a device was lost or stolen.

Defence then locked the device, wiped classified material and had the carrier block the SIM and International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number. Staff would then have to file a report, which would be investigated by their commander or manager.