Sheraton Grand Hyde Park, Wednesday 20th – Friday 22nd August 2025
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Intelligence 2024 Wrap up
Cath Burn on Wednesday spoke of ASIS and its accountability to the Australian government, the Australian people and to their own staff. Cath went some way to demystifying work in an organisation like ASIS and how the agency is slowly but surely becoming more transparent where it can be. She spoke of recruiting, staging engagements, demographics and diversity needed in the people ASIS recruits and of outposting staff from time to time.
Dennis Richardson, on Thursday, spoke about his experiences in a very broad and extended career in public service. He spoke of complexity and complex situations in reference to the geopolitical issues impacting Australia and mused about whether the world is really a more complex place today than at any other time in recent and not so recent history, I suspect his proposition that it is not more complex today is right.
Alastair MacGibbon, spoke to us of difficulties we all face and will face in relation to the growing reliance of cyber in all walks of life. He spoke of attack vectors and targets of foreign interference including in embedding code in critical infrastructure software intended to destroy that critical infrastructure in the case of conflict and our likely lack of preparedness to manage those attacks. Alastair also touched on our ability to respond to failing infrastructure, which amplified a comment from Dennis the day before on the breakdown of society if supply chains were cut off – and that was purely in in the domestic context.
Elsina Wainwright, spoke about diversity, career progression and career movements across the NIC and importantly about professionalisation within the NIC agencies.
Over the course of the conference we raised over $11,000 for Small Steps 4 Hannah, but could not be more moved by Dave Kramer’s speech at the dinner. How could we not be compelled to lift our collective game in combating coercive control and domestic violence?
Finally, a big thank you to Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness, Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator, for coming to provide our dinner speech, which was found inspirational, informative and touching.
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