Australian PM Urges People to Remain Patient Amid IT Outage Aftermath

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Feb. 7, 2023. (Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has urged Australians and businesses to remain patient while the massive global IT outages are fixed.

During a press conference on July 22, the prime minister said the government was expected to deal with the “legacy issues” of the outages in the next one or two weeks.

This comes after the Australian government had a meeting with security software company CrowdStrike, where the latter informed that it was close to rolling out an automatic fix to the issue with their update.

CrowdStrike also said the fix could speed up the recovery process of computer systems across the Australian economy.

While acknowledging the significant impacts of the IT outages, Mr. Albanese said Australians could be “proud” of how state and federal governments and the business community had responded to the event.

“By and large, things have been back on track,” he told reporters.

“I think the response of government agencies across the board, as well as business, shows how resilient we are as an economy and as a people, and that we can be quite proud of the fact that this very significant global event was dealt with in a way that minimised the impact on the Australian people.”

At the same time, the prime minister called on Australians to refrain from venting their frustration on service workers.

“I again call for people to be patient where there are legacy issues that are still being dealt with and make sure that they don’t take out what is understandable frustration on frontline workers at our supermarkets or in service delivery,” he said.

The IT outages occurred on July 19 when what appeared to be an antivirus software update by CrowdStrike went astray, taking over one billion Windows-based computers offline worldwide.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has issued a statement apologising for the incident, saying it was not a cyber attack.

While the government confirmed that the outages did not affect critical infrastructure, government services, or emergency services, the business community was not so lucky.

Airlines were forced to ground their aeroplanes and cancel flights, and many banks could not provide their services as systems went offline.

The incident also prompted IT experts to raise concerns about the vulnerability of Australia’s digital systems.

Travellers wait in long service lines at the Sydney domestic airport in Sydney, Australia, on July 19, 2024. (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

Government to Examine Digital Infrastructure

When asked whether Australia’s digital infrastructure was too reliant on a few companies, the prime minister said the government would examine the issue.

“Those issues will be examined over the coming weeks, months, and years,” he said.

However, Mr. Albanese noted that the government had been “working very hard” on cyber security and that the disruption caused by the IT outages could have been far worse than it was.

“We know that this has had an impact, but the impact was far less than what was first thought it might be, and that shows that agencies have put in place mechanisms as well as the business community,” he said.

“Australian businesses, as well as the different levels of government, acted swiftly and worked together in cooperation to minimise the disruption.”