Cybersecurity and the Australian Federal Budget 2025

I looked for the cybersecurity line items in the budget so you don’t have to.

This is the worst budget yet when it comes to cybersecurity, privacy, and cyber safety.

No net new spend on cyber

I suspect it’s because the government does not believe cybersecurity is an issue that anyone is going to care about when they go out to vote during the upcoming federal election. So, they really didn’t give a S&*$ about it.

While the government made it a point in previous budgets to allocate material dollars to cyber, it’s mostly been political posturing outside of money allocated to federal government departmental spend.

This year, they aren’t even pretending to care anymore. They have been notably silent on all cyber matters since the previous Minister for Cyber, Clare O’Neil (who IMHO was Australia’s best Minister for Cyber in history by a huge margin) was moved to a different portfolio in July of 2024.

The best the budget documents could manage was to say this:

“Since the 2023–24 Budget, the Government has committed more than $60 million to help small businesses uplift their digital and cyber security capabilities through the Digital Solutions program, Cyber Wardens program, Small Business Cyber Resilience Service and Cyber Health Check. Together, these programs help small businesses adopt digital tools and grasp the opportunities that going online offers, and prevent and bounce back from cyber attacks.”

So, if you want to know what the Australian government is spending on cyber, look at what was announced in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Ian Yip is the founder and CEO of Avertro, a venture-backed cybersecurity software company.