Communications Alliance CEO Luke Coleman was interviewed by Sky News about submarine cable security

1 April 2025: Transcript: Communications Alliance CEO Luke Coleman with Sky News host Sharri Markson 1/4/2025
Sharri Markson:
Let's bring in now the CEO of Telecommunications industry, peak Body Communications Alliance, Luke Coleman. Luke, great to see you now. You do a lot of work. You're an expert when it comes to submarine cable security issues. Now, is this an innocuous ship that we're seeing circumnavigating Southern Australia, or what sort of activities could Chinese intelligence be undertaking on vessels like this?

Luke Coleman, Communications Alliance CEO (00:29):
We have seen examples from around the world of where what appears to be a civilian vessel or a research vessel has accidentally dropped its anchor and cut through submarine cables. It happened late last year in the Baltic Sea. It has happened more recently in Taiwan, and so I think that we should really see this as a bit of an alarm bell going off that we have a vessel that is very close to critical infrastructure off the coast of Australia. These submarine cables carry 99% plus of Australia's internet traffic. It is the very definition of critical infrastructure, and so Australia really does need to step up its efforts to protect these cables. Most people wouldn't realize that there are about 12 cables coming into Australia today that carry almost all of our internet traffic. If you cut those 12 cables, you cut Australia off from the world.

Sharri Markson:(01:27):
So what more can we be doing? So we know, just to backtrack a bit, we know this Chinese vessel is charting a similar cost to the root of our deep sea internet cables, as you've been saying. What more can we do though to protect the cables?

Luke Coleman (01:43):
Well, Australia has a thing called submarine cable protection zones. We have two zones off the coast of Sydney where most of those cables come in. We have one zone off the coast of Perth, but the fact is those zones haven't been updated since 2007. Think of how far internet connectivity has come from 2007 to 2025. We've got cables that land in Darwin, that land in port Headland in Marucci door. We've got cables that are planned to land in Melbourne, going over to New Zealand. Yet we don't have protection zones in any of those places. So not only do we need more protection zones, but we need active monitoring of those protection zones. At the moment, you submit an application to get a cable landed in a protection zone, but then there is no actual protection offered. Nobody is monitoring those zones. Nobody is enforcing those zones. In fact, only recently we saw two major submarine cables off the coast of Perth that were cut by a ship's anchor. This is a very regular occurrence, about 80% of cables that are damaged when a ship drops its anchor in a storm. Now, that might appear to be perfectly innocent. It may well be malicious. It's hard to tell in a lot of circumstances, but the fact is we don't have anybody patrolling these zones enforcing ships that need to be out of these zones.

Sharri Markson (03:03):
Just to interrupt you there, to be actively protecting those cables. Luke, when you say that this could have been malicious, was this done by a foreign vessel, a Chinese ship, or was it by a local Australian ship?

Luke Coleman (03:17):
I'm not actually accusing any malicious activity in this instance, but we do see around the world that there have been accusations of malicious activity from what would appear to be a cargo ship or a civilian vessel, which drops its anchor and cuts through submarine cables. The point that I'm really seeking to enforce here is there is no active enforcement regime in those cable protection zones. So not only do we not have enough cable protection zones in Australia, but we don't have agencies actively enforcing them to ensure that ships aren't dropping their anchors. Whether they're doing that innocently because there's a storm and they need to quickly anchor, or if it is in the case of malicious activity, we do need to be taking a much more proactive role to ensuring that this critical infrastructure stays online.

Sharri Markson (04:03):
Really appreciate your insights tonight, Luke. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.