Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is under fire for spending five days on holiday in Queensland while the country recovers from a major global technology outage.
Major companies including airlines, banks and supermarkets faced financial problems on Friday afternoon after antivirus company CrowdStrike released a faulty update.
Microsoft computers running the software were shut down around the world and displayed a “blue screen” the next day until the company rolled out a fix.
While the Australian fighters faced delayed and cancelled flights through Saturday, Mr Albanese boarded a flight to the Sunshine State later that day.
His office confirmed that the five days of leave had been planned in advance and will be kept informed of the outage. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles will step in during his absence.
Although Albanese had already planned the holiday, Australians were furious that he had left the clean-up to the rest of his government.
According to one of them, the power outage was not caused by the government, but it still played a ‘major role in the recovery and the consequences’.
“They can set up systems to help the poor get groceries (or) help small businesses with an overview of technical solutions,” they wrote on X.
Premier Anthony Albanese (pictured with partner Jodie Haydon) has gone on five days’ leave to Queensland, the day after a global tech sector outage shut down entire industries
“The world is almost in lockdown, but Albo is still going on vacation,” wrote a second.
A third added: ‘He has no idea.’
Others argued that Albania would have little influence in solving a global technical failure.
“What do you expect a prime minister to do when faced with an international software problem?” asked one X user.
‘Do they have to go to the local supermarket to process the groceries?’
Another said he “can’t do anything… It’s a fix for the technicians on site to solve.”
“Yes, it will take time, but there is nothing a politician can do,” they wrote.
Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister Claire O’Neil confirmed the economy is in ‘recovery mode’ after businesses regained access to their computers.
However, Ms O’Neil also noted that there were “start-up issues” following the outage and warned of opportunistic scammers trying to take advantage of Australians.
“We are seeing reports of phishing attempts through the incident that just occurred,” Ms O’Neil told reporters on Saturday.
She said scammers are posing as CrowdStrike or Microsoft in emails and asking potential victims to “enter banking information to access a reboot.”
“I would ask all Australians to be very cautious over the coming days about any attempts to use this for scams or phishing,” Ms O’Neil said.
A faulty update from a cybersecurity firm caused Microsoft computers to crash at airports (pictured crashed computers at Sydney Airport), banks and other major companies
CrowdStrike released a statement Friday night confirming that a software upgrade was impacting Windows hosts, but noted that it was not a cyberattack.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a solution has been implemented,” the report said.
‘We understand the seriousness of the situation and deeply regret the inconvenience and disruption.
“We are working with all affected customers to ensure their systems are up and running again and they can deliver the services their customers rely on.”
Several companies, including media organisations such as News Corp’s global operations, ABC, SBS, Channel 7, Channel 9 and Network 10, were affected.
EFTPOS services, airlines, banks and supermarkets were also hit, throwing the whole country into chaos.
The crowdsourced website Downdetector reported outages at Foxtel, NAB, Bendigo Bank, Suncorp Bank, Commonwealth Bank and Me Bank.
Telstra, Microsoft, Google, Foxtel, National Australia Bank, ABC, Uber, ANZ and Bendigo Bank also experienced outages.