Huawei has condemned former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for suggesting that his move in 2018 to ban the telecommunications equipment giant from installing the 5G mobile network in his country was now justified, due to recent reports claiming China might be behind a cyber-attack targeting Australia’s government system, reported The Australian Financial Review (AFR).
Huawei’s chief corporate affairs officer Jeremy Mitchell issued a statement within hours of Turnbull’s interview for AFR, where he referred to his decision two years ago to expand a 2012 prohibition on the company laying cables for the National Broadband Network.
“In the not quite two years since my government made the decision to keep high-risk vendors out of 5G in Australia, [that] has been proved to be the right call,” said Turnbull on Tuesday.
In response, Huawei Australia said it was “extremely disappointed” by Malcolm Turnbull’s comments, seeking to justify his government’s ban on Huawei “delivering the world’s best 5G in Australia”.
“It is completely inappropriate for Mr Turnbull to claim - as reported in the AFR - that the recent cyber-attacks on Australia by a so far unnamed foreign country justify the 5G ban on Huawei in Australia,” said the statement.
The developments come after the Australian government revealed on 19 June that a “sophisticated state-based actor” had targeted government companies, hospitals, and schools in Australia in a cyberattack.
Although Turnbull's successor Scott Morrison stopped short of naming Beijing as responsible for the cyber-attacks, Australian broadcaster ABC reported, citing former Australian officials, that they might have been orchestrated by China as revenge for the crackdown on Huawei.
Reports claimed the attackers might have been linked to China’s intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS).
The cyber campaign is believed to have sought to steal users’ details through fake harvesting websites.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian dismissed the accusations as “baseless nonsense”, insisting that China has “been opposing and combating all types of cyber-attacks.”
Australia’s ban against Huawei in 2018 came in the wake of a pressure campaign by the United States, which has been accusing the company of spying on users at the behest of the Chinese government through backdoors in its equipment.
The company and Beijing have vehemently denied the uncorroborated accusations.
