~ https://theshovel.com.au/2025/10/14/albo-yet-to-receive-sing...
A crestfallen Anthony Albanese says he hasn’t received a single phone call, text, or even a cheeky meme, after his personal phone number was leaked online this week.
“I honestly thought I’d be inundated,” the PM said at a press conference today, staring at his phone’s empty notifications screen. “Not even a scam text pretending to be Australia Post”.
Albanese said he’d even logged into a website that requires two factor identification, just so he would receive at least one text message. “But they ended up sending me a code to my email address instead. My phone’s still empty”.I thought it would be very interesting if the public could submit questions to the Prime Minister during PMQ, and not just rely on their elected official. Make sure they are reasonable and professional, and ask him.
He was on the Australian TV Q+A which had questions submitted by the general public, and it's not all that hard to get meaningful questions put forward in Parliamentary Question Time .. which is better for all as it goes on the record via Hansard.
* https://www.abc.net.au/about/media-centre/press-releases/q-a...
* https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard
* House Question Time, 9 October 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU9mf2sMfe8
I'd call him useless, but lets be frank he is no worse than his peers, or recent prime ministers from both sides of Parliament.
If there's any actionable issue that you want to raise a better starting place is with whatever minister has the portfolio that's relevant. Also write (and cc the minister) to whatever national reporters are covering that domain.
It's about finding the leverage to raise awareness and response to whatever policing, agricultural, medical, defense, et al. questions or concerns you have.
Remember the phrase "metadata isn't data"?
If it's your metadata, collection and storage is mandated. If it's their metadata, they send in the police to put a stop to it.
- caller identity should not be spoofable
- identities should form hierarchies and groups so you can allow whole organizations instead of individuals
- organizations should use predictable identities for egress calls
- most likely managing multiple identities per device is needed (e.g. personal and work identites)
etc
None of this is particularly difficult technically. Even simply slapping x509 certs on calls and having some basic filtering would achieve a lot.
Slapping x509 certs on probably some of the oldest telecommunications infrastructure in the world (both in terms of devices using it, and devices enabling it) wouldn't be "technically difficult"?
But I've never worked in telecommunications, maybe I'm overestimating how large piece of work this would be.
Probably not.
>The Australian Federal Police is formally seeking to get the prime minister's number removed.
How about getting the Prime Minister a new phone number instead?
And allowing direct communication would increase transparency and improve how well democracy can work.
This is not true. There are quite a few people who love to harassed whoever they see as opposition. That includes harassment of loved ones of the politicians. So, that is why.
> Honest man has nothing to fear as proverb say.
Nonsense. That is true in happy times and completely false in ... times like today.
Local representatives is a different matter and I think some reps in Australia do give out their mobile numbers.
Some possible reasons:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Don...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jo_Cox
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Amess
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Paul_Pelosi
I tried to choose a range of politicians to make my point.
I wondered if the ABC would acknowledge who broke this story. (Latouffe sued the ABC earlier this year for wrongful dismissal and won.)
They didn't link to her new media company though or the original story (other news sites did).
https://www.ettemedia.com/exclusive-personal-phone-number-of...
As an Australian living in Australia, this reads as:
“We became so enraged that we formed a committee. We will be asking the government to let us nicely ask the criminals to nicely take down his number.”
The innocence is charming :)
discordance•3mo ago
“ Hackers release Qantas customers' data on dark web. The stolen data included some customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and frequent flyer numbers.“ [1]
0: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/28/anthony-alb...
1:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-11/hackers-release-qanta...