Parliament will hold an adjournment debate, moved by the Opposition, on the Committee on Public Finance report into the cybercrime-linked fraud that diverted a US$2.5 million debt repayment intended for Australia, the Communication Department of Parliament said on Thursday.

The House will sit from August 4 to 7, as decided at a recent meeting of the Committee on Parliamentary Business chaired by Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne.

Other business is already scheduled for the first day of the sitting week. On August 4, Parliament is due to debate and approve the supplementary estimate relating to the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education, and to take up the determination of the salary of the Auditor General.

The Committee on Public Finance (CoPF) has tabled its report on the fraud in Parliament. A date for the adjournment debate within the August 4-7 window was not announced.

Context

The case concerns a US$2.5 million foreign debt instalment owed to the Australian Export Finance Agency that was rerouted to accounts controlled by fraudsters. Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eranga Weeraratne has said the diversion was achieved through fabricated emails impersonating the creditor rather than an intrusion into government systems, and that investigators found no evidence of internal involvement.

The CoPF, chaired by Opposition MP Dr. Harsha de Silva, received the Treasury’s report on the incident in June and questioned officials over the following weeks. De Silva had earlier raised the possibility that the missed payment amounted to a technical default — a framing the government rejected in Parliament in May, saying advisors expected Australia and Paris Club members to treat the matter as a cybercrime rather than a failure to repay.

The matter has run in parallel with a criminal investigation. A court imposed travel bans on five officials connected to the case.

Parliament’s own digital systems have come under scrutiny in the same period. An audit reported this week identified cyberattack risks in the legislature’s IT infrastructure, and a separate review found the Treasury was still running an email system dating from 2019 at the time of the fraud.

The adjournment debate will be the first full-chamber discussion of the committee’s report.