In the National Interest: From Ukraine to Geelong - What Critical Infrastructure Disruption Really Looks Like
In Australia’s National Interest - Security of Critical InfrastructureShow Notes
The recent fire at Viva Energy’s Geelong refinery has been widely reported as an industrial incident. But what does it reveal about Australia’s broader vulnerability when disruption occurs at nationally critical assets? In this episode, we move beyond cause and examine consequence — exploring how disruption to a single node in a highly concentrated and globally dependent system can have cascading effects across the economy. Ukraine has shown us what sabotage and disruption of critical infrastructure really look like. In the years leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, fires, explosions, cyber attacks and supply chain disruptions were often treated as isolated events — many ambiguous at the time, and later attributed to acts of sabotage linked to Russian state activity. What becomes clear, over time, is the pattern. Disruption rarely arrives as a single, decisive event — it emerges through a series of smaller incidents that only later form a recognisable and strategically significant pattern. Events like the Geelong refinery fire may be very different in nature — but they highlight how disruption at critical nodes can have broader consequences. Australia’s fuel system is not immune to these dynamics. In this episode, Tim Slattery and Marina Shteinberg from Pentagram Advisory examine what these patterns mean for Australia’s critical infrastructure — and why organisations must shift from a compliance mindset to one focused on assurance, resilience, and understanding their true points of vulnerability.
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In this episode, Tim Slattery and Marina Shteinberg, Co-Founders and Directors of Pentagram Advisory, unpack the personnel security implications of section 9A of the Enhanced CIRMP Rules 2026 and what responsible entities should prioritise ahead of the 10 June 2027 and 10 June 2028 implementation milestones. They explore how section 9A strengthens expectations around access management, critical worker identification and suitability, ongoing personnel assurance and workforce lifecycle security. The discussion also looks at why implementation should begin with risk, how to think about the two layers of access — to the critical infrastructure asset and to critical components — and why organisations need to connect people, roles, access, suitability and assurance within a coherent enterprise personnel security architecture. The episode concludes with a broader question of trust: how organisations can build appropriate assurance around the trust they grant to employees, contractors and third parties with access to their most critical assets, systems and information — their organisational “crown jewels”.
How much of what we judge to be a material security risk is driven by evidence — and how much by what we can most easily remember? In this episode, Tim Slattery and Marina Shteinberg of Pentagram Advisory explore the availability heuristic and what behavioural science can teach us about security risk management and decision making under uncertainty. In an era of heightened uncertainty, Boards, executives and security leaders are required to make consequential decisions with information that may be incomplete, uneven or constantly changing. Recent incidents, personal experience and highly visible threats can quickly dominate attention — while less familiar but potentially material risks remain outside the spotlight. Tim and Marina examine how availability bias can influence security risk assessment, risk prioritisation and investment decisions, and why a formal risk management framework does not remove human judgement — it structures where that judgement is exercised. They also consider practical ways to strengthen decision-making through broader evidence, structured challenge and greater transparency around the reasoning behind risk ratings. Because what is memorable is not necessarily what is material. And unfamiliarity is not evidence of safety.