06/09/2026
NEWS/OPINION | In December 2025, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant warned that connected vehicles were becoming “weapons on wheels” in domestic violence cases. Her point was: cars are no longer passive machines. They track, listen, record, and can be remotely controlled — and those features were already being misused inside Australian homes.
Now, a former national cyber security chief has issued a very different warning about the very same technology. As reported here: https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/catastrophic-excyber-chiefs-brutal-warning-as-aussies-flock-to-chinesemade-vehicles/news-story/4182b57e6c2bdd51917530fa0b487c66
He cautions that Chinese made connected vehicles may be capable of transmitting audio, video, location and behavioural data offshore, and that Chinese intelligence laws could compel companies to hand that data over.
These two warnings are being treated as separate issues — one about domestic violence, one about foreign surveillance — but they are actually the same story.
The technology enabling coercive control in households is the same technology enabling mass data collection at a national level. The difference is scale, not substance.
Australia has allowed surveillance capable machines onto its roads without establishing who controls the data, who can access it, or how it can be misused. The risks didn’t suddenly change between 2025 and 2026. Only the framing did.
It’s time to stop pretending these are isolated concerns. They are two sides of the same blind spot — and Australians deserve a conversation that acknowledges the full picture.
6 September 2026 | By COURAGE IS THE CURE
