There is a much longer history behind the current concern about submarine cables off Perth than might first appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Australia’s dependence on submarine communications cables is not new. The original international telegraph network reached Australia in the early 1870s, when the Darwin\u2013Java submarine cable was connected with the Overland Telegraph Line. Western Australia itself had already embraced telegraphy, with the Perth\u2013Fremantle line opening in 1869, followed by the expansion of the network across the colony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 1877 the east\u2013west telegraph connection linked Western Australia with the eastern colonies and ultimately the international network. In other words, Australia’s strategic dependence on cables goes back more than 150 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What has changed is the scale of what those cables carry. Today’s submarine fibre-optic systems are effectively the digital arteries of Australia. The Australian Navy’s Sea Power Centre<\/a> has previously warned that Australia’s military, government, commercial and private communications rely overwhelmingly on submarine cables, with satellites unable to provide an equivalent substitute for the enormous volume of data involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The recent damage to Indigo West and Indigo Central is therefore particularly concerning because both cables reportedly suffered faults within a short period of one another and in close proximity, inside the Perth Submarine Cable Protection Zone<\/a>. There was also reported vessel activity in the vicinity at around the relevant time. The owner, SUBCO, referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police, and the AFP has confirmed that it received a report of crime and is assessing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it is important not to jump from “suspicious circumstances” to “sabotage”. At present there has been no public finding that the August 2026 damage was deliberate, no publicly identified perpetrator, and no conviction. The investigation needs to establish whether this was an accident, negligence, deliberate interference, or something more serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is also a very relevant precedent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In August 2021, the Australia\u2013Singapore Cable was damaged off Perth after the container ship Maersk Surabaya allegedly dragged its anchor through the protection zone. The AFP charged the ship’s master over the incident. However, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions subsequently discontinued the prosecution in December 2022. So, while there was an Australian prosecution for cable damage, there was no conviction in that case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That history is important because it demonstrates that the threat does not necessarily require a hostile state or sophisticated sabotage operation. A large commercial vessel, an anchor, bad weather and the wrong combination of circumstances can be enough to cause millions of dollars of damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n