Defence renews storage deal with Global Switch, years after Government vowed to ditch Chinese-owned firm

The Australian Defence Department has quietly extended a contract with a Chinese-owned company to continue storing data in its Sydney facilities, despite a push to end the arrangement by 2020.

For a decade sensitive military files have been stored by Global Switch, but concerns were raised four years ago when a Chinese consortium bought half of its British parent company.

The ownership of Global Switch changed in December 2016 when the London-based parent company, Aldersgate Investments, accepted $4…