Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has defended the Department of Defence’s exit from a Chinese-owned data centre. Defence made plans in 2017 to migrate all its data into a secure, government-owned facility by 2020, after the UK-based Global Switch owners sold a 49 percent stake to Chinese consortium Elegant Jubilee in Dec. 2016. However, the department will remain in the current Ultimo data facility in Sydney until 2025 under a $53.5 million contract. A defence spokesperson told itnews, that the decision arose due to the sheer size of the department’s data holdings. “The size of the Defence holdings made it impractical to migrate all the holdings from the data centre prior to the expiry of the Defence lease in September 2020,” they said. “Defence has developed a plan to migrate its remaining holdings cover the next three to five years, as supported by the government.” In response to security concerns, …