Federal MPs and senators are taking security into their own hands and deleting or deactivating TikTok from their mobile phones.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil is considering advice on a government-wide ban on the use of the social media platform.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie told reporters on Tuesday her office had disabled TikTok a week ago, as a number of foreign governments including the US, the UK and New Zealand announced bans based on security advice.
Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said he had taken the app off his government-issued phone.
"The government's reviewing all the social media platforms," he told Nine's Today show.
"The Chinese government does run TikTok, and I think that's an issue."
TikTok's Beijing-based owner ByteDance has rejected concerns over the handling of user data and privacy, and says the company works within the law.
Opposition cyber security spokesman James Paterson said the platform posed a "serious national security threat" in two respects.
"One is the way in which it handles data and the espionage risk that comes from that," he told Seven.
"And the second is the risk of foreign interference in that it reaches millions of Australians with a non-transparent algorithm that could be used to promote narratives supportive of the Chinese Communist Party and suppress ones that are critical of it."
Senator Paterson acknowledged the company worked "within the law".
"One of the laws they have to work within is China's 2017 national intelligence law because they are headquartered in China and therefore subject to those laws," he said.
"And what those laws require is that all Chinese citizens and companies co-operate with China's intelligence services and keep that co-operation secret.
"So, if they're asked by the Chinese government to hand over the data on Australian citizens, they will have to comply and we will never know (and) TikTok Australia may never know that their parent company is engaging in this co-operation."
Meanwhile, Ms O'Neil told a national cyber conference in Canberra on Tuesday the Medibank and Optus incidents marked a turning point in cyber security in Australia.
She said it was important Australia develop a sovereign capability in cyber security, and that small and medium-sized businesses are supported to improve their information security.
Ms O'Neil said government information security especially mattered because "the organisation that holds the most data on Australians is government".
Former prime minister John Howard told the conference the pace of technological change would "go on inexorably".
"There is a great deal of bipartisan agreement when it comes to cyber security and that's a good thing," he told the Australian Information Security Association event.
