SYDNEY, July 19 (Reuters) - A cyber outage affecting

Australian media, banks and telecoms companies appears to relate

to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike ( CRWD ), a

spokesperson for Australia's home affairs minister said on

Friday.

Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several

banks and telecoms companies.

"I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a

number of companies and services across Australia this

afternoon," the office of Australia's National Cyber Security

Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.

"Our current information is this outage relates to a

technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by

affected companies."

"There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security

incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders."

Her statement did not mention Crowdstrike ( CRWD ).

State broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a "major

network outage", without giving a reason.

In a pre-recorded message played on Sky News Australia as

regular programming was disrupted, correspondent Tom Connell

said the outage was not believed to the result of a hack.

"Our computers, our systems are down, all the things that

make Sky News run down and indeed for many other major companies

around the country," he said.

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Christopher

Cushing and Muralikumar Anantharaman)